185: Roundtable: Future of the Pet Care Industry
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Summary:
What does the future of pet care look like? 2020 taught us a lot of lessons, changed our behavior, our client’s behavior, and opened up many new opportunities. We have a roundtable discussion with Daniel Reitman, owner of Dan's Dog Walking and Pet Sitting, Natasha O’Banion, owner of Start. Scale. Sail. and Renzo and Ruby, and Doug Keeling, owner of Bad to the Bone Pet Care. We cover how the industry will change in the next 10 to 20 years and how pet care providers will need to grow and adapt. From the changing expectations of clients, growing commoditization of technology, and even the increasing importance of social causes, we talk about how we can start gearing up for those changes.
Topics on this episode:
Changing technology
Changing services
Changing client behavior and expectations
Importance of social causes
Main takeaway: Change doesn't have to be scary. By educating ourselves and getting plugged into a community, we can help bring about positive changes for the industry.
About our guest:
Doug Keeling: Episode 18 and Episode 53
Over the past six years, Doug Keeling has built an award winning team of in-home pet care professionals across Northeast and Central Florida. Bad to the Bone Pet Care is currently a team of 30 pet sitters and dog walkers offering fully customizable personable care and is constantly growing. It is Doug's goal to show the pet care community, and the world, that through compassion and love we can truly make a difference. Be sure to follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and his blog to follow his teams progress as we continue to expand. Feel free to email him any questions you may have about starting and growing a pet care business.
https://badtothebonepetcare.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BadtotheBonePetCare/
Instagram: @badtothebonepetcare & @thewanderingpetsitter
Daniel Reitman: Episode 29, Episode 42, & Episode 86
I am incredibly grateful and amazed to look back on the journey that this business has taken me on. I have been fortunate enough to surround myself with an amazing team of staff and I have been able to create wonderful relationships with my clients. My mission with this business has always been to provide pet owners with someone who is reliable, trustworthy and caring to care for their pets, and I am incredibly honored to have been given the chance to do so for so many people within my community for so many years. I look forward to many more years of providing the best quality pet care for your pets.
Dan’s Dog Walking and Pet Sitting website
Natasha O’Banion: Episode 59
Natasha O’Banion has 15 years of extensive marketing and sales background from the automotive industry. She has successfully occupied roles such as Client Relations, General Manager, Executive Assistant, Service Advisor, Aftermarket Sales, and Automotive Finance Manager, and she has ranked highest among her peers in sales goals, high-pressure environments, and meeting deadlines. Natasha is a highly respected straight shooter, known for her no-filter approach. Some know her as an open book, happy to share a story or moment in her life, as her empathetic nature allows everyone in her presence to feel comfortable, acknowledged, and valued.
“The pet care industry isn’t easy, and it’s surely not for everyone, but if this is what you want, stick with it, and I’ll help you get clear and focused and find a more efficient way to achieve success”
After her tenure in the automotive industry, Natasha enjoyed a well-deserved sabbatical to process her next move. Once again realizing that dogs are her first passion, she bravely decided to take on the pet care industry, thus creating a dog walking and pet sitting company, from inception to success status. Natasha is one of the few entrepreneurs in the industry to earn six figures in only six months, an incredible feat, given the short amount of time, unpredictable market, and specific arena. During this pivotal time, Natasha became a mother, and so, she put her company on autopilot to fulfill another one of her dreams – traveling freely across the globe with the people she loves most. As Natasha’s business continues to thrive, and she explores new places near and far, she has decided to reach back into the communities that have welcomed her ventures, now sharing several different ways to help others reach professional freedom and gain valuable knowledge regarding business strategies.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, pet, dog, business, industry, natasha, technology, dog walker, dan, put, people, started, services, pet sitters, years, company, great, day, brands, doug
SPEAKERS
Collin Funkhouser, Dan, Natasha, Doug
Collin Funkhouser 00:17
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is pet sitter confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter brought to you by time to pet pet sitters associates, pet sitters International, and our wonderful Patreon supporters. Welcome back to very special episode 2020 changed a lot of the industry, including the trajectory of where we thought we were going, and kind of changed our mindset around thinking about how we view our businesses and the services that we provide. And so to look at that trajectory, and that next 1020 years, we wanted to bring on a couple innovators in the pet care space. We've had them all on before. And so we're really excited today to have Natasha, Albanian owner of walk with brinjal and Ruby start scale sale. You'll recognize her from our aska pet biz coach segment, as well as we interviewed her back on episode 59. Natasha, thank you so much for coming on today. We also have Doug Keeling, owner of bad to the bone pet care in YouTube. extraordinare doing lots of great stuff on there helping educate pet business owners on how to operate. He was on episode, Doug, I was shocked when I look back and I saw you we had you back on episode 18. And
Doug 01:36
a whole different lifetime.
Collin Funkhouser 01:38
It is it is really appreciate you coming on today.
Doug 01:42
Thank you so much for having me. I'm
Collin Funkhouser 01:44
excited. And we have got Dan Reitman, owner of Dan's dog walking and petsitting. I don't know what you're not doing these days. But we had you back on episode 2942 86. Dan, it's always a pleasure to get connected.
Dan 02:00
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here with you guys and chat about some cool stuff.
Collin Funkhouser 02:05
Yeah, you know, we're talking about the trajectory of the industry where we're headed things that we're doing. And I think in order to do that, I think in order to do that, we need to kind of look back and reflect a little bit on where we're coming out of because the trajectory of the industry is going to be framed a lot of through how we experienced 2020. So I'd like for each of you to kind of give in a nutshell, what 2020 was like, for you and your business. And we can we can start with with Dan.
Dan 02:38
Well, beginning of 20 point, he was fantastic. You know, January, February, I was like doing my calculations, I was like, you know, we're definitely going to hit some some revenue markers that I'm really excited about. And I was even thinking like, Alright, terms of like financial cycles, we're about 12 1112 years from the financial crisis. There's something coming, but who is not going to need a dog walker, right? Well, I was super wrong. And my world crumbled around me on March 24. I had to have a we had a zoom meeting with the staff and I made the call maybe like five minutes before I'm I'm literally crying in front of like 48 employees, and letting them know, look, I don't know how long it's gonna be. But we have to furlough the entire team. And it was awful. I lost my mind for a good week and was like, Oh, my God, oh, my God, and then realize, okay, well, we got to figure out what we can do. So we pivoted, I was new, I was still doing walks. We had a lot of clients who are immunocompromised, things like that, where they couldn't physically get the dogs outside. So I was doing walk seven days a week, but trying to figure out all different ways we could add revenue. We started doing grocery delivery services, little things like that, anything that would work. It didn't really help that much. But then, as the year as once we got the PPP loan, I was able to put my management team back to work, we overhauled everything we were able to trim the fat, bring back all the great employees. We didn't bring back some employees that weren't a good fit for the company anymore. We ended dog training, we started a podcast, we started working with BuzzFeed. It's just been like, mind blowing. So you know, it's one of those things where sometimes when these awful situations occur, yes, in the moment, it's terrible. But from a business perspective, I think what we've all collectively gone through, if you've made it through, your business is coming out stronger, and I think we're definitely in a better position. And I'm super excited, actually, a year to the day that we had to close the business. I signed the lease on our first brick and mortar location. We're gonna be opening our first doggy daycare facility. So it's definitely been a year of ups and downs, but I definitely am very happy with where we are at.
Collin Funkhouser 04:51
And Doug, you're here in Florida. What was your experience like through 2020?
Doug 04:57
I gotta say I'm I'm lucky to be in Florida, we did go from six figures to zero overnight. And like Dan said, I mean, I lost my mind for a solid week I laid in bed just sobbing, not knowing what the future held for several days. And then that was about mid March. And then by May, we were at 75%. And then by the end of the summer, we were busier than we had ever been, again. And I just thankful to be in Florida because of that. Because I know a lot of the country didn't have that. That take on it. But just like Dan said, I mean, we we overhauled a lot of things, I rewrote all of our policies. I actually started operating in some different areas under different brand names, and just re redoing my thoughts for the future a lot.
Collin Funkhouser 05:58
Yeah. And Natasha, you are in a different part of the country where your business operates in DC, Maryland area. So what was it like for you and your sisters? Yeah,
Natasha 06:05
for us, like we are near the White House, obviously. So everything is political. So we're used to shutting down a couple of times, and we're like, Alright, we got to shut down. Congress can't make a decision. So it was a shocker to us. And we prepared because again, we've had this happen to us before multiple times. For me, I was pregnant. And I don't work in any of my territories. I was just launching like our Texas here and traveling great. We got like 20 clients now we're good. We're getting walkers in there. Like, let's go ahead and push that forward. And my DC walkers I have tons of walkers who like dance, if it can be compromised, you know, if they have asthma, you know, a lot of staff that are you know, 50 plus. And I just was like, You know what, I will never do anything in my business that I wouldn't do myself. And with the uncertainty of the pandemic, like I think it was around March like 13th 10 that we were like, We don't really know what's happening. Let's just keep walking. Let's ride this out. And then like Dan said, towards like the 24th it was like, No, we're shutting it down. And I actually let all my walkers decide. I said, Hey, guys, like, if it were me, my friend that behind is not coming out there and doing this, what do you guys want to do? And so we're not about to die out here. So let's close it out. So that's the data side and I said, I respected I got your back. Let's close it. Let's write it out together. And then let's go from there. So we ended up closing our doors for three months, it was not going to be like a swift recovery. People asked me like did you want to open up sleep over did a carriage training and I had like, you guys heard my position at night, I had been really hard work to scale all the way to dog walking and dog walking only. And I just wasn't prepared to open up anything else. But what I was prepared for is to be the inspiration that our industry has needed. So I leaned in a harder to pet care coaching. Because I'm like, I was kind of made for this. I knew this was kind of may or may not have happened again. I was in the automotive industry with the recession. So a lot of these like, sweep the rug under you had happened to me. I'm like, Alright, I've been here again, I've been here in automotive, you know, we had no cars, we had a flood in Japan, we got no inventory coming. So I've seen a lot of this, but I really wanted to help our industry kind of guide through it because it was a mental test. Like Yeah, really. And for me, it'd be pregnant and hormones are going wacko anyway. And I was just like, Alright guys, right here, let's do it. Let's do a summit. let's get let's do the things. And let's go and our team will start working from home, they start helping me with some marketing stuff, some different initiatives, virtually and we jump back in in July.
Collin Funkhouser 08:55
What I love about all three of your stories there is there was that series of what's going on, right assess the situation, and then start making changes and doing something different and start adapting to what was happening. And I think as an industry we all we can work through that process and know if it's literally the cycle of grief or or whatever it was, but it was this resiliency, that stuck in there. So I think a question I have for you all is is what are you doing now that you weren't expecting to be doing when 2020 started?
