165: The Many Hats of a Business Owner
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary
On this episode we discuss the different types of hats you may wear, and the ones you shouldn’t. From being an IT manager to a marketer and CFO, there are a lot of things to do. The key is determining which hat you should be wearing versus finding a way to have someone else, or software, wear it. Natasha O’Banion answers the question, “How do I fire an employee in a healthy way?”
Topics on this episode:
What are some hats we all wear?
What we are NOT?
How to not wear so many
Find a balance
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main takeaway: YOU get to decide which hats you wear. Wear the ones that align with your strengths and passions.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet sitter, hats, hiring, running, people, pet, canva, managing, software, work, tasks, social media, clients, business owners, part, pay, episodes, confessional, scheduling
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
hi i'm Meghan
Collin 00:18
i'm Collin and this is pet sitter
Meghan 00:20
confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter welcome to episode 165 hello today we are talking about different hats in business we want to thank our sponsor pet sitters associates and also our newest patreon member michelle from paws and claws thank you so much michelle
Collin 00:46
thank you thank you michelle thank you so so much it's that kind of support that helps us do these shows every single week and if you're interested in what being a patreon is and all that it entails head on over to petsitter confessional comm forward slash support
Meghan 01:03
we hope you listen to last week's episode last week was jam packed with three different episodes and they were all super good
Collin 01:11
we might be a little biased in that but we hope you enjoyed them a lot
Meghan 01:14
on episode 162 we talked about client education about how it's not only you educating the clients about your services but also the need for them to be better pet parents as well and then once 63 was about insurance with colleen giles harris from pet sitters associates
Collin 01:30
there was a lot more than just the ins and outs of what a good insurance policy will do we also discussed the importance of having good release forms and having good waivers in your business
Meghan 01:39
and then 164 it was with kristin morrison who talked about burnout recovery and her new book so again we hope you enjoy those episodes and we have some awesome upcoming shows for you as well not only topical episodes but interviews as well today though we are going to talk about the different hats that we wear as business owners so basically all of the roles that we have to do in running our businesses a lot of us are solopreneurs and even as you build your team or think about expanding in some way you still have to wear a lot of these hats we all wear many different hats both in our personal life but in our business and no matter your business structure whether you are just by yourself or with a partner like Collin and i or have a whole team of people you wear a lot of different hats that we're going to talk about
Collin 02:28
right and the balance here comes in recognizing where your personal strengths and weaknesses are up and against the things that you want to be doing and the things that you don't want to be doing all of these tasks all these hats that we wear are things that have to be done in business the question we have to be asking ourselves is do they have to be done by us or could they be done by a software program or could they be done by somebody else part of growing and expanding in business is recognizing what you the business owner what you the listener should be doing versus having somebody else doing that's just part of this maturing process as we go through business as we go through the cycles of being busy of taking on new roles again recognizing man i really really liked doing this thing but i need to be directing my time somewhere else and where we fall in that balance is going to be up to each and every single one of us
Meghan 03:25
well and also as your business grows or ebbs and flows through you know a pandemic for example the the different ratios of these different tasks that we're going to talk about will change and will change based on your comfort level or the market in your area or just how you want to promote your business at that time
Collin 03:46
well and so one of these we're going to break down some of the different hats here and one of the very first ones is is that one of the hats that we wear as a business owner is we are marketers we have to be able to market through social media through writing ad copy whether that's directly on our website or in things that we're putting in newspapers or on other website ad slots we're doing a b testing of ads which is something that we are still trying to figure out you know it's not just creating one ad and pushing it out there and waiting for a response it's creating a couple different flavors of ads to see what response gets or which ad gets you the biggest response part of being a marketer is also running your social media site and running your social media platforms and posting megan does all of this i don't
Meghan 04:36
well in the future i want to do an episode specifically on social media but yes so you may be on one platform like facebook or all of all 10 or 11 platforms or however many they're out there you need to be able to be a digital marketer in this day and age because that's likely where your ideal customers are going to be now if you're going after the super affluent and The super rich, they're probably not going to be scrolling on tik tok or scrolling on Instagram every day.
