134: Back to Basics- House Sitting
This podcast is sponsored by Pet Sitters Associates. Pet Sitter Confessional listeners can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter Confessional discount code Confessional at check-out to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance at petsitllc.com.
Summary:
What’s the difference between a value based house sit and a for-pay house sit? Should you eat their food? This Back to Basics episode is all about house sitting. From questions you should ask, to what house sitting looks like with Covid, house sitting is something you should consider if you love traveling. Also, Natasha O’Banion answers, “Is print advertising dead?”
Topics on this episode:
Different kinds of house sitting
Questions to ask
Taking Covid into consideration
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Make sure you have checked your insurance to know if you are covered for house sitting and how much!
Links:
Document on virtual food drives from the Pet Food Task Force
Episode with Stacey Lebaron about Community Cats
Episodes with Kelly Hayes-Raitt about getting started in international house sitting
Episode with Jennifer Flett and Henry Lecky from Hoopla Adventures
Check out the Texas Pet Sitters Conference and get signed up today!
Check out Start. Scale. Sail. and use PSC20 for 15% off.
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, clients, house, pet sitters, dog, home, sitters, check, sitting, greet, places, food, extended periods, important, invisible fence, people, pay, emergency contact, pet food, service
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Collin 00:18
Hi, I'm Colin.
Meghan 00:19
And I'm Megan.
00:20
And this is petsitter. confessional
Meghan 00:21
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, and welcome to Episode 134. Today we're going to talk back to basics with housesitting. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our amazing patrons for supporting the show.
Collin 00:38
Before we dive in, we did want to take a moment to mention a really important and pretty cool charity that we've recently learned about. Many families have been impacted with the loss of jobs and income and have actually had to start going to food banks unfortunately, well, Stacy lebaron, from back in Episode 56 actually got us connected with Lindsey Feldman, who runs the pet food Task Force in Massachusetts. They're a coalition of animal shelters and groups which provide pet food to food banks, so that families who come there to get their own food will actually be able to pick up food for their furry family members. They're getting involved in a lot of areas around the state. And they're always looking for transportation volunteers to actually physically move the food from whoever donates it to the food banks, who needs it. So if you're in Massachusetts, check out our show notes so that you can get connected with Lindsay. And you can start seeing how you can contribute in your area. However, if you're thinking, I don't even know what that is, I don't even know where Massachusetts is. That's totally fine. We did want to throw out some ideas of things that you can do in your local area. So you can actually have your very own virtual food drives. And these are great idea mostly because of COVID restrictions in a lot of areas around the globe. We'll have links in the show notes for a document that Lindsay provided for ways to organize and get the word out about having a virtual food drive.
Meghan 01:58
If you are able, though host an in person food drive. work with local groups and organizations to help pets in your community. Make sure that they have the food that they need. If you work in pet supply grocery stores, or if you have connections that do save the unsaleable pet food, the broken bags, the dented cans, the discontinued items and donate it. Again, we've got a ton of links in the show notes you can check out and in your podcast player or on our website petsitter conventional.com.
Collin 02:27
Now, on to the main topic, how sitting in the time of COVID.
Meghan 02:31
This is how we got started petsitting back in 2012. We were grad students at Texas Tech. And we started pet sitting on the side, we'd go for several weeks without being in our apartment. Because we were house sitting throughout Lubbock. And it was actually really cool. We were newly married. And
Collin 02:49
it was really fast paced is a great way to explore the city. And it was a crash course in what kind of houses we did or didn't like or want to live in later
Meghan 02:57
in life. Yeah, we still do some house sitting but not as much as we did back then. Which is okay, because we have our own home now where we can board dogs and do daycare. And it's really kind of difficult to do with the kids while we're also doing boarding and daycare.
Collin 03:12
So something that we had to do when we first started and actually even now is explain to clients what house sitting is. So how sitting is when you travel to the client's home stay there to care for yes their pet but also their home and their property.
Meghan 03:28
This episode is predominantly going to be about how sitting as a pet care business. But there's also an entire other world that does this for free, known as value based where the house sitter does not charge for their services and in return gets to travel extensively around the globe. Really cool topic, really cool adventures that you can go on. And you can check out our interviews with Kelly and hoopla adventures in episodes 920 and 45.