Dan 09:30
I don't think it was something that I wasn't expecting. I was we were just so slammed and everyone thought about it, but like adding the dog training, opening the daycare, all these things that like have been, oh, I want to do this. I want to do this. We finally had time to do it. And the podcast. That was a thing that like Maura was kind of like we should just do this. And I was like all right, because we actually bought the equipment before we even did it. I just thought somebody was selling it super cheap. But yeah, I mean honestly The beginning of this, I didn't know, we were going to be here, I was like, Alright, well, there goes 11 years of my life, I got to go to vet school now and figure out how to pivot. But just the fact that we're here I am, like, on days, and I'm like getting stressed out and like worrying about things. And like, a year ago, like this didn't exist, you weren't able to pay your rent. Like, honestly, it's just the fact that I'm here. I didn't know that was gonna be happening a year ago. So that I'm incredibly grateful for. And I
Doug 10:33
couldn't agree more. I could not agree more with that. I mean, I, I did not expect to be sitting here. With where we were in March of last year. I mean, I had the exact same feeling There goes the last eight years of my life, what am I going to do now I was looking into going to law school and all of these different options, trying to figure out what was next. And then surely enough, the clients came back. And I think that is just proof of how strong our industry really is, and strong, the strength of the connections that we are making with our clients and, and in our overall communities. And that was really the big realization that I had throughout this whole thing is, wow, we really are all in this together, we all have something to give. And we're doing our self and our entire community a disservice by not giving everything that we can in every instance. And I mean, that's why I started the making the YouTube videos and doing other things like that was I just want to share everything that I know, that I've learned over the years with everyone. And then with all of that, I mean, our services completely changed. Also, before the pandemic, we were very much like, we offer this, this, this and this, and we can make some tweaks here and there. But these are the offerings. And now we are really a lot more. You tell us what you need, and we'll set a price for you. And we'll make it happen. You know, we're here to help we are the dog people. And with by by making that transition, I mean, we're now offering nationwide pet transportation, traveling pet care all over the world, all these things that a year ago. I mean, I never ever once thought as a pet sitter and a dog walker, that I could be driving dogs across the country. I mean, who would have thunk it? I love that.
Natasha 12:36
I wish I could tell you guys some grand champ servation for myself, but you guys know how I roll. I stick to my game plan. I never let off the gas. So it was just like, you know, I guys, let's just hunker down. Now one thing I did do, however, is even a little bit more online. So we start rolling out like our puppy training sessions, virtually our online courses. And so same thing when I was in the recession, oh, eight, I was like, oh Fool me once won't fool me twice. So I'm like, what other income streams do I have? That I can pivot online? Because I love dog walking. We love our membership program. But I'm like, What if they pull the rug again? Or what if, you know, again, I don't like someone to determine my income or how the flow operates. So I'm like, since I'm pivoting and online, and I see that this has now been an online economy. What can I do in the pet world, I obviously set up my online store, we launched that before this all happened so that we leaned into, but I just realized through grooming and training has really been like, had a huge influx. And they also stayed really consistent too. So they weren't so much affected. So I'm like, you know, in the past, if you want to stay in the pet industry, maybe you can start partnering with different groomers and trainers to start offering online courses on your platform. And so through my connections and what I've been able to do, and just me reaching out to people and just opening talks, I'm like, you know me, I'm not about to reinvent the wheel. So I was like, hey, grimmer, you already have the process. Great. Let me go ahead and pay you to put it together. Let's start promoting you. And I'll do it through my stream. And they're like, it works great. And the same thing, I partner with trainers to do the same, the same idea. So mostly, for me has been an online focused
Dan 14:19
product up and going, by the way the online course stuff.
Natasha 14:22
I love it. It is the best. I'm like my whole team now is turning into online people. So we're we used to go around and give out flyers to apartment complexes. Now they've taken on my email strategy. So now they're doing a lot of like virtual stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, but people still want to see you. So you still got to go in there. Right? Yeah. But um, they've been really looking at the whole virtual thing too. And I've always talked to my team about my vision and how I've always wanted to expand in multiple states that's never changed. So I've got a lot of those like head honchos that stuck it out and show With the grid, and I'm like, you guys are gonna have a territory. Where do you want to go? And one of my other guys went to Austin this year and I'm like, we'll pop it up in Austin. Let's go. We got nothing stopping us.
Dan 15:09
That's amazing. Austin, a great city for dogs. I
Natasha 15:11
love Austin. It's such a great place. And I'm only two hours away in Houston. So I mean, for me, those are the natural. Like in DC we took Maryland is right next door, we took Virginia right next door. So you know, it wouldn't it would have naturally gone from state to state closer. But because I transitioned to Texas with my family, it was like, Alright, well, we're gonna be over 1400 miles away on this side, but we'll just build up from this side.
Dan 15:35
So it kind of worked out that way. Actually, another question for you, Natasha, I'm sorry. quick thing. So you're expanding to all these other states? How? How are you managing everything? If you have managers on site in each territory, is it? Are they independent contractors, like they have ownership of that, you know, territory, and that you do profit sharing? What does that look like?
Natasha 15:58
Yeah, so we have all employees always. But we really empower our staff. So not like a head manager, we empower our staff to run their own operation. So anything that I can do anybody on my team, didn't you, they can answer calls, they can email, they can do meet and greets, they can onboard off or they can do invoices, they can do follow up. So we train people. But even when you're with at least six months, you can do every single thing that the business runs on, you guys may know that I'm all about automation. So we've already removed a lot of those like mundane administrative tasks, and you how, and so we do partner with the app pocket suite. And they've been really great by building out our infrastructure the way that we need. And they run their own clients through our app, we've never had an issue, they do the pre meeting, greet, they booked, they pay we show up, pre meeting greet Book Day, we show up, they conducted their notes, their schedule, and like there's no babysitting, which is really, really nice. And that's what I've tried to show the industry now that a lot of the things where you think you have to have your hand on you really don't as long as you show them what to do, they'll do it themselves, and half the time even do it way better. And when you empower those people to to work with you, they become their own owner within themselves. Now, as far as pay structure, I always give one person a higher percentage. So always have like that one guy, that one go to what you would consider them the general manager, but they don't do General Manager tasks. But they know that if the buck stops, it stops with them, and they get paid extra to have that role.
Dan 17:36
Awesome. I mean, you have to contact you to pick your brain because I'm like, I'm like hiring sales managers right now. Just
Natasha 17:46
I was bad girl. I had a manager, I had a marketing manager how to admin, onboarding manager. And I was like, nobody can I need walkers. That's what I need. I'm like, I don't need anyone to look cute in the background. I need someone that could jump in if they needed to. Right. I like how about you train them? Like, they'll just go with you on their on your regular shift? And they'll just start training while you're working? Right? And they're like, yeah, and we did it that way. It was like there's no need to like, go to a coffee shop and get all additional like, this is a hands on industry. Get in here. Yeah. See what we do. Do you agree? Do Is this something you would see yourself doing? You know, we get full transparency and be like, I love it. Let's roll. And then I always share the visions that we get on zoom calls like this, I share my thoughts. I say listen, guys, I want to grow out. I'm not a DC girl, not a Maryland girl at a Texas girl. I need you guys to do this. What are you game? And they're like, let's go. And I'm like, that's what I'm talking about. And then we do this your people you need them?
Dan 18:48
How do you hold them accountable?
Natasha 18:50
Oh, our policies is black and white. That's the easy part. It is black and white on our sheets like script by spirit by spirit. They all sound like Natasha at the end of the day. So that part is actually fairly fairly easy. They always can go back in their app. Okay, how do I do this? Or how do I reset a lockbox go in a lockbox policy? Check it out? Oh, what do I do if the concierge is in there, go to the clumsier policy read that like it's not an owner's manual, which is this whole like crazy pamphlet. Then I can even talk episode on that. It is nine. For us. It's a nine it's nine sheets that is our every day go to questions and we wrote those out on policies, they can wrap those sheets in their software and read it on the spot on the job. And we don't get a lot of questions. But if they do we also look at work chat where we all chit chat and we still keep that camaraderie going. So we talked to our walkers in Texas and in DC and they're like, What are you guys doing the same shit you're doing? It's just hot or hot and to have better tacos. You know, they laugh about the weather stuff but we run the business the same I mean, that's like franchise mentality. Although we're not a franchise, we still run all of our entities the same because that's how you can duplicate it has to be the same.
Dan 20:09
Okay, that's similar to a franchise model. But you're not in franchising. No, we're
20:13
not franchising at all.
Dan 20:14
Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. All right, I'm gonna pick your brain.
Collin Funkhouser 20:18
Absolutely. Have you heard about time to pet, Susan from the pet Cal as this to say,
20:26
time to pet has helped us grow exponentially. We believe the platform's features make us by far more professional than other companies who use conventional dashboards. They are the software gurus constantly developing and improving the platform based on user feedback, this decision was a good one,
Collin Funkhouser 20:43
if you are looking for new petsitting software, give time to pet a try, our listeners can get 50% off their first three months by going to typepad.com. forward slash confessional. Well, and Natasha, you brought up several good points there. And there's actually one of the topics I want to talk about for the future of pet care was the role of technology, because a lot of the things that you were discussing there, and how you run and how you're able to do those things are powered by the back end of the advancement in technology. And I think one of the things, at least that I saw through last year was we as an industry, and as a country, I feel like advanced 10 years and how we were comfortable with using technology and allowing it in our homes and and working with it. And I think in ways that we we never thought we would. And so I think that's a real big positive. But, you know, moving forward, where does that lead? Where does the advancement in the use of technology in our businesses play a role for us and how we manage it, and how we interact with our clients? Totally.
Natasha 21:43
So I love automation, guys, I think people think about automation is like this robot that steals jobs and like you're at Walmart in the checkout aisle, there's like no person, you're stuck right there, like, oh, there's no human element to this. But in automation, you automate the things that you do every single day. So the human element can speak stronger when it's necessary. So if I know that I have 15 questions I have to answer and then I need in order to get you in my system, I have 15 questions I need from every single person, why wouldn't I just automate that process and let the client speak through those questions on the app. Instead, they do it the old school Natasha, way that I would show up with my whole meet and greet. And I was like, I gotta do my sales pitch. And I gotta, you know, they like me, and I gotta, you know, get build a trust relationship and have a good time. And my meet and greet would be like, 45 minutes long. And I'm like, okay, there's got to be a better way. Anyway, is the client had already decided to book me anyways, before I got there. So it was never, you know, my personality even decided for the customer to use us. So I said, You know what, instead of me bringing out all the stops and taking up too much of my energy, why don't I automate that onboarding process, let the clients fill out all the pertinent information that I need. So now, anybody in my business, the person who gets what he poms when they talk to people, anybody can go in because they know that I'm just gonna go in, I'm gonna have fun with the dog. I'm gonna take a couple pictures of the foyer, the cleaning supplies, and what a lockbox is, we're gonna put that in our app, and whoever comes to the home is gonna see the same information. And so now our meet and greets are literally like 10 minutes. And the clients are like, wonderful. Yeah, they already got everything, I filled all the forms out, you guys got it. Here's a photo of the lockbox, we add that to the notes. Like, here's our foyer. So I personally like to snap a photo of the foyer, and the cleaning supplies and when they keep the crate, because when I'm like overseas, which I was traveling before, I like to visually see in my pictures on the phone of like, each home a little bit. And then it also implies that I swear lockbox back, I have a photo of actually worked sitting. And so I usually give that photo back to the client, I say, hey, right behind your house, here's the picture. And they're like, perfect, right? So you got to scale some of those things. But you can put it right into your software, and you can duplicate it. So using the tools, you have to just do the things that you do every single day. Again, if you're saying the same thing, doing the same thing, that means you can most likely automate it. And if you are doing something extra, you should automate that too, because now that's come up. So you're like, Okay, how do we do that part. The only thing that I really do that's high touch is I do my quarterly phone calls. So I will do the three day phone call when we get a new client. And then I'll do the quarterly phone call and they know that the doors are open, they can follow us if they need anything. And then about three months, I'll check in again. And we get reused at that time. We get referrals at that time. We build brand ambassadors at that time. We make friends at that time. So we really get our clients invested in our business as a whole as well. But they're not even expecting me to call They're not expecting me at all in their business, right? They're like, you guys do an amazing job, which more do you want for me, and I'm like, have a good day.