Collin 05:08
But it is just part of this thing that depending on your business, depending on who you're targeting, it is going to be something that you should will be doing from time to time, at least right least having a presence.
Meghan 05:19
Yeah. And then another hat that we wear is being a graphic designer. I am not trained in being a graphic designer. But some of you may be I know specifically one pet business who is an awesome graphic designer as well. But Canva has made it really easy these days to design your own logo or design the social media images that you put out every day or to market your business. It has been a huge help for us, I think before we had just splice some pictures together. But then once we started paying for Canva, and recognizing the power that it has, and the awesome versatility and adaptability that it really has to fit virtually anything you want to create, you can do it in Canva
Collin 06:01
part of this hat is also doing a lot of photo edits. I know all your phone right now is currently full of photos of dogs. And cats because ours are as well. And when we go to post those on to social media, we typically like to dress them up a little bit or, or not, depending on what you're trying to get to take away from that or add a watermark or add watermarks or, you know, do filters or things like that on your phone and these different apps. Again, a true graphic designer would sit down and Photoshop would add layers would mess everything, you know, go through this entire process. If that's not your background, though, there are apps that can help you through that. But again, it is a task that we find ourselves doing an awful lot.
Meghan 06:42
The next hat is a CFO, so Chief Financial Officer, whether you like money, whether you
Collin 06:49
think we all like money, it's it's the accounting and accounting of managing.
Meghan 06:54
If you like managing money, or even if you don't, this is something that you have to recognize as part of your business. bookkeeping is essential separating your personal from your business account will save you come tax time and in the long run, because you need to have your business receipts, separate from your personal receipts, you are the one going out and buying stuff, whether it's extra leashes and collars or a first aid kit, you are managing your money.
Collin 07:22
And I know we've interviewed several people, you know, Robin Bennett from the dog gurus and j Pat is from out in warrensburg, Missouri have both talked about and many others have talked about the importance of knowing your numbers, whether you're paying for somebody to do them, or you're saying that to do them yourself. It is fundamental to us as business owners to be able to understand where money is coming from and where it's going, and how that changes from time to time, especially as we approach everyone's favorite season of the year, tax season, which is really just coming up. So getting our books in order. And again, that can be a monumental task, if you have a lot of employees, or can be a fairly straightforward process if you're a solopreneur, without a lot of other expenses going on.
Meghan 08:09
And you can't have a CFO without a CEO. That is what you are. Obviously, you're in charge of your business. And this is probably the greatest hat of the entrepreneur is being the CEO, we are in charge, we want to run our businesses the way we want to. And we can do that because they're our businesses.
Collin 08:31
It also means that that's where the responsibility for everything stops. It's all on your shoulders, which is the stressful side of being an entrepreneur who's going out and doing it yourself knowing that the responsibility of keeping it running, of hiring the right staff of continuing to bring in business that falls to you. So it is a very exciting role to be in. But it's also very serious and an extremely important role.
Meghan 08:55
The next one is not quite as exciting, but it is HR, you are the Human Resources Rep. If you have employees, you are hiring them, you are firing them, you are managing people if you have independent contractors, but if you're solo, you still have to deal with yourself. You have to approve time off for you, which is essential for self care in this business. Particularly if you're a solo, you have to take time off. So you have to deal with yourself, you have to decide how much you get paid for your job.
Collin 09:26
And if you do have employees, but you don't have somebody specifically working in HR, you're managing those relationships, you're helping them resolve conflict, you're helping have a good working environment. And again, if you're so low, you're doing that same thing, making sure that you don't have a toxic work mindset that you aren't having destructive habits throughout your day that you are holding yourself accountable and building yourself up. Well in speaking of building part of running a company is the maintenance which is something that I don't think many people think of.