Collin 03:58
And if you're interested in something like this and want to get connected with a broader community of global house sitters, we actually have a Facebook group dedicated to that called worldwide house and pet sitters that you can join.
Meghan 04:10
But for those of you who aren't ready to make the jump into that style of house sitting, many of us choose to offer it as a for pay service. But is it right for everyone?
Collin 04:19
As you could guess as with most things, it totally depends. Really think about what other services you are providing and whether you have it in your schedule to fit this kind of service in and how you want your schedule to look. When housesitting and dropins were our most popular, we would use one housesit as the new quote, you know home base in Lubbock, and then we'd schedule all of our other visits around that location. It provided us a lot of flexibility. But we were we were constantly changing our route and routine based on whatever house we were sitting throughout the city and the requirements of that particular dog.
Meghan 04:55
Some pet parents don't want their pet to be left alone at all, at which point Make sure you're charging enough. They're asking you to give up all of the other sits, walks, dropins, whatever other services you provide for them for that client. So you should be charging a lot. And this doesn't come up often, at least not for us. But it may if the pet has never been left alone, ever, or has some type of grave medical condition.
Collin 05:22
Well, this actually did happen to us. Last year, the couple was retired, and only one of them ever left at a particular time even to get groceries or to go out to eat, they go get food and bring it back home and run their errands like that,
Meghan 05:34
which is actually really detrimental for the dog. But yes, a whole other discussion. Yeah,
Collin 05:39
well, and then their son got married, and they both needed to be gone at the same time. So they called us and asked that I come over, and I not leave for 24 hours, and they were willing to pay our rate for that. And it
Meghan 05:53
may also happen if the pet is needing medications or monitoring, like I said, because of an illness, or it's recovering from surgery, or it's the end of his or her life, and the owner doesn't want to take them to the vet. Now right now, because of COVID. Many clients are asking for pet sitters to check on their second home. So in places like Florida, and other vacation heavy places where the clients can't get to, they really aren't able to travel to their second homes like they usually do. And they want someone to check on things periodically to make sure everything's okay to make sure nothing, the windows aren't broken to make sure that you know the water is still running okay that the pipes haven't burst. And so these clients don't have pets, they just want to make sure that someone has eyes on their property periodically.
Collin 06:39
Regardless of the reason as we've described here, be ready to make it worth your time and stand your ground when people push back if you give them an hourly rate, or however you choose to structure that. It's really important when we're thinking about how sitting that we, we understand that we're not there just to care for the pets that we are also caring for the house. So the questions that we ask, need to be about the home and its care as well.
Meghan 07:05
So at the meet and greet, we always ask, Where is the water shut off? Do you have a preferred repair company for heating or your air conditioning? Do you have a lawn care company? Or do you need your plants and garden watered is the owner expecting any packages to be delivered? Will anyone else be in the home like a maid or a lawn service or remodeling company? Kids or other family members? That's really important to know because you don't want to come home one day and unexpectedly have somebody there?
Collin 07:37
Well, and if someone else is going to be home, you have to check with your insurance to make sure that you are covered. In general, it's always a good idea to be wary of those instances in case something happens to the pet to the home or to their property. While you're not there. You could be held potentially responsible for those damages.
Meghan 07:54
We also like to make sure the owner explains the house rules for the pet. Are they allowed on furniture? Where do they go? If you leave? Are there any rooms? They're not allowed in? How often do they go out? If it's a cat? Are there specific hiding places where you should look if you can't find the cat? And then house rules for you as well, the sitter? Where will you sleep? Are there any places that are off limits? And then the eternal question to eat or not to? Food is a big topic when housesitting if they never mention it, don't eat the food. If they do mention it, do not eat all of it.
08:30
So important that you do not eat all of their food. Yes,
Meghan 08:33
make sure they don't come back to an empty fridge and an empty pantry. That is not kind and well not really look good on you. We've had clients asked to grocery shop for us before we come over. And we typically decline and bring our own food. I know there was one instance a few years back where she really insisted on going to the grocery store for us. And we were really hesitant to say yes, but we did end up saying okay, that's fine. Just a couple things like we were going to bring our own food anyway. So you don't need to go all out. She went to the stores, she got a bunch of stuff. And I know I think you were you were the one house sitting and you only ate a few things. And when we came back she was like, Oh, you know, did you guys were you guys okay have enough? Yeah,
Collin 09:19
she was really concerned about us, which was really, really sweet. And again, a lot of people who asked for this kind of service, they're gonna be those kind of people they're gonna want to, because they're gonna want to make that part of the service and sit for you. So be ready for that have a few things that you can give them that they can buy for you and then bring your own food whenever you come over.