Dan 25:11
I definitely agree with you on the technology front, like I'm a big believer in if it can be done by a computer, don't waste man hours on it, because that stuff can be spent, you know, paying attention to clients checking in on the employees, making sure things are running smoothly, I think like, in terms of robotics, we're maybe 3540 years, maybe away from autonomous units that are gonna be living in people's homes. I mean, just look at the scale, the way techniques like the phone technology changed in the last 20 years, like remember, Razor phones from like, 2000 2001, you could launch a missile from this thing like this is more computing power than the computer, they used to put us on the moon, back in the 60s. So like, you know, I think they're, you know, there was that robot in 2011, that likes to walk someone's dog, I think, 3040 years from now, we are going to start seeing that. But I think it's going to be similar to the whole thing where, you know, if a client makes over a certain amount of money, there's a very good chance they have live in hell for 24 hour health there, those people are the ones who are taking care of the dog go a lot of them, I don't think it's gonna affect us directly as much. But in terms of the technology and stuff, like I think more and more companies and on the consumer side, they're definitely expecting, you know, can I just use a map like for me, if I have to order food, and I got to call somebody, and then I got to grab my credit, what it broke. I literally won't order from restaurants. And it's horrible. And I've worked in the restaurant industry, I know how awful it is with grubhub. But like, I'll go on grubhub. If I can't order, I'm like, Alright, I'll just get from somewhere else. It's the convenience that people want. Like, that's why we're building our software platform, just because I know exactly what I want. And I know that it is integral to us being able to scan like Natasha was talking about, automate as much as you can, like, my managers joke like, hey, once the software's that are gonna have jobs, like, yeah, we're gonna be super fucking busy. Like, of course, you're gonna have a job. But like, it's going to automate, you know, all of our client onboarding, it's going to automate employee reviews, it's going to employee calls out, it's going to redo the schedule, like it's going to do so many amazing things, that currently when it happens, it's like crap, I got to deal with this. And just, I think, for the industry as a whole, people need to double down on technology, they need to automate things, they need to anticipate where stuff is going, like focus on social media. But I personally, I feel pretty confident working with social media, tic tocs, the one thing where I'm just like, I'm old, I don't get it. Like, we will make beautifully edited content, stuff that we'd like to base the plan. And then like, the stupid clip of a bird will like go viral. I'm just like, I don't get it. This is the one platform that just doesn't make sense to me. Like, even if it doesn't just put stuff out there. Like you got to keep going with this stuff. Because like, these are all digital storefronts, you know, people like Main Street is now online, people used to walk through a community, and they'd be able to see your business. Now you do that online, and like anybody who is not capitalizing on that is like you're giving up on so many amazing opportunities, like get on here. And if you're not good at it, find somebody who can I mean, like you could, everything you need is right here, this is all you need, get on Fiverr going Upwork, you have some of the most amazing talent globally, and you could be working with people over wherever that are at a much more competitive rate. There's just so many amazing things technology should be used for in our industry. And also, from a safety perspective, like all these great colors and stuff like that, the focus on health and wellness, these trackers, there's just so many things that I think are going to be just kind of tying into like the pet industry ecosystem that eventually grew to see like, you know, your doors gonna unlock, because the dog collar has an RFID in it or, or Bluetooth or something like that. Like, there's so many things, I think, are coming to this industry. And I don't think this is slowing down unless all of a sudden, like some viruses only transmitted through dogs. I don't see this going away. I don't see our industry like declining in terms of, at least in our lifetime. So but yeah, double down on tech, for sure.
Doug 29:27
Yeah, that is so true. That is so so true. I love what you said about hiring people that are good at the things that you're not good at. That has been the key to my business because I knew nothing about nothing when I started, and I've hired just people that knew more than me and that has been key to everything. And technology just ties ties into all of that. I mean the entire world is becoming more reliant on technology and every industry every age bracket, every country It's happening around us. So to not capitalize on that on every turn that we can, I mean, we would just be doing ourselves a huge disservice. And then I mean, we talk about the apps a lot, and a lot of businesses are using apps for scheduling and payment and stuff like that. But bringing in those other technology products into the pet industry and into our services, as pet sitters and dog walkers, I think is going to be huge in the future. You mentioned the RF IDs in the callers, you know, you have the litter boxes, they clean themselves. Now, you have smart feeders, you have the cameras that can throw treats. I mean, if we can figure out how to incorporate all of these different things in a pet sitting package. I mean, that is the way of future.
Natasha 30:56
I agree. I always hear people say like, I've been in business for 20 years, I've been in business for 30 years. I'm like, Listen, if you've been in business for 20 or 30 years, or 10 plus years, you got to stay relevant. Like it's not a 30 year business and I'm afraid of it's like Dan said, the tech Tucker, the Gen Z that I'm like putting out all this policies, right? I'm all I'm old with my policy cell, and the Gen Z are kicks out a freakin dog licking somebody's toe and they're like, I want to go with them. That's just how crazy pop culture is happening. So you can put in this longevity and you can be stuck in your ways. But you got to evolve you got to hire the people who know more than you or more there that are in those zones of genius. So you can sit back and be like, you know what, you you follow the trends. Do you think that's you let me know how that works. I'll be back here. And that's why I try to talk to like dog walkers and pet sitters all the time about like utilizing people because you cannot grow without the minds of others. Even if you're in a mastermind and taking in all these tips are like getting four away roundtable like us, we're already worried plotting, like, Hey, I'm gonna see what Doug's doing. Let me see what Dan zero we get the opportunity to pick out each other. How amazing is that. But if you're not in these communities, or you're not using staff to kind of help you grow, your mind is only going to take you so far. And if you're still trying to figure things out by yourself. It's really a painful road.
Dan 32:24
I was so guilty of that. When I first started. I was such an arrogant little. I thought I knew, like I wish I can go back and scream at 22 year old me I was awful. I thought I was like God's gift to business. I was like, I'm gonna be the next Mark Zuckerberg. And then I wasn't I was like, why didn't everything happened the way I wanted to? I started hiring people. You know, like, my goal is I would like to be the dumbest person in the room at board meeting I want to have everyone around me is smarter. And I can be like, Okay, what do we do here? What do we do here? I mean, that's how most of my management team came to be like Morrow, who I do the podcast with. He's my media director. He started off as a dog walker. And he was like, Oh, I can edit videos. I was like, great. Get in my car. We're going to Best Buy right now. We bought a GoPro, we've been making videos together ever since like, I definitely grew in touch. The thing too with that is like, you know, find out what your team does, like part of the interview process with us. Like, we asked, What are you interested in? Like? Like, yeah, we obviously know you're here because you want to work with us? What stuff that you like doing. And sometimes, like I, my guy who does my social media, all of our ads for social now, he started off as a dog walker, like, there's just so many amazing people that and getting into these networks, because I only got into these Facebook groups maybe like three or four years ago. And I was like, Oh my god, there's other people who deal with this nonsense dealing with and it was like it was amazing. So like anyone who's listening, if you're not in the Facebook group, or if you're in them, and you're not participating, ask questions. I'm happy to answer your stuff. I know everyone here is super happy to answer stuff. But like us, the community, like oh, my God, 100% is so so valuable. But I
Collin Funkhouser 34:07
think what's key there is that we're listening to the community. And we're looking to others because I think when in our business, and we were talking a lot about change and technology here and I think the first reaction is to go, Okay, what do my clients want? Let me go talk to them and see what they want. But I think what's important to realize is that your clients don't know what they want, they they're going to take what you what you present to them, right. And I'm reminded of the example of Microsoft and IBM of the 90s, who only kept going asking the database centers and the nerds about what they wanted in their laptops. And that's why many of them still have like VGA connectors and five and a half inch floppies. Right where it's like they failed to advance because they kept meeting those needs. Right? So so how do we as a business, take that in looking forward? How do we make these changes in technology and do it without the fear of losing people and leaving them behind?
Natasha 34:59
I can tell you one thing I do. So we all know that a lot of us don't like to hire because the only thing that the client can really feel while they're at work or when they're on vacation, is that post wealth report? Can I get an amen? Kill the post walk report that instantly determines like, Oh, they were really good pets in there and they were really bad. But center, know your dog equally love these people the same. But in a client perspective, the bubbly, giddy happy tell the whole laundry story is always the star versus the other guy that's like, Listen, I keep this dog every single day. It wasn't very well. Right? But these people, you don't take the characteristics or the character of the human any different, right? So for me, I had to scale. I realized that somebody in the early pet industry, we didn't have all this technology. So they came up with the post swap report. They came up with it because there was no technology. So he used to write reports on papers and notebooks to let them know what's going on. Well, now just like time to pet has a checklist precise has a checklist. Doggy logs has a checklist. I'm like you the client wants you to refresh the water every single time though, the client wants you to feed the dog every single time no one wants you to ask the boss every single time, right? So why can't you write that all in the checklist? Check, check, check, add a photo that everything was done and hit send with some epic photos. Spend more time with the picture versus writing this like essay that you don't want to write anyway, if you send a client up to get the checklist from day one, like client said, the client gets what you have already done. But if you go to photo mode and a great report, and then you go to the checklist are like whoa, what does happen. But for a client to start never had a dog walker and hit got the checklist looks perfect. It's very pretty. I have emojis on mine. It has photos to match. And they're like, I love you guys. And I was like see my walkers are dying laughing because you're like, this is never gonna work. We can never pull this up. And I was like, watch. And then we started pulling it off. And they were like, God dang girl, it is working. I'm spending less time in these homes thinking of random stuff to talk about random words to say they're like Check, check, check photo photo, and now they're like, I use some extra voting photo editing apps to make it look even better. Versus like trying to, you know, be Shakespeare. We're just not we're dog people. That's right, I use my technology to start and it is literally been a game changer.