Meghan 09:57
Yeah, I mean you have equipment. If you bring your leashes and harnesses you have to clean them you have to sanitize them if you do boarding and daycare in your home you have to maintain your home you have to maintain your yard which can be sometimes the most difficult part so much from experience right now yay springtime rain and then your car if you do lots of drop ins and dog walks and how sitting you have to maintain your car you have to get regular oil changes and check the brakes and check the lights and everything make sure that it's okay
Collin 10:28
as a solopreneur and running our business we're also the ones going out there dealing with pr so public relations we are advocating for our business we are being our own cheerleaders here
Meghan 10:38
yeah we are getting our name out there whether it's in local facebook groups or pitching yourself to the newspaper or a local magazine you are your own best advocate for your business
Collin 10:49
right going out getting reviews and what this is fundamental here is managing and understanding how people how your clients how your community view your business do they think highly of you when they think of your business what are the things that come to mind that's all that we're doing when we're managing pr and also when it comes to managing things again i mentioned photos earlier when it comes to editing them and adapting them for social media but what about photo backups where are we putting our photos this is part of what a it department would be interested in would be taking care of the software the hardware part of our business they'd be doing it managing our website they would be taking care of the messaging platforms that we're going across doing backups on our phone doing updates on our computer software all of those it things that we tend to just do you are being your own it department whenever you're running your business
Meghan 11:46
and then the last one is an administrator so the manager you are managing the day to day tasks you are managing your calendar you are if you have staff you are managing their calendar
Collin 11:56
you're also taking in fielding calls and questions from people who are interested in your services and seeing whether you can book them or not when they meet certain criteria checking that calendar is so huge it's something we do almost instinctually a time somebody calls to us that's part of a good admin team
Meghan 12:13
and we also wanted to discuss some things around mindset as well so you are also your own cheerleader you know your business best it is your baby you want to everyone who works for you and everyone in the community does have the same passion about your business that you do and that's great you should be shouting it from the rooftops about how great your business is what sets it apart from everything else if you're a solopreneur why you are uniquely capable of caring for these special pets
Collin 12:47
well that leads into you are your own coach sometimes you will or your we do have to help get ourselves ready get our heads in the game understand what the hurdles are before us and understand our strengths and can do some self talk and some self coaching of like you can do this you've done this in the past you know what is best so coaching is also an aspect that we do that has to do with our mindset and how we view ourselves and how we view our business
Meghan 13:15
and then we are also visionaries so whether you have a three month goal a five month goal a 10 year roadmap of where you want your business to go you are your visionary you are your own visionary for your company
Collin 13:29
and at the end of the day you are a human being with a life and things to do and passions and and fears and anxieties and and as you said goals and dreams and hopes and a family and friends
Meghan 13:43
well i'm because this is a service based business we can sometimes feel like it's all consuming when i see in a facebook group that a pet sitter hasn't had a vacation in two years i think oh my gosh give yourself time we just took a weekend away and colin forced me to
14:03
make it sound like that
Meghan 14:06
i have a very hard time stepping away so i am i am with you in the trenches if you have to feel that way that we have to take time away we are human beings we need rest we have other things to do we like to go out to dinner we like to hang out with our friends we like to spend time with our kids so you need to make that a priority as well take time to breathe
Collin 14:29
while we're thinking about the things that we in business are whether it's how we have our mindsets or these tasks that we have to do it's also important to think about what we are not and one of the first ones that we all have to recognize is that you are not the guru with all of the answers no one has them all and it's okay to reach out to help it can feel so isolating sometimes like we almost have to have all of the answers like we have to stay in our head and we have to stay in our lane and figure it out for ourselves and never reach out or think that somebody else could help us because we're the ceo right we are the visionary we started our business we should be able to figure it out that is a lie and it's very unhelpful and actually unhealthy to think that you have to be able to figure it all out we don't have it figure it all out no nobody does and that's what's really important