Meghan 09:39
These questions are not just important to help make sure that you are caring for the pets in their home in the best way possible. But they're also important legally if the client tells you to always kennel the dog when you leave, and that was spoken verbally or is in the contract or was communicated via email in some way and you don't do that you could be held responsible for any damage or consequences that come from that action. So really pay attention when a client tells you those kind of instructions. Additionally, if they say certain rooms are off limits to you and you do go in them, you are not only breaking their trust, but also potentially putting yourself in a bad situation if anything were to go missing.
Collin 10:18
I'll also add that if they say things like the cat is not allowed in the laundry room, and then you let the cat in the laundry room and it gets stuck behind the dryer behind the washer or gets hurt, because of those kind of things. Again, you would be held responsible for that for not following their instructions when it was explicitly stated. If they have cameras as most people do these days, they'll know what rooms you go into. So it's best to discuss cameras at the actual meet and greet to determine where they have them and be ready to ask for certain instances or have it in your contract to not sit in the place if they have cameras. I know a lot of people have it in their contracts where if people have cameras in their bathroom or in places that the pet sitter is going to be sleeping because they just don't feel comfortable there. So that may be something to consider putting in your contract or at least discussing during the meet and greet
Meghan 11:12
if you are not bonded or your employees are not covered under you. It is really a good idea to make sure that it is in place before you start housesitting being bonded covers you in instances where there is an accusation of something being stolen. property damage is covered under your insurance. So double check your coverage is and talk with your agent because you don't want to find out that you have the wrong coverage when it's too late.
Collin 11:35
Well, that's actually a great transition here. 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 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a quote today by visiting pet sit llc.com you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership, pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pet sit llc.com.
Meghan 12:24
When how sitting and stayed in someone else's house either a lot of things that you need to consider in COVID times you may choose to do the meet and greet and home walkthrough virtually have them walk through the home and show you where everything is. And this can easily be done if you're doing a house in a different country. Or if they're they just have a cat or two. And remember to take notes, whether it's in person or virtually because we are human and we forget things. And you could choose to have them write down some of those notes and instructions as well. And we have a meet and greets form that we make sure that the client fills out before we have the meet and greet so we have a little bit of information going into the meet and greet so we can have all of our questions answered and leave a meet and greet with nothing
Collin 13:10
unanswered. While we have our split we have a meet and greet form for each type of service so that not one form is just this huge bloated form and all they need is a dog walk so if they request housesitting, we send them in additional form to cover all of the house care kind of questions.
Meghan 13:27
For housesitting. Our motto is leave it cleaner than you found it. Now, this isn't always possible. And sometimes the definition of cleanliness is a cultural thing or an upbringing thing. It means something different to everybody. So we've been in houses that were not necessarily cleaned to our standards. And even the sheets of the bed, were not that clean. It wasn't a hoarder situation or anything like that. It was just not as clean as we would have liked it. Right. So we took a deep breath and started cleaning the space that we would be in the sheets got washed, counters were wiped down and the floors were vacuumed. Now we didn't clean the entire house that was not necessary and not our job at all right? Just the we just clean the areas that we'd be most infrequently.
Collin 14:12
Now how sitting in a pandemic cleanliness is even more important, so ask that they provide disinfectants and then bring your own on top of that. Wipe down everything when you first enter the home and then periodically while you're there so you're staying on top of it. And then do a really good thorough deep clean before you leave. We'll even generally strip the bed and either get it washed along with the towels and folded or at least bring it into the laundry room. It may even be a good idea to bring your own towels and sheets so you don't even have to mess with that thing at all. And then additionally on the last day we always collect all the trash from the house and we take it with us so that we leave them with a nice empty trash cans and not having to worry about dealing with our garbage that we generated while we were there.