Dan 37:36
I definitely I agree. Like one of the things I panicked about constantly. I mean, I'm just a super anxious depressed guy. But I was so nervous about making changes. And I was so nervous about making everybody happy. You're never gonna make everybody happy. There's always gonna be that one person who's not happy with this or not happy with that. And like, you know, they're a great client make an exception for them, you know, find a way to make it work is like one of those. I will say this is completely unrelated. This is one thing that drives me absolutely insane. On the Facebook group. is people complaining about a client bookings last minute. Oh, why didn't the fucking dog walking company, that's why they're booking and something happened. life happened. Stop complaining about it. It's your business. Be happy. You're getting clients. It makes me so it's like, I will start to respond to it. Like I can't, I can't do it. I am all about the community being able to vent about stuff. Do not complain about getting business. Stop it. Stop it. Be grateful. Okay, rant over. Just add to it. Exactly, I charge 10 bucks. It's an extra $10 great, you need a last minute walk at night for 10 minutes, that's gonna be a $35 walk. Boom, we just pocketed an extra 20 bucks, nothing, no issues. So I get it. I understand. Sometimes it's stressful, but figure out a way to make it work. There's a lot of money to be made. I don't like to talk to the saying, Don't overthink it. Like, try new things. Like the phrase I love the most and I don't always adhere to it done is better than perfect. If you try for perfection, you're never gonna get it. It's not a real thing. Perfection isn't real. You just keep trying. You know, I'm a big fan of build, measure, learn. You try something. You put it out there. You get feedback. Okay, this worked. This didn't work we get but like, you know, we're starting to look into actually putting GPS trackers on every dog that we take out. We just pop it on them. It's part of an insurance policy. Knock on wood. We haven't had a dog get away from us in a very long time. the off chance that does get away boom, they're tractable. We're going to be using RFID collars in the daycare so the doors lock automatically if the dog has that collar on like this, we can't get out of the building. We're trying to implement as you know, like done He was talking about to like, any way you could tie in any aspect of like the whole IoT world like the furbo, I was thinking about adding that as like a little extra thing, we pop it in the house for when the clients away, we give them access to it, boom, boom, boom, you could send your dog a treat and charge them like, I don't know, 50 bucks for the week or something like that. There's so many cool pieces of technology out there that are going to tie in and this is only going to keep building because I think within the next 10 years, we're gonna see you guys see Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, these sites that make it very, very manageable for somebody who doesn't have coding skills to make a website, we're gonna start seeing that with API's and canadia we have it was a peer where you connect all these platforms, I think you're gonna see a Squarespace or Weebly or Wix, within the IoT community being able to find ways to connect these different things. So connecting the dog collar connecting all you know, the bowl this that like and educate yourself, go look at all these blogs and look at new stuff coming out. Like, you should be constantly consuming new information about technology and trying to find different ways that and accepting crypto, which we are going to start doing. So we're going to start doing Dogecoin just because why not. But we're also going to start accepting ether and Bitcoin, just because I want to my holdings up. But you know, I think those kinds of things are going to be more and more adopted, you know, you're starting to see big bang. So looking into it. Like there's just so much cool stuff happening right now. And like, find little ways, it's like, chances are with the crypto stuff, most of my clients aren't going to pay us in crypto, but I guarantee you will get some local press. And that's one of the things where it's like, you know, show that you're on the cutting edge, show that you are using these pieces of technology to make your business stronger. And yeah, at the end of the day, it might not make a tremendous difference. But you know, like Natasha saying, all they see sometimes that report, at the end of the visit, you wanted to see the different steps you're taking as a business to improve what you're trying to do. And it's constantly educating people and putting that information out there.
Doug 42:11
Yeah, utilizing that technology in as many ways as you can is like the easiest way to prove what we are doing. And if clients don't have a question about what you're doing, then they're definitely going to keep using you. We talked about this the other day, and the pet CEO group. For client retention, I mean, it all fits together. And educating yourself paying attention to what is going on, not only in our own industry, but in the entire world around us is absolutely vital to being a CEO, being an entrepreneur, growing your pet business. And having you using those, utilizing those Facebook groups is a perfect way to do that just with an insight into our own industry. I think about when I started my business, you know, there were no Facebook groups, there were none of this stuff existed. And it I can't even imagine where my business would be today, if I had access to those resources back then. And I think that's why we're seeing so much progression in the industry right now, think about how many businesses that didn't have a website or didn't use an app, or were just technologically in the dark age that came into the light in the last year because of the pandemic. I mean, it's because we're all listening to each other in these groups, and we're communicating with each other. And it's just building building, building building and it's gonna move faster and faster and faster. I think it's beautiful. I love it. I A lot of people are scared of this change, but I think it is absolutely the way of the future. And we've got a pioneer this yet.
Dan 43:56
Yeah, I agree with that. 100%. But don't be scared, lean into it change. Exactly good. It's also always gonna happen. So get on board or path anxiety,
Collin Funkhouser 44:07
technology, and things are becoming a lot more accessible not just to our clients, but to ourselves. You know, Dan, you mentioned Squarespace. So the ability to have this amazing website that you can build yourself with no coding, you mentioned Zapier, which I think all of you use in your businesses to connect multiple things together so that they're talking to each other. And you can shift documents from one thing to another. Dan, you said, the IoT I feel like I have to do a dictionary here of IoT, that's Internet of Things, the interconnectedness of all these items. And what we're able to do with that, and what I'm hearing this is it's kind of slightly starting to change the not just the services that we're offering, but that what a service means definitionally What does a pet sit me What does a dog walk mean? We're able to change the definition of those services, because of these added on thing. So you know what, let's go in that direction for a little bit. What does a dog walk look like? What does a pet sit look like? What is these services? What do you think those look like 10 years down the road 20 years down the road.
Dan 45:10
I think one of the things where is the body cams are gonna get cheaper. That's something that I've thought about for a long time. Right now, I think it's cost prohibitive, but I think having body damage. So, you know, if you want to stream the walk directly to the client, a little tiny camera that they can stick on, you know, 10 years from now cameras, look at how like this, what you can take with a phone now is unbelievable. And camera technology is getting better and better and better. I think, you know, that's going to be one thing is full transparency. I think that is hugely important. It protects everybody protects, you know, the client, it protects the employee, it makes sure that you know, they're held accountable. And so, you know, we've had the occasional accusation. Oh, so and so stole this from my house. Okay, well, how do you know that? Do you have cameras, you have proof of that? You know, do you want to file a police report. And a lot of times, it's just accusations. Unfortunately, sometimes it'll just be based on prejudice and not great circumstances. I'm a big believer in that transparency. So being able to have it where everything is documented, is a really good way to kind of protect the company, obviously, there's things to figure out in terms of privacy issues and stuff like that, figure out how to hide that information. But I think that's gonna be huge, or drones, I could just follow people's like, we've done drone checking on our staff before. Like, if they're within a few miles of the office, I'll just put in where they are dropping on down, and I'll just check, I'll send them like a screenshot, hey, so you're on your phone, put your phone away, and have your phone out during the walk, things like that, I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more tech use of technology, making it easier for us as business owners, because like, Natasha, I have like anxiety, just with the way you obviously have figured it out. But the way you operate your business, I'm like, how? How does everything? What if What is it like so for somebody like me, who is I'm a bit overbearing and could be a very little bit intense with how I like things done, I think a lot of cool technology is going to exist allowing us to do that. I also think that, you know, we, we just had Andrew Gill, on the podcast, they have this great new dog collar. That is currently, what it's doing is it interprets the emotional state of your dog based on the bark. Now, first, when people hear that they're like, Oh, that's kind of a useless idea. But situations like you know, if you're doing an overnight, and the dog is barking aggressively, which is, you know, this is going to come after millions and millions of barks have been documented, you're going to have that technology that can notify like, hey, this, the dog is barking in a really abnormal way it gets sent an alert to the homeowner can be linked into the security system or from this isn't the walk, but this is on the medical side. Either they have dogs that you could train them to, they could detect seizures before they happen to have a dog from the Texas notify medical personality. This is life saving stuff. There's so many amazing, cool new piece of technology that we're going to be seeing, I think in the next decades, that are going to allow it to be a little bit easier for us to do our jobs and manage our businesses. But I think the biggest thing is going to be the quality of life for pets, and little pieces of technology along the way that are really going to help streamline things and also educating pet owners because that's another huge thing that we all deal with, is making people understand like, hey, it's not great to get your dog table food because not only is your dog morbidly obese, borderline, becoming a diabetic, and making sure people know like, you know, the different ways they need to do things. But I think at least for me, sometimes I forget not everyone obsesses over all the ins and outs of caring for pet animals. Why don't you know this, I'm like, Oh, they have jobs and kids and lives and things to, you know, focus on other than obsessing over this stuff. But I think technology is gonna continue to play a bigger role in all the things that we do. And if you don't want to have that, I'm sure there's going to be a space for more analog type businesses. But I think you're going to start seeing the technology resulting in companies getting bigger and having a further reach. So you're gonna start seeing your, I don't want to say Walmarts of Petcare. But that I mean, like, my goal is to be national, I want this I want to have, you know, a location in every single state, like, I think just the same way you guys do. We want to raise the bar in terms of what is expected when it comes to pet care. Because, you know, when I started the business, people kind of laugh like, oh, you're gonna go walk dogs and like, even I didn't realize what it like my goal was to make as much as a vet tech would make and now you know, we're a multi million dollar company and I never expected to become that I think our industry is just going to continue to grow and when The growth comes more money being dumped into r&d and all this different tech that's gonna play a huge part, I think in our day to day operation, right? Absolutely.