Meghan 15:24
well and that's what we hope the interview episodes to help you with is different ways to think about your business how to run it ways to manage it that every single person that we've interviewed you've interviewed has a different perspective runs their business differently and hopefully you've been able to garner little bits of truth here and there for your business that you can take back and say yes i want to implement this because i saw how they did it and it really worked for them and i think i can do it the same way
Collin 15:54
well and that leads into the second thing that we wanted to cover that you are not you are not alone
Meghan 16:00
that is true here that
Collin 16:01
yeah yeah exactly when if you ever think that you are alone and there's nobody else out there for you or advocating for you that is a lie that is a lie that we tell ourselves because we feel so isolated that we're all alone in this again i we can't emphasize this enough can't be emphatic enough that you are not alone that same thing when we feel like we have to have all of the answers we have to go it alone we have to be that that that conquering entrepreneur that just goes out and figures it all out on their own and there's no one else that can help you these two are tied together and they're very toxic especially in entrepreneurs especially in solo business owners especially in businesses where we don't get to spend a lot of time around other people these can start to sink in and can lead to a lot of burnout can lead to depression and can lead to thinking that we aren't good enough and that's just flat out wrong
Meghan 16:52
something that's not a lie is pet sitters associates as pet care professionals your clients trust you to care for your furry family members pet sitters associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance if you work in the pet care industry 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 free quote today at pets@llc.com you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com
Collin 17:33
while we're running our businesses and especially when we're starting out we do tend to wear all of these hats at the same time which can be really really overwhelming so we wanted to take a step back here and detail some ways that we can have all of these hats on or at least some of them or most of them on and still have some sort of balance in our life so when we start out in business some of the big hats that we put on immediately are some of these it things like how do i have a website then there's the administrative part scheduling and keeping track of all of the clients and then there's the the marketer side of how do i market my business and many of us don't have backgrounds in that so this can feel pretty overwhelming
Meghan 18:15
but what's important in all of this is that you have to decide whether it's you who wants to be wearing these hats or someone else just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should you can totally run your own website on squarespace i personally don't know how to do it but colin does
Collin 18:33
so we run all of our websites off of squarespace it's a very simple drag and drop very feature rich website builder we know a lot of people who are also really passionate about using wix it's important to know that just building a website is the first step you then have to keep it updated and post up there frequently and use their seo tools to optimize it so people can find you and that's where a lot of people go well i don't want to do that actually i don't want to worry about even dragging or dropping or worrying about seo so i will pay somebody to do that and they'll build my own website again that's perfectly fine you can but you get to decide whether you want to build your own or go the route of hiring somebody to do it
Meghan 19:17
and then the second one is scheduling so when it comes to scheduling we know many who run their entire schedule off of a piece of paper their their calendar planner or a google calendar we choose not to do that but there are people out there who do that one step away from that is using a pet sitting software like time to pet pocket sweet precise pet care and there's so many others out there so again you can go your own with just a planner or google calendar or you can outsource to a software there are a lot of benefits to using a software but some people choose to just keep with the pen and paper it's really all your preference and what you want to do and then the third Want to is marketing and social media. And it's another area where we can really spend a lot of time, a lot of wasted time, I feel like just getting caught up in the scroll on Instagram or on Facebook and not really utilizing it for the purpose that we are on. Therefore, using something like Canva can really cut down on that time scrolling, where you know exactly what you're going to post, you don't have to think about it. You can create posts, months in advance and schedule them with an app like later. And then you're good to go. All you have to do is your hashtags. If you're on Instagram, and you can use Instagram to post to Facebook, and you're good to go, you can plan out, I think Kate McQuillan has an entire year planner of social media content.