Meghan 14:57
Make sure to disinfect surfaces before You leave, obviously, it's not going to be possible to wear a mask the entire time you are there. And if you are there by yourself, which you should be, because your house sitting in somebody else's house, you won't need to wear a mask, because there's nobody else there. And I believe the general guideline is still three hours, and then you're able to enter the space again, the air recirculates after three hours, right?
Collin 15:22
Yeah, yeah, it's it's the airborne particles settle down, you can wipe them, clean them off. So that may be good to know when exactly they're leaving during a day. So you can schedule to show up at least three hours after they leave, so that you're not catching anything that they may or may not have. And
Meghan 15:36
if not, then just wear a mask for up to those three hours, right.
Collin 15:40
We always also like to ask if the dog is a digger, or if it can be left alone and attended in the backyard, if they have a fence at all. This is because sometimes they may be a digger and they can get out. And if the client doesn't tell you to be watchful of that you may let them out in the morning, come back and check on them 20 minutes later, and they have dug out from the fence and they've gone chasing things down the road.
Meghan 16:04
And if they do have an invisible fence, ask for them to check the battery in the system and collar before they leave. But also if they do have an invisible fence, make sure that you are out there with a dog. Because a couple times we have had a dog get out of the invisible fence and thankfully they were neighborhood dogs. So like they are used to roaming the neighborhood and fine with that. But also it was very unsettling when you know the dog was out of the yard. And yeah, they like having to go call it back to the house. Is
Collin 16:34
it though? Don't worry, we have the visible fans. And we've got out there and the dog just literally bolted straight and ran past it. And then we had to work good to get back moral of that story. Always supervise the dog in the backyard at least for the first couple times you let them out.
Meghan 16:47
Yes. Sometimes you'll be asked to house it because they have other pets like birds, reptiles, farm animals, bunnies. So be sure you're equipped for that.
Collin 16:56
Yeah. And actually one of my very first house sets ever This was before Megan and I were married was for professor at our undergraduate who kept many, many when I say many, I mean many reptiles in his house. He kept Ball Pythons and hinge back tortoises in his basement. It was really, really cool and a really wonderful experience. But the feeding regime was in sane there were a ton of directions because they were very particular on what they got and the different mixes of food that they got throughout the day while I was there. So it would have told me what I got. What I got out of that was this important lesson in paying attention to those details.
Meghan 17:32
Unfortunately though, even if you do pay attention to all the details, and cross all your eyes dot all your T's sometimes things can go wrong when housesitting, you're watching over not only animals, but the house as well. So things could break in the house. So what happens if the oven breaks, or we've had that happen, or inclement weather moves in and you have to take cover or you aren't able to make it back to the house, always have an emergency contact phone number, especially if the client is going to be out of the state or out of the country or maybe not in reach into my may not have cell phone service all the time, you need an emergency contact, you need a local vet number and the nearest animal hospital number in case anything happens.
Collin 18:14
Yeah, well not fun to think about planning for these kind of instances. Right now, at least jotting ideas down and getting those emergency contacts information stored away, will really help in those instances. So you're not having to find them, you're having to think about those, then they'll help you communicate with the client and work through the situation. Because you have those emergency contacts in place.
Meghan 18:36
If the owner is going to be away for an extended period of time, be sure you have their emergency contact for not just the pet and the vet and everything. But also home repairs. And know who will pay for those expenses have that outlined in your contract or in writing of some kind, in general try to get them to have a card on file with their preferred providers. So you're not just having to try to get reimbursed on the back end, if they have a favorite plumber, know that if they have a favorite lawn care company, make sure you have their information on file,
Collin 19:08
there was one house it where the AC broke, it was the summer in Texas. And so we had to reach out to the clients. And they scheduled the AC repair person to come over in the meantime, we had to keep the dogs cool with lots of fans and actually a portable AC unit that we stuck in the window but we had their preferred contact provider information in their kitchen. So we were able to coordinate that through them and then they they were able to pay them through an account that they had on file.