Natasha 50:09
I mean, that's literally the way to grow. People think about like, Oh, I don't want to do this. Is this the only way to grow? Is this the only way to grow? You just have to be okay with trying new things. Like when I saw my stories, I had a dog walker before I became a dog walker. So I'm the client, right? And I was always trying to tell him, like, how he could reinvent this, he could offer this and you know, this apps are out here for you to do this. You could really put me in the experience. And he's like, Yeah, no, you know, I'm cool, right. And so when I came out on the scene, there was no official pet care, like GPS tracker, or there was no like, track the miles or the steps. I just use map my walk. Like I'm from Maryland under armours. Here, I knew that my wife had a really cool app. And I could just map my walk with the client, I will email them the report with the pictures and like we got Shami, so sometimes not even having the technology, but being okay to lean into it a little bit is great. Just like when Dan said the whole body cams, I'm like, you know, I think I've been elevated right now. We have a GoPro, we can totally record the experience right now and save it in a data file. So if anything were to happen, we always have a record, you know, even maybe save our records for a year and then you know, archive them. But hey, why not? Why not start doing it now. Go ahead and use your GoPro, save the data, save it for a year or after the pet it's done. And then discard it. If anything comes out, you have the body footage, and you can also give them a video of the whole experience. So you're like, hey, do you want to see what Adana life with Bentley's like, click here. And I think as we go into our industry, like people are gonna be like, I don't want this a picture. I want to actually lean in and hit the button and go with you like, yep, I do think there's pros and cons in technology. And for me, I'm always like, let's not entertain the Cray also, because even the daycare centers with the body cam with the daycare cams and clients can see like my dogs in the corner, my dogs doesn't look happy. It's like, What are you talking about, they were just playing for two hours, they're having the best time. So we can also use technology to entertain a little bit of clients anxiety. So I definitely recommend people kind of pick and choose where you put it and what you empower, because clients don't need to see everything. But you as a client, you have a backup in case there is a question that you can bring to the surface. But in general, you also want to make sure if you're going to offer something that you're going to be supply and demand and you're going to continue to keep it consistent. Because I see that all the time when the client asked, and I'll do it. If they asked, and I do and I said what's your boundary of when a client asks you'll do it like, what's your policy? Like? Where do you stop? When do you start? Like, what do you stand for? And that happens a lot that people come out of their comfort zone because someone else is making them when they haven't really mentally caught up. And then they kind of get lost with their whole client experience conversion. Like they're like, I really don't know the client experience. They call me I show up. I'm not really sure, you know, my my day to day income, but I'm doing well I'm not working a day job anymore. So it must be okay. You know, when it's like no, there's there's numbers there's tracking, there's there's apps where you can always know where you are, how much you can pay people how much you can say how much you can put away for another COVID scenario. So it's not just the experience, but also managing your business. You also use my entire company on myself. I have the cheapest HP computers just dropped dead on me today. And I'm like, I need you anyway. But you know, it's just like, make it easier for yourself. I never want to hear burnout ever in life. I don't even know what that means. So someone says I'm burnt out, I'm tired. I'm driving myself crazy. Okay, well, we need to dig deep because there is more than enough resources out here for you to streamline your whole business and to relax. So what do we need to get you on? I'm glad that we're having this roundtable because I feel like these kinds of conversations, let new people understand. And then all providers understand like, the industry is moving differently. Like all the things that you used to think that it was or all the things that you used to feel is not the same. The client is in more educated client now. They're using these systems. So they're looking at you like well, I just do this so you want me to fill out this paper form? Did you literally print out a clipboard situation with me right now? Because like, I can just go to my kids daycare, like just check them in. So you guys got to get that and when your clients started telling you how to run your business and giving you tips is not from endearment. It's from a place of like, Come on, honey, you could do better.
Dan 54:49
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the pen and paper. This is a constant argument we have in my office. Like I was a manager they they have their own systems for keeping their notes like if they're on a call, but like anytime they travel What do you what do you hate train to hate the environment? What are you doing here? I'm a big, I'm a big fan of digital, digital, digital.
Doug 55:08
Yeah, there's no reason for people to be printing anything in today's day and age, I mean, even if you do print it, you're probably going to lose it, or dogs gonna step on or pee on it or something like that.
Dan 55:19
Just stop, just stop.
Doug 55:22
And I was I was reading over some stuff from the American pet Products Association this morning. And they said that, like 31% of consumers in our industry are millennials. And I think that is huge, because millennials expect fast service, they expect to be utilizing every bit of technology, they expect you to be progressing, they're going to be paying attention to whether or not you are progressing. All this stuff is expected. I mean, that is a huge, that's a third of our market right there. And we've got to pay attention to who our clients are and what they are expecting out of us and and out of our entire industry. Now,
Collin Funkhouser 56:07
I'm really glad you brought that up, Doug, because, you know, 2020 saw the largest collection of people getting pets for the first time, many of them and they were right and square in this millennial demographic, I was reading over some stuff. And they were saying there's around 130 million pets in the us right now. And And of those, most of their owners actually view them as a family member. Right? And and Natasha you mentioning, I can check my kid in daycare by eye. That's how we check ours. And when they go to school, I scan that QR code. And I click Yes. And they are allowed in. So how does that affect these client expectations, these client behaviors when we've got so many pets that are viewed as family members, what do I as a business owner need to be doing to be meeting their needs?
Natasha 56:59
You got to rule out the client experience. Like I think Doug hit it on the head the other day talking about keeping up with the Joneses. It's like everybody wants to like sing the praises of their providers, whether it's the guy cutting the grass, the guy fixing the plumbing, the person come into the house, like we all want to be like, Yeah, I got these really amazing people who helped me to make my life crazy. And I can't tell you more about them. That's how they refer because they love you so much. So when you understand that you're coming in as an extension of the family to be like the dog manager like are we consider ourselves a dog. We're like, we're the dog's entourage standing by, we're coming in. And instead when they're like, Oh, I'm sick, and you can't come in. And we we have this going on. I said you stay in bed because the dog knows the entourage. And so clients are going to be expecting now that we are already in the know. And we're keeping up with what they know. Like if they're on tik tok, and we're not. They're like, What do you mean, we just literally saw the dog gray just happened like Where were you? You're a guy with a no. And if your consumers are smarter than you when you start losing that, and that's what I've noticed throughout all my careers over the years, is that you cannot allow your consumer to be smarter than you, the moment you do, you lose the perspective of respect. And that's when they start changing that dynamic of how much they should charge or what they should pay you because they start to be like, you know what? sales is an experience. And so you can roll up the red carpet for me, it doesn't even matter what price tag you put on that. It's like, I know when I go to Bentley, I'm getting champagne, okay? And I know that I'm going to pay for that experience. But when I go to Kenya, it's going to be like congratulations on your first car. Here's the keys. So if you roll out the experience for clients and treat their dogs like gold and royalty, it doesn't matter what your rates are. It doesn't matter, the tag. And then now you can provide a lifestyle for not only yourself, your family, but generational succession, which people really don't talk about in the pet business. I'm like what happens to generational succession? What's your succession plan when you're no longer here? like Dan says he wants to be nationwide? Well, most of us are just beating ourselves down to just close out the day. So what does this all look like for the clients? You just let all these clients go out to the wilderness when you no longer can handle anymore? Or do you implement some of these technology to where you can sustain yourself and keep the hard work that you've put out to be evergreen?
Dan 59:36
I also think you know with what you're saying is sometimes people are afraid or and I get it, you know, financial stresses can be awful. But I've spoken to a number of people in the last year and I thought you know, one of the big things we do is the car wrap. Just seeing the brand constantly in the community. It really kind of puts that trust into your company that like people need to Little bit more comfortable with like investing into their business because yeah, it's a little scary, it might be two grand, three grand, you'll make that money back. And it's like, it's really about like the passion thing, end to end, I want that I want every single touch point with our company to be holy shit, that was a dog walking company, like I want when we opened our daycare, I want people to walk in and be like, I would actually easily beer, I would say here myself like, that is always the experience you should be gunning for. And like, it doesn't matter if you're a 250 person operation or a one person show, you should be, you should always be pushing to raise that bar, like see what your competitors do. I do that probably once a year, I make a fake email. And I go and sign up for my competitor services. And I see what they do. I want to see what my competition is doing. I also want to know what's happening in the market. But I think being able to do all these little things that really do make a difference from the customer experience side like we started doing the the first meet, like real media content we did was these GoPro videos and we had this awful, I still hear the background music was the same song, we did like 250 these videos. And it would be you take the GoPro you put it on a stick and you get four separate shots and give it the more of you edit them would make a little page on the website, we write a little bit about the visit we send to the client, that client then sends that page shares that page all over social media, little things like that. So just constantly trying to evolve and find different ways to grow the customer experience like I've been seeing this way I know Doc's is constantly pushing these boxes. I love them. I've actually I signed up with them. And we just started yesterday, we're doing some rebranding, and I'm having internal panic attacks about somebody touching my logo. But that's a whole other issue. But doing stuff like that being able to give deliver the the end of the bereavement boxes that we do, they're not crazy expensive. But people remember that stuff. It's really you know, what is this? What do they say, it's not about how you make somebody feel or how you acted. It's about how you act is about you made somebody feel that is so important. You need you know, again, like I say this all the time, this is you know, no disrespect of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, we're not coming in and doing work on your home, we are caring for a part of your family. And if you can't remember that, with every aspect, you know, if the clients stressing out about things, they're trying to get in contact with you and they seem angry, they're worried, like, you need to anticipate where someone's coming from in that customer service process. And if someone's upset, there's a good chance there might be external things going on. Or if you made a mistake, be transparent. Make sure that like the client knows what's going on. Like, I remember, you know, I made a bunch of mistakes when I first started my business. But every single bad review I've gotten, I know exactly like To this day, I'm like thinking of them. I remember like I've one from 2012 where there was a stupid mistake. And I still remember that those things really will stay with you. But like, gotta be open to changing and evolving and making sure that whatever it is you're doing that you are always keeping the customer in mind. And yes, there's gonna be stuff that your customers don't even know they want yet. And that's our job to bring them that experience. But you always got to be customer centric, you know, the customers not always right. But most of the time they are and you really want to keep that in mind with all the things that you're doing every now and then you're gonna get somebody around like, No, not that. But overall, the same. customer centric is so incredibly important.
Doug 1:03:38
Yeah, I mean, that's an understatement. That's an under statement, it all comes back to that that relationship that you and your team and your business your brand has with these people, not only with your clients, but your overall community, because everyone sees what is going on, whether they're using your business and your services or not. And you've got to have this cohesive, positive, amazing interaction on every single front every single day, no matter what, you've got to remember that the they're not customers, they're their family. You know, you develop a bond and a relationship or your team does with their pets, you're in their home. They are a part of your family and you are a part of theirs from day one. And I tell all of my clients that in the meet and greet that. We're family now. We are family now. And I have had Thanksgiving dinner at a client's house two years actually. And building those types of relationships is one of my favorite parts of our industry. And what we do is how many jobs are out there in the world where you get to form those types of connections. It's almost unheard of I've certainly never worked in another industry where I got to build these types of bonds with people. I think it's such a beautiful thing. And I mean, moving forward in our industry, I think it's so important to be educated and like you said, you know, never let your clients be smarter than you are on, on your services. And in the in the pet world, you've got to stay up to date. And the more educated you are, the more of a resource that you're going to be to them, the more they're going to trust you. The more that you can charge, you know, it all goes together, I think it's that is so important. And our consumers are a lot more educated now than they used to be. That I was looking at statistics and pet supplements have gone through the roof, the sales on pet supplements have gone through the roof in the last year. And that that just goes to show you that clients are educating themselves more about what their pet needs. Biologically, medically, what is in the dog food, all of these little things that no one even talked about 1015 years ago. Now there's an entire sub section of our industry based around this stuff. It's It's so important just to be a part of that, and share that with your clients.