Collin 20:45
So it's probably an overstatement. But we probably use Canva, about 40 times a day, at least, to create our posts. what's what's good about it, what's key here is that it brings in a lot of elements that you can use and put on photos and design from basically a blank canvas Canva. And build something that matches your colors matches your theme matches the feel of your company without having to hire a professional graphic designer, to then come in and do a one off just for you. Now again, you get to decide whether that's time you want to invest in time you want to spend doing. Even in Canva, we know many people again, who go well, that's nice, but I don't even have that amount of time, I need to go and hire somebody to make these designs for me, so I can use them on my business. And that's the great thing. Again, that's what we're talking about here is that when we're running our business, we get to decide how we do it. If you want to learn how to do more in graphic design, and you have that kind of time, do that you get to make that decision. But if you'd rather not and spend your time doing other things, pay somebody to do it. Again, that's the beauty of something
Meghan 21:57
that not a lot of us like to do is the money aspect of it and the bookkeeping. So when it comes to something like bookkeeping, depending on your business, a simple Excel spreadsheet may be all that you need. Otherwise, you can connect your business account to something like wave apps is kind of like a simpler or freer version of QuickBooks, and you have all of your accounts there. And you can see them itemized by category, you can categorize your transactions, and it can generate a report for you, that tells you exactly where your money is going each month or each year. And then you can fire file your taxes quickly from that. So we keep saying this over and over again. But all these things require you to be doing them the strength that comes in that you have control over them. However, the con is that they require you to do them. So if you want control over every single part of your business, and to do each individual component of your business yourself, you can do that.
Collin 22:52
Now if you wanted to save a little bit of time, you could combine several several of these things. As soon as you start combining a calendar with an email service, you're basically working with a booking software at that point where people can contact you and get on your calendar. And if that's how it happening automatically, and you're not having to physically click buttons and move things around that 20 bucks a month would probably be worth it and worth it for your time. What we're doing through this process, we start abstracting up and away from the basic fundamental things that we were doing at one point in time. Many of us think I'm so busy, I should hire, that's what I need to do. When the first step made to actually bring on some robust software packages, a full fledged bookings, scheduling, messaging, and payment processing software is going to save you a ton of time. If we start combining that with good graphic design and accounting software, you're on a really good path here and saving more time than you probably would imagine.
Meghan 23:50
And this is how you really build the stack. And as you scale. You can abstract it out parts that you want and parts that you don't. Part of that stack is hiring and not just hiring walkers, but hiring administrative staff and marketers. So each time you are doing less and less of the fundamental things, we forget that we are hiring the manager because we are doing this task. Well we aren't just hiring a person we are hiring someone to accomplish a task. But hiring isn't always the answer. You might need to build robust systems and build your stack and your business.
Collin 24:27
But you can do it yourself. Not that you want to or not that you always should, but you can totally do it yourself. Now, we don't do everything ourselves in our business.
Meghan 24:38
No, we have a booking software, it takes messages, allows our clients to book allows them to pay signed contracts and forms and everything. So we have also auto generated responses on our Facebook for our business as well. So we have some automated things in our business. It's not totally perfect, but we're getting there and so part of the business is recognizing the things you love to do versus the things you don't love to do and the things you have time for versus the things you don't have time for
Collin 25:08
yeah what's in our best interest as business owners is to figure out the things that should be done by us and the things that shouldn't be done by us figure out the things that we're actually good at and then outsource the rest don't like writing blogs but there are people who you can pay who will write blogs for you as many blogs as you want don't like coming up with social media content and posting there are tons of social media managers out there and again maybe it's not hiring somebody but instead delegating some of these tasks to a software program so that all of your admin parts are taken care of for your business
Meghan 25:44
and if that still doesn't meet your needs that doesn't necessarily mean you have to hire someone to do your scheduling but it could mean you stop scheduling in your google sheet or in your google calendar and you move to some sort of software and the same thing goes for payment processing you could hire someone to do that for you or you could get a software and then what about the other hats we mentioned what about being it maybe your needs aren't huge right now but does facebook ever work 100% of the time has your computer ever just started acting weird and you can't get work done well welcome to being in it if you have staff and someone likes it work maybe let them run wild and figure it out but otherwise we have to take our stuff in for repair and troubleshooting