Meghan 19:38
As Bob Dylan says the times are changing. And that's really true. COVID has really changed this sector of the industry. We've heard from international housesitters that 2020 was incredibly difficult, and many are changing some of their safety plans. We know that the entire pet care industry as a whole has been really Up ended, but particularly the International House sitters because they are not able to travel borders are closed, and have been closed for a long time in some countries, and they're really just aren't that many houses available because people aren't traveling, right. And when people do travel, it's not for extended periods of time it's going to the lake for a weekend or going to see grandma, that's just, you know, a state or two away,
Collin 20:27
right? Well, and these changes we've seen and we've all experienced, even closer to home, even within our own state or within our own County, they're not going away for extended periods of time, or they're not going away at all. And honestly, until the vaccine gets a broader rollout and acceptance. And, and it's really important here. And on top of that people start feeling safe. It feels safe to travel again, how sitting bookings will most likely be won't be as numerous as they were in previous years. But we really hope we're wrong.
Meghan 20:55
Yeah. Because I mean, I think that is one of our goals one day is to travel the world. Once the kids get older, that would be so cool to just see different places, explore different cities, and taking care of pets. What a dream.
Collin 21:09
Yeah, yeah, it'd be really cool to be able to do that. So we hope that that happens eventually, and are able to do that. So let us know if you house it, and what you've learned and what your expectations are for the coming year.
Meghan 21:20
And this week's pet business coach segment, Natasha, oh, Banyan answers, the question is print media dead?
Collin 21:26
We were thinking of marketing. I know there are a lot of different ways to Market. But one that has kind of stuck around for a while is print media. So is print media just totally dead? Or what role should it play in my business?
Natasha 21:41
I think the way I view marketing is like little seeds everywhere. So you have to plant little butts in seeds wherever you go, because you never know which one's going to land. So if you do a little bit of print to do social media, you do foot work. If you add, you're planting seeds everywhere, you know, you should never just rely on one type of marketing strategy, because that's just not how marketing works. Marketing is a plethora of different people, different ideas, especially people of our parents age, they still like great people on my grandma's age. I know a lot of walkers specialize in senior citizen developments, they still enjoy prevention. But one thing I try to remind them also is a lot of those times it's their son or daughter that finds them to service, not the elderly person. So they're like my clients read because that my clients read the post, I said, Yeah, but your clients are not looking around for a walker all the time. A lot of that, like from my business, I get the son always calls. My mom needs a walker. And I'm like, okay, I always get this son is never the daughter, it's always the son. I'm looking for a walker for my mother. And I'm like, great. So don't forget to put those marketing butts in seats a little bit bit everywhere, because you don't know who feel good. And you don't want to knock yourself out of the game many area
Collin 22:56
being open to all options. And knowing if I want to put a little here, here, little here. So nothing is all in one basket, because you are going to miss certain certain types, certain groups of people that may never look at that one spot where you're dumping all your seeds.
Natasha 23:09
Yeah, and most importantly, when you think about, you want to go back, like we talked about earlier, you want to go back to the basics. So if you're looking at print, where do they buy that print? Do they come to their front door? Where do these people shop? Where do these people go get their haircut? Where do they go get their nails done? Where do they go to the grocery store, go to those places and make yourself visual, not just waiting and see if someone saw you and you know, 50 sheets of paper. That's not enough. It's the same thing and making your business Good to Great. You have to get out there. When we look at analytics and statistics. It's not waiting around to see what happens is making sure you're testing you have to test different strategies to see what's working and what's not working.
Meghan 23:57
Natasha has started scaled and sailed her own pet business. And if you would like her to coach you through yours, you can go to her website, start scale sale.com and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off any of her coaching last week on episode 133. We interviewed Jessica, my mom with Texas pet sitters conference, their conference is coming up in February the 19th through the 21st it is free. So if you haven't signed up go do so
Collin 24:24
there's also a paid version of VIP version which gets you access to a goodie box and actually become makes you a become a founding member of the Texas pet sitters Association. And what's really cool here is that you don't have to live in Texas to attend the conference, or be a part of the association. It just gets you access to those awesome communities, continuing education opportunities, and just these awesome speakers that are going to be at the conference this year. You can head to TX pet sitters.com and get registered. And again, there is that free tier which gets you access to all of the talks, all of that information. And then there's that paid tier where You can get the goodie box, you can get a little bit more contact and a little bit more community during the actual conference.
Meghan 25:07
Yeah, a lot of networking opportunities there as well. We wanted to thank pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for sponsoring this episode today and thank you so much for listening. We are so grateful that you continue to listen and enjoy what we are doing here. We're having a lot of fun and thank you so much for listening. We
Collin 25:24
really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