Natasha 1:06:32
Very true. I have a saying in my communities, we create the beast. And so every time somebody has a client complaint, I said you created the beast, you either didn't invent them in the beginning, and let them know that this was not what you're looking for. Or you let things go by, by by throughout your process where things didn't come up, you didn't set the client expectation. And the client was expecting something that was not what you offer or what you do. And so every time we were like, these clients are crazy. I don't know why they're doing what they're doing. It's because they expect to be treated in service a certain way. And if you're withholding information from them, or giving them a half policy or semi meeting, I mean a semi service agreement that doesn't really explain all your policies, they're not making a fully educated decision when they go to hire you. And then there's flags that pop up later, you created that beast. And you want to keep that in mind. It really helps us humble ourselves, to be able to be fair on both sides. but to also say, listen, these are my policies, they're black and white, you have a copy, you definitely don't want to be the policy police. I talk about that all day long. And nobody likes the policy police like our policy, our policy, even if your policy is correct, nobody wants that approach. Okay, you got to do like, Listen, I'm sure you got a lot of paperwork. In the beginning, you may have overlooked our line five, where we talked about that we work as a team, and you're going to have anybody in our staff come here home, right? You want to be able to reference back to somewhere in your app or anywhere in your client touchpoint. So the client can always be on the same page. When I have a client dispute. It usually comes out to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, I totally forgot. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Even our clients, you don't create their dogs, I have to clean them. I say, listen, you're giving your dog a lot of responsibility right now. You're giving them a lot of responsibility. They're like, What do you mean? Like they think they're just letting him free and being great. And I say no, the mother would not allow. The dogs have this much responsibility. They're still a mother. And sure enough, our clients started doing the proper training and their dogs amazing. And they're like, wow, Natasha, thank you for really like setting it up for me for success. I trust you, I love you. You've made my life better. There is a transformation here. And I wanted to keep working with you. And I want to keep referring you out. And I want to keep being I want to be a brand ambassador. And that because we have those programs that our business, like, Can I help with you? Can I help, you know, get the cars going? what you're doing? So just those little things I know there's a lot of us out here that are like, well, that's not for me. Well, that's not for me. Well, I won't do that. That's not my style. Well, I would just hate for you to be left, left behind. But really hate for you to have somebody else come right behind you. I want to talk to the small towns right now. Not the big cities or the density is there, but the small royal towns that you're the only dog walker, you're the only pet sitter in your town, you get to set the tone. Okay? You get to make the marker so high right now that nobody can touch you in the race. How epic is that? when people tell me those methods don't work because I'm in a small town. set the bar be the Trailblazer. Anybody that comes under your toes don't even have a chance because you crushed it out of the park so far. You got to change demographic clients and I go In Texas, they're like, oh, the dogs outside. And I'm like, No, I just came, I'm not putting the dog back outside, right? Like, no, no.
Dan 1:10:12
five degrees out? No.
Natasha 1:10:14
You're like, really? What's the big deal? And I was like, well, we'll talk about it, but our staff won't be doing that. Right, just small things, we're, like we said, the client may or may have not been, you know, 40, the same education that we're able to give now, with our groups or community or technology, like we can be the person who's making the awareness, whoever is building awareness to the community, typically is where everybody's gonna, amen.
Dan 1:10:40
Yeah, yeah. And also, in those in those small town, if you are not setting the bar high enough, someone else is gonna see an opportunity. I mean, when I first started my business, there was one competitor, I was like, 22 years old. And I sunk all of my money into yard signs, it was like 800 bucks, because all the money I had at the time. And what I did was, I would go out every night, it was 1am, with two people, and we would put them all up and down the, what's it called, the exit ramp of the highway of the service, there's the want to get to theaters. And then I would go out later in that day and pick them up, we wouldn't lose them. I got a call that an American named the company, but they have a very colorful vehicle. That company was driving up and down the lie, taking all of the signs, the person who actually called us, I was like, hey, if you have dogs, I'll give you 100 bucks for the free services. Thank you so much. They've been a lifelong clients since this happened. But I called the company. And I was like, Hey, you know, one of your peoples going up and down the highway taking my stuff I understand like competition competition for this kind of like a weird move. It's like not it was not. That was like, Well, no, I have a picture of one of your, and it was the guy who owned the company. And I was like, what, what do you what do you do, like I was, I didn't know what to do. I was like, I spent all my money on this. So you know, I tried to be cordial respectful with them. They were really rude and awful. So I spent the next year following their vehicle, writing down the address of each client's home they went to, and I sent them a letter, and I introduced myself and I proceeded to pick off at one point, because all they had to do was give me my stuff back. But instead, I took a whole bunch of business away from them. Because, you know, people are gonna do stuff like that, if you're going to be like, all all that could have been was, hey, here's your stuff. Or, hey, we're really sorry, be nice to your complete competition. Because there's nutjobs out there like me, who will do that. And we'll try to pick off as much business as I can. Now, we don't do these kinds of practices anymore. I'm not a big fan of it, but you got someone who's young and hungry, and you know, you're not setting the bar that high, someone will come in, they'll kick your feet out, they'll take all the business away from you. And you just got to always be prepared for that kind of stuff. Because, you know, if you're not staying on top of your game, somebody else will, they'll come in, and they'll do a better job, or they'll find ways to get your clients and why would they stay with you? If they're, if they're offering better? You know, why do it. So just make sure you stay on your toes and be nice to people. Don't be rude. It's not nice. Be a nice person. There's,
Doug 1:13:31
there's plenty of pets for all of us, you know, there will always be more pets, and there are service providers. So it makes no sense to not be nice, you know, just be positive, put positive energy out into the world, they don't come back to you.
Collin Funkhouser 1:13:46
Yeah. Over saying, you know, set this bar high? Well, we're doing that for two different reasons. We're doing it so we can stay at the top of the pile, right, we can continue to advance the industry. We're also setting the bar high because there's a huge swath of pet owners who expect it, right? Because of this, the millennial generation is expecting that high bar, they're expecting that premiumization of a service to be getting these little details to be getting these surprises. Give me these little joys from it, right. So it is both it's a yes. And a kind of thing of why would I even bother? Well, there's a lot of driving factors behind the progression and change of the services. And this bar that we're continuing to run, take a break and tell you about our next sponsor pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, pet service 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 free quote today at pet sitter. llc.com you can get discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets it llc.com. I want to shift gears a little bit. And I mostly because I feel like all of us are currently experiencing a huge growth in being busy, and are kind of pulling our hair out trying to figure out managing this and trying to I think also looking towards the future going, where does this land. And I asked that because, you know, we expected a lot of growth, there's a lot of pent up demand. But we also saw a lot of pet care businesses have to close over last year. So I want to throw it out to you all to talk about why talk about a is the industry actually growing? I think just to you know, put aside any fears of anybody and then be what do you think is driving the large growth in pet specifically pet services?
Dan 1:15:59
I mean, I I definitely think the business for sure is growing. I, I feel big, I just have so much empathy for the people who did have to close their businesses during this like it is building a business, at least for me, isn't my baby, this is something I've literally put my blood sweat and tears into. I've missed huge portions of my life building this business. And it is so important to me and the idea. Like I get emotional talking about anytime people get to achieve something or being taken away. Like I feel that and it's it's, it's awful. Just because, you know, in those situations, you think like, well, there's something different they could have done? or could they have done this or pivoted or this and like that's just the way my brain works. But I feel absolutely terrible for all the companies that did go through this. But I think a couple of things are happening. One, people are having kids later, to some people are deciding, hey, the planet kind of not going to be in a great place for the next 30 years. I don't know if I want to bring a child into this. And so dogs are becoming the replacement for kids. For a lot of people. You had a pic. Was it over a million pets that were adopted in the last year? I think it was some insane number of pets? Do you have a huge boom in first time cat owners who had all the time in the world to be at home with their pets do research about everything for their pet, they've done their homework on you, they've done your homework on your competition, they're gonna know what to expect. So you know, we're dealing with a more educated consumer base, we're dealing with, you know, like you guys have been saying, a bar that's expected to be higher, you know, you've got you know, people got very excited, especially here in like the city people got very excited about in the beginning brands like rover and wag, which allows me to, boom, I have a dog walker, now, they want that convenience. But they need that service of a small business. Did you bring those two things together? That's an incredibly powerful combination for this demographic, and I think that the industry as a whole is just going to continue to grow, obviously, eventually, it'll plateau. But I think that, you know, this is something that is not going to go away in the next 10 to 15 years, I think the focus on pet and wellness and well being for animals is just only going to grow I I'm betting big on it, not slowing down like this is I'm going all in on this growth. So I think, you know, now is the time to aggressively pursue the growth in your business. You know, take all the right steps. Honestly, I can't keep pushing this enough, go hire people to help you. Not necessarily full time employees. But like, I already am, like ready to call Natasha cuz I'm like, Wait, how do you do this? How do you do that? How do you do this? And like, it's it's one of those things where it's like, you know, you got to recognize when you don't know how to add that value to your business. But you see somebody like Doc's design, I've been watching them for a year. I am so weirdly possessive over my logo, because I know it's you know, people recognize that they know the brand. I'm like, I don't want anyone to touch it. Like I feel so bad for that because I'm like, Well don't do this. I'm like, Alright, I'll take a step back. But let the people who are good at this thing, do the same because I can't design this stuff. I'm not an artist, like look at this chicken scratch behind me. That's a model for a product that I'm working on. You have no idea what that is looking someone through that with their feet. I'm not a design guy. You got to find the people who can help you do the things that you're struggling with and invest the money. Sometimes people's prices might be a little bit expensive. It is so much more expensive to go through making mistakes, lose the clients, all these things happening. You're buying access to their brain, whatever they're charging you I guarantee you it's worth 10 times. I'm bad. So invest in yourself and invest in like all of these things that will strengthen your business because this is only going to just keep going up. Amen. Well, I
Natasha 1:20:10
can vouch for that. I had my own design two times you're in good hands. You'll be fine. I'm very excited. Listen, I think in general, the the dog mom, dog dad error is here. Okay. So there's Instagram, there's pages, there's there's monitors, there's dad injures. So just the emphasis, like Dan said, physical or not having a kid. There's no more than look at my kids in my phone, though. Now look at my dog and follow him on Instagram, we have an epic page. And then we're also using my dog for sponsorships and Superbowl ads and commercials. And people are using human to human affiliate marketing now. So people want more dog faces. Like, if you think about all the things that have happened in the world between like, inclusion and all the other topics we've had to kind of face together, dogs are the one thing that we all kind of agreed on as a whole. And if somebody messes with the dog, every race, religion, sex background is coming in, okay? matter, whatever you agree on political or not, you mess with the dog, and we're all coming in. And so I think brands understand that buying power, and that emotional connection to dogs now, so everybody has tapped into the dog boy, I thought I was gonna be I just want to be a dog. I didn't want to work 13 hours in the car, but it's like, I didn't even plan on it being anything more than my general tri state area. But I think overall, it looks like Doug was saying with the supplements. And now you can do like your own dog branding and logo, and you can turn your dog's face into a monogram. And like all this stuff that people are doing, it's just gonna go higher and higher and higher. And I completely agree with Dan bars, investments, like everyone asked me to talk, what was your biggest business mistake that you didn't do? And I said, outsourcing every thing. And again, not necessarily the full time employee from day one. And now I did hire two months. But like the website, any of the marketing, I hate social media, why did I ever even try to do my page? Like why? Everybody knows I wasn't going to be consistent. I should have just had someone else do it. Okay. So when someone looks at your rates or your pricing, you are promising them a transformation. And so like Dan said, you're paying for their mind. So if they've invested all this energy and investment in their own mind, and you're like, well, it should be free, we'll let you be $10. Well, I can't believe that you're actually going to charge for that. Oh, you mean to give you a transformation to make you profit to make you successful? Oh, to take care of your dog and give you peace of mind. So you can increase your income yourself, right? So it's just like the whole mindset shift that I think people understand the value now. And thank God for wagon rover, let's just talk about them. Thank God for them. They had the cash, they had the funding, thank you for opening the doors of free marketing for us, because all of us have a little guy who's got this triple right behind them. So we can say from you know, 20 years ago, no one had that buying power to market and really open up what a dog walker is today to put it on an app and have an on demand service. So we all got to kind of ride on the coattails. And I'm always grateful for everything and everybody.