Collin 26:28
which is i guess if you're thinking about this technically outsourcing our it problems to a business that's going to handle that for us it's something that i think we all recognize where you know my time is too valuable to try and learn about programming and figure out this issue so i'd rather just pay somebody to troubleshoot this issue and figure it out for me while i go out and run the other parts of my business
Meghan 26:49
part of growing in business and maturing is shifting those hats around so maybe the hat never fully goes away but it doesn't have to take up as much space on your head you can make room for other things as you develop your business and it goes through ebbs and flows throughout the years let us know how you balance your time and the many hats that you wear as you run your business you can email us at feedback at petsitter confession without calm or you can look us up on facebook and instagram at pet sitter confessional
Collin 27:20
this week's question on ask a pet biz coach with natasha obion is how do i fire an employee in a healthy way
Natasha 27:28
oh so a healthy way to fire an employee is by going through your steps before the fire so i think there's any preparation we all can identify with if something happens as an incident you have to write it down a lot of us get in the habit of talking and talking and talking and saying hey don't do this don't do this it's how we do this is how we do that but you need to have a systems in place where you can reflect back and say hey collin unfortunately you did go against or whether call heart policy excuse me or whether call whether protocol policy excuse us you did go against that you know you did keep the dog out for x amount of time you know that's against our policy let's go ahead and write it up that we talked about it that you understand how we do things let me get you to sign on it that is a first warning okay it's a nice easy smooth sailing way to write out a first warning and then if they do it again hey colin we did go ahead and talk about this before i am aware that you know how we do business with you to have this break down because it's happened again i know you didn't mean it i know it wasn't your intent but unfortunately it did happen again i'm gonna have to go ahead and send you a second notice that we did talk about it a second time we even talked about more strategies more always prevent this we're going to have you sign up the second time okay so now that's one two same way they do it in corporate america it's the only way to fire someone you have to have a paper trail and if you're a three shake shirt i'm typically a four strikes you're out in my business i let them go to three and then i'll fire on the four so that's my style just because i think people sometimes don't mean to do things they do but at the same time all of my learning experiences i do document as well and same thing you go to the three strikes or different scenario and say hey call and unfortunately i've loved having you but this may not be the best relationship for both of us so we are going to have to go ahead and let you go or you can say based on you know the four scenarios that we've talked about they know it's coming you know they know that they've signed three times or four times and that's just a simple way to fire part of
Collin 29:26
that documented process is a way of having that open communication so that that third strike it's a surprise to nobody right including the employee because as a manager sometimes we can be afraid like we're springing something on them or it's going to be this big tumultuous thing but at each stage just documenting and keeping it moving forward it helps it be a lot more healthy at the end of it
Natasha 29:47
exactly and then they don't feel like you're attacking them or you're against them it's really now just taking accountability and they know that they're they're being noticed you know when someone doesn't think you're watching them or think you're paying attention to them they may you know set on the rock or Do things that they feel they want to do, which not really your vision, right? But your job as a business owner is to make sure your vision is getting executed within the team. And that's really where the focus is. And if that person is not implementing your vision is not going to be beneficial for you.
Meghan 30:20
Natasha not only runs her own dog walking business, but she is a pet business coach as well. And if you would like her to coach you through your pet business, you can go to her website, start scale sale, calm and use the code p sc. 20. For 15% off, we really appreciate you taking your most valuable asset, your time and listening to us today. It is a joy to come on every week and share a little bit of our knowledge with you. Like we said earlier, no one is an expert and we don't ever claim to be experts. We just want to share from our experiences over the past 10 years of being pet sitters and
Collin 30:54
learn from you as well. That's why we love getting feedback and hearing from you and what you've taken away from these episodes. We want to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our newest supporter, Michelle for making this week's show possible. Coming up on Wednesday, we have an interview with Petra lucency, from Petra brand photography, about the importance of brand photography and how we can make sure that the photos that we're taking and posting align with our brand and start getting us the clients that we want.
Meghan 31:22
So we hope you join us then thank you.
31:23
Thank you