Doug 1:23:38
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I don't know what I can add to what you just said, I completely agree with everything. One, one thing that I see happening in the future for pet sitting and dog walking businesses, is you guys were talking about like the bark boxes and stuff. We're gonna see a lot more of that with service businesses offering products and then a lot of the product companies are going to start offering services. We have rover and Walmart in their partnership. I think we're going to start seeing a lot more stuff like that. And I love it. I love it. I agree with what Natasha said, you know, thank God for rover and wag. I mean, they they kind of paved the way for us in a way. And yeah, I think it's great that the sky is the limit for the pet care industry. I mean, there's so many things that we can do and it is changing so quickly that there there's no stopping it. There is no stopping that's at this point.
Dan 1:24:42
Yeah, I agree. Like I we had some I had a tech company a few years ago in the restaurant industry, we in an office in Manhattan. And I remember every day there was these two adorable little rowdy puppies running up and down the hallway. And obviously I was like, Alright, I gotta go find out who these belongs to. I go to the office, and it's this guy named Brett. And I was Oh, so what do you do? He's like, I'm starting this, this pet food delivery company. And you know, that's really cool. Brett founded farmer's dog. And it is now insane. Like, he's actually gonna be coming on the podcast later this year, but it's just like, it was literally him and his partner in an office. And just like, I was, like, that's a good idea. I was like, I should maybe do something with that. And then it's just like, they just absolutely exploded, like, I think they've raised over $90 million. Like, I, they're either going to IPO eventually, or they're gonna get acquired by a big guy. But like, you know, the food brands, all these, like, it's just, everybody is spending money on this stuff. And it's just like, Alright, figure out where you can kind of get your foot in the door and what you can add value to out there.
Natasha 1:25:51
I love that you said that too. Because we all know that those subscriptions are literally like $5 a meal almost. And so little dog walkers and pet sitters are like, I can't raise my rates, they'll never pay for that. me when they're buying, you know, $1,000 food. It's like, people will pay for what they see value in because they could have easily went and got alpo. But they didn't. Okay, so let's just go ahead and keep the value topics at Taco Tom, because people will pay for what they see value
Dan 1:26:27
it? Yeah, I agree with that. I was super nervous. Like, anytime I had to raise my racial thing, oh, my God, everyone's gonna go away. You get like two people who were like, Oh, that's too expensive for me. And like, sometimes we'll find a way to make it work for people. Because I do want to, you know, we try to make sure we can help people in terms of like all ends of the financial breakdown. But like, yes, be confident what you're delivering. If you're delivering the services that people expect and want, it's okay to increase your prices as cost like New York State, we're going up to $15 an hour minimum wage next year. So we're going to increase our our wash prices, but we're also going to be bumping up our pay for staff who want to be competitive, but like, definitely, don't worry, people will continue unless you jack it up by like 20 bucks. Don't Don't be terrible. But definitely don't be so nervous when you're raising your rates. Yeah,
Doug 1:27:22
amen to that. Amen is that I struggled with that for years. And I finally just had this epiphany moment where I realized there is a market for everything, you just have to find the clients, you know, they may not be your current clients, but and if you do, raise your rates, if you formed the right connection and the right relationship with your clients, they're gonna stick with you. And if they don't stick with you, you know what, they probably weren't the best for your business anyway, and you will replace them with better higher paying clients sooner or later. Don't forget that.
Natasha 1:27:57
I love that we don't have to be for everybody. And I think that's where people are like, Oh, you should be catering to me. And you should be saying the exact words that I like, and you should be charging the exact rates that I like, We are not here as God people on this earth to to make everybody happy. We're not for everybody. When you find your niche and your people, they will flock to you. Period. Like my b2c clients are very loyal. So one or two, leave and go to another company. I'm like, well, best of luck to you call me. And it's no loss. I'm like, if it doesn't work out, you want to come back doors are open. But for the most part, my clients are like, Yeah, right. Like, we know what's on the other side, girl, we are standing right here, it is all good. And even my coaching clients, they're like, we know your value. We know the transformation you can give me and your rates are premium, and we respect it. And we want it because we want a high touch experience. Your b2c clients want the same thing they don't want. Nobody wants like a free crap. Like, would you buy a pizza that was sucky for free? You're like, I don't even it's crap. It's your low grade product. I wouldn't even eat it for free. So why add all the toppings, the premium mozzarella, all the goodies and put the high dollar on it? It gives people a wow moment. What's wrong with
Collin Funkhouser 1:29:17
them. And I'm hungry. We're talking about the growth of the industry and the diversification of services and pet health being one thing I know veterinary care is just going through the roof as far as people investing in the pet and the health of their pets and supplements and all this stuff. As as business owners, is it worth our time and or should we be trying to diversify into these other areas of growth? Or should we just be honing our skills and making sure that our dog walk is the best possible. Eyes bulging out of their head.
Natasha 1:29:54
You've got to diversify your income and we didn't see that from this past year. You guys know I'm like the eight anti diversify when it comes to other services, right? So I'm not gonna put services, I'll put some products on the line. So you have to diversify your income, whether it's your affiliates, you're working with other brands in your neighborhood, whether it's supplements or products or selling, whether it's online store, like these guys got awesome daycares pet sitting going on, because right now, pet sitting is booming. And I'm like, I'm okay, sitting this part out. Right? You got to know what you stand for. You got to know who you are. But definitely never put all your eggs in one basket. Because we know how it goes.
Dan 1:30:34
Yeah, I definitely think you know, double down on what you're doing well as to like, explore other options. I mean, my long term plan with this business is, once we are at the point over, it has maybe like seven brick and mortar locations, I'm probably going to take a step back as CEO and bring in a CEO. And I'm going to be going to best school because my long term plan is in these facilities. Because that was always the goal. Going to vet school is always a plan. This is just a 12 year resource that I've taken. But the plan for me has always been I want to run animal hospitals within our I want to be a one stop shop for everything. dog walking, tested in grooming surgery, you know, post stops, anything that you need. That is my plan. So I want to be able to have it where we are in the veterinary space I we work with bonds that and I was joking with their chief veterinary officer. I'm like, yeah, we're friends. And so we were like competitors. She was like, good, I wanted to keep up with this. But like, that's the goal for me is I want to, I want to be involved in every single touch point in a past life. And if I can't offer that expertise, I want to bring in the people who can like we're trying to hire as many dog trainers as possible. Right now we're trying to hire as many groups, I don't know, the first thing about grooming a dog. But I know it looks good. And I know what what, uh, you know, someone who knows how to groom a dog can do and that's really what we're trying to do is we're after the last year of like, nobody being a dog walker and watching the grooming and daycare businesses thrive and me being like, I don't get any of this, I want to make sure that we have those. I'm like the opposite of Natasha, when it comes out, like, let's do everything. But make sure that we've got the right systems in place, because I have to remind myself on a very regular basis, because I'm a super impatient person. This is not a sprint, this is a marathon and I am trying to you know, when you're trying to build a national brand, it takes time, but you got to make sure all the systems are in place, you're doing all the right stuff. But I think, you know, doing affiliate marketing, doing, you know, partnerships with other businesses, like, you know, if you don't want to hire a trainer, have some sort of a partnership for the trainer, where you do a revenue split or something like that. There's so many different ways you can you can work with people, and there's so many local brands, like we do events, there's a market across the street from us here in Brooklyn. And they there are so many like dog treat companies that their local businesses like what better way to get the word out, then working within the community and supporting each other to because like, yeah, there's, the Walmart doesn't give a shit about me, or my business, they don't care if I succeed, but like, you know, I genuinely care if local businesses succeed or fail, like that's, that's what makes the community and communities you know, having all of these different aspects to it, and being able to find a way to work with other people and bring them in and add some revenue streams. It does not hurt.
Natasha 1:33:30
You said that too, because I'm sure we'll talk about this. But social causes, like people are shopping local now because their social causes and that has changed the client experience a lot because they want to buy from who they support the same things that they believe in. So you gotta get with one of my clients, Dan, because he just partnered with a vet to come into his facility. They do grooming so they just have that one thing I do want to open the guys if you guys want to partner. Let's go. I want to open a dog bar. So I hope in the future we can drink hang on the dogs play. I'm all about a dog bar in the south where the real estate's cheaper
Dan 1:34:11
arcade. There we go. Whatever you want to call it. I'm not hard. No, no, no, they exist. They're in there. I think Minnesota. Yeah, we have a bunch in our area for sure. I didn't even know it was like a thing yet. barcade Nope, that's not it. Yeah. That's another one. That's completely different. Anyway, but Yeah, I am. I love the idea that like, that sounds so exciting. We're all going to talk
Collin Funkhouser 1:34:42
Yeah. What do you What's your take on how we should be diversifying our businesses you know, people from both a solopreneur all the way up to you know, six, seven figure business
Doug 1:34:51
and diversify, diversify, diversify from day one start to day in every way that you can. If you're only offering dog Walking star offering pet city if you're only offering pet sitting offer dog walking or offer dog training or dog treats, there's so many different ways to go about it. And Dan made a good point that you don't have to do this all yourself, you don't have to do it all under your own business, you can partner with other businesses. And that's what I've done in the last year is I saw what was happening with dog training. And I knew that I didn't want to hire and manage dog trainers. So I went and contacted all of the other dog training companies in our service area that I liked and that were positive reinforcement cetera, cetera, et cetera, and made revenue splitting agreements with them and a dad, tell them that that's it. I see. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. It looks like right there. Exactly. And that's a whole nother conversation right there. That's a whole nother conversation. There's so many different The point is there's so many different ways to do this. And if the last year has shown us anything is that you can not have all of your eggs in one basket, you are shooting yourself in the foot to be narrow minded in that way. And the sky's the limit with our industry. So why not dip your toes into some other things and see what's possible. And you know, let's say you partner with a Dog Bakery, you think you can sell their treats, and your clients don't like their treats? Go partner with a different Dog Bakery, go, go try something else, just trying it, trying it and trying it. And you might fail a couple times. But you're eventually going to find something that is amazing that your clients love. And why would you not want to do that? It's it's a great thing.
Natasha 1:36:51
We have that with our subscription boxes. So we do a surprise box where the client doesn't get to kick, they get to pay $30 for the subscription box, and we put local businesses in the box. So every month, that's a surprise. That's awesome. Awesome. Yes. There's no terrible company, it was like, okay, to get some feedback, you put a survey out, and then the next month, the new supplies,
Dan 1:37:14
and you keep supporting everyone to throw all their money to judge every time you throw it all in there.
Collin Funkhouser 1:37:20
Okay, Ilan, settle down. But But you're right, like, when we look at the total pet care industry, it's not just one thing, right? There are supplies, there's that there's health there services, there's live animals, there's all these different things that we can start picking up on, and we can start bringing in under house, whether that's partnering with an independent contractor, or that's bringing them in house, you know, like, like Dan is talking about doing with his and making it all one under the same brand. There is so many different pies that are huge, multi multi billion dollar industries by themselves within this larger pie, that when you start bringing in a little bit from each of those, you do have this robustness that you can have. And you have security right moving forward. Yeah,
Doug 1:38:05
I do want to mention that as, as businesses like ours continue to grow and diversify. And especially as we pour more into technology and all of that, I do think it's going to create a little bit higher barrier of entry for our, for our industry, I think it's going to be interesting just to see how that plays out. Because right now the barrier to entry is so low. So I think it's gonna be very interesting to just to track that and see how all that affects each other.
Dan 1:38:40
I love that. I also think on the flip side of that, you're gonna see the money coming in from either banks or big, you know, investment groups, investment banks, I think you're gonna start seeing some money being thrown at larger, you know, larger brands in our, in our space, because that is like that is a pie. We're only the pet dog walking and pestering. As industry is like, big. We're only like 1.7 billion. And currently, like we're it's like 100 billion, the whole pet space. So we're a tiny fraction, but that fraction is growing. There's a lot of money to be made. I think we're going to start seeing some money being thrown into the, you know, the bigger brands in the next decade for sure. But yeah, I mean, like when I first started, I don't know about you guys. I literally bought neon pink paper, and I printed Do you need a dog walker, local vet tech will walk your dog and then the little tear off thing. And that's how I market my business. I just I that I would put little flyers on people's cars. I got fined constantly for it. But you know, that's what I did to get started. Whereas now like, you know, there are established local companies. Yeah, you can definitely start like by all means I support anyone who's just getting started, like if you put in the work at the end of the day and you're willing to outwork competitors do all the things we're talking about, raise the bar and make sure you're delivering a better service. You have to win 100% hard work, I think Bs, you know, talent, nine times out of 10. Like if you're willing to put in the work and outwork your competitors and deliver a better service, there's no reason you shouldn't succeed. Absolutely, absolutely.
Collin Funkhouser 1:40:20
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Natasha 1:41:48
I think it's going to be huge. I mean, everybody supporting something, we got falafel shops in our community getting back to refugees. We got us as pet care providers giving half of our percentage to different local rescues. We got breeders now partnering with rescues to bring awareness for like ethical breeding. I mean, we got people giving back to you know, Black Lives Matter. I mean, there's always a cause, and people want to follow and help like if somebody is deliberate, like, not deliberately, but it's always enjoyable. If someone is deliberately working towards putting their for profit to a great cause. And you're on a lineup of four different businesses. You're like, what should I go? It's so hard, everybody is trusted. Everybody has an app, everybody looks smiley. But what would be the one thing that would break the tie, the person that has a social cause align with your social cause that's gonna break the time, if you are part of the lbgtq community and its other person is not showing that they're friendly. And this other community is like, hey, look at us, we're, we're a unity. They're like, Yeah, that looks like more people I want to have in my household, right, you got to decide like, what you overall stand for. I think back in the day, it was like don't talk about your social politics. But nowadays, I think that is a huge contributor to climate purchases these days.
Dan 1:43:05
Yeah, I think it's like 84% of consumers are more likely to go with a brand that supports, you know, causes that they believe in. This is actually the whole focus of the startup I had in the restaurant space, we basically the long search, it was a weightless management app. And it allowed people to make a donation to a charity and skip to the front of the line. People loved it. And that was like, that was the only thing that differentiate us from our competitors. Honestly, our software is way shittier than all of our competitors we ended up selling, but like, it's one of those things where people make choices based on like, you know, feeling. So like we we definitely try to do as much as we can in terms of like giving back to the community. My I had a very close family member who had breast cancer. every October we do a breast cancer fundraiser. We do holiday pet food drives every year. You know, back in 2017, we drove down to Texas and rescued like, we went down like 10,000 pounds of food, medical supplies, came back for 24 dogs and cats that we got adopted. People want to see that you're doing good things. I think at the end of the day, like as business owners, if a community is entrusting us with whatever, you know, they're letting us they're literally letting us into their home. That is a huge level of trust. I believe we have a responsibility to give back whether it's your local community or the global community. I just think it's it's the right thing to do is find a way to have some sort of a positive impact on the world around us when people are you know, giving your business money. I think it's just the right thing to do for companies. Absolutely.
Doug 1:44:42
I have such a believer of if you put positivity out there it'll come back tenfold. You know, it's so share, share the love, share the positivity and talk about folks and and and organizations and cause Is that our underserved, it's it's our responsibility as business owners and as people that have some sort of following that, to give light to these causes. And I think it's a wonderful thing. Not only is it you're spreading positivity and love, but I mean, that's going to keep clients coming back to you. The first several years of my business, I was terrified that my clients would find out that I was gay. I thought, if my clients know that I am gay, it's going to tank my entire business. I truly believe this. And I don't I don't even know what got me out of that thought process. But it's the best thing that I ever did. Now I go to every local pride rally, and I'm waving my bad to the bone sign. And I mean, and people love it. People love seeing you, just
Dan 1:45:53
you who you are. Yeah, I think that's also you know, people, you know, businesses getting behind all sorts of things kind of open people's eyes up a little bit more to the world around them, I think, continuing to be able to push whatever cause or whatever thing that you believe in, and being able to educate people. It's just it's, I feel like it just kind of continues to get people to open their eyes and be like, okay, okay, I'd like this, I'd like to do that. I think it's a fantastic thing across the board.
Natasha 1:46:25
Can you imagine, like not imagined, but can you remember all those companies that actually tanked because they stood up for something that was like, Whoa, this is all left field, we will not support this business again. So your your whole energy and efforts can be literally removed in just one wrong saying that you're just not aware of. So it's also important as us as owners to, to keep, like elevating our minds in general, I always say get comfortable with read books, get in communities get in groups, where it's like, well, totally shift, your your train of thinking because it's detrimental to your company at this point.
Collin Funkhouser 1:47:02
Yeah, but not too, right. And I know this can sound pretty overwhelming to somebody who might be not be doing this right now. You know, they've listened to our conversation up to this point, and they're going okay, so I've got to be thinking 20 years down the road, I've got to thinking about robot dogs, I've got to be thinking about the services. And now I've got to be an activist, right? Like, what, what, how do I manage this? Right, but I think at the core of this, and what you're all saying here is that it's coming from you, right? It's like, you don't have to try to be you any more than you are already you. You just get to talk about it more, right? Like, like, Doug, like you got to experience of, I'm not, this isn't any extra effort, because I this is who I am. Right? Right. And I get to share with other people. Right, exactly,
Dan 1:47:45
exactly. I think it helps people connect, I think, you know, being able to see, you know, who somebody is, and the things that they support people, you know, I can get behind this company, you know, we try to be as supportive and transparent, all the things that we do. And I think it's incredibly important that you do that. Sometimes companies, you know, take certain stands, and I'm like, that wasn't the right move to do kind of, like, take a look at the world around you. But at the end of the day, you know, they're right, as a business owner to take the stance they want to pay, you know, they're gonna have their base, that's gonna, you know, go to them. And that's that, but I think it's just kind of propels more positivity being open and being able to kind of be like, Hey, this is what we're supporting. And, you know, if you don't like it, that's okay. But this is, you know, we're in support of this. And I think it's really important that it's tough because like, you know, you see everything that happened with, you know, people with Nike, they were either incredibly supportive them, or they were like, I'm never wearing Nikes. Again, I'm like, that's a stupid thing. You just, you're not gonna wear Nikes, because they're standing up for something that's a little bit insane to me. But again, people are gonna have their beliefs. But I think, I think the more companies, the more people are locally detached from the saying, like, they didn't say what kind of daily don't bring your political beliefs into it. I think it's a good thing. I think it allows for more open communication and conversations about everything. I mean, look at where we're at now versus 20 years ago. Like, I mean, the fact that like, Doug, you were worried about how people perceive that, that is so insane to me that that like even existed within the last decade. But I mean, I'm hearing drugs, and I think it's a very open community. But it's just the idea that you had to think about that. It's just like, where are we where this is even like, a thing that you have to consider buy things by being able to kind of continue to be open for all businesses and all these different causes. I think it's just helping to progress things forward.
Collin Funkhouser 1:49:52
So it really helps to continue having that conversation, right, because we're normalizing just being ourselves just across the board and it really does help again have those conversations makes it a lot easier. And again, it's not a huge step because it's who you are, right? We are connecting with people where we're helping educate them about these things. We're speaking to a generation who is hungry for authenticity, whatever that word means, right? But just being yourself right there, they're hungry for that they're tired of being spoken to, like they don't know anything. And they're tired of these disingenuous campaigns that just do go with something after $1. But when we're being true to ourselves, and who we are, like, that's an instant connection that is going to, you know, be there for as long as you're working with them. Right? That's you can't take that away.
Natasha 1:50:37
Oh, yeah, we've talked about niching down all day clients niche down to, they do their process, when they look on the internet, and they do their review process and their little mental checks, they niche down on the people that they want to spend their money with
Dan 1:50:50
all the time. I think it's only gonna continue, I think people are going to be, you know, more aligned with the brands that align with what they believe. And I think that's going to get further and further, which is great.
Collin Funkhouser 1:51:00
Yeah, that shouldn't be disheartening to somebody listening to this, that shouldn't be terrifying. That should be that should be going, Okay, great. I get to connect with the clients that are I'm going to connect with, right. And that's going to help strengthen me and my brand and my business. Yeah,
Natasha 1:51:16
yeah. And that's whatever you stand for, there's no right way or, you know, I used to do social media management, our agency and some of our reps were like, We should be posting about these halls. And I was like, Listen, this brand does not want to post about these problems do not help. I can't believe you said that. I'm like, Listen, we run a company here, you give the people what they want, they don't want to come, you don't make those kinds of content for them. And you're like, I can't believe it. And I'm like, you got to make sure you're not mixing personal decisions with business decisions. And I see that happening a lot. Although we want to blend social causes, we still don't want to lose the basis of etiquette, right? We don't have to be overbearing, or push ourselves and tell someone what they should or shouldn't be doing. And you know, we'll have a conversation about that with vaccines, you know, later this week about just what you stand for, and what you're going to go towards and what you're going to lean against and what you're going to trail your community to do. But we're never going to exclude in anything that we do.
Doug 1:52:13
Yeah, it's important to just be respectful, we have to remember to respect everyone around you, even if they may not have the same thought process or the exact same belief. Everyone's entitled to their beliefs. Everyone has reasons for their beliefs. And we just have to remember that and if we respect them and their beliefs, they'll be much more likely to respect us and our beliefs. There you go. Yeah.
Collin Funkhouser 1:52:37
Yeah. And I think that kind of gets to kind of an inkling in closing here. We've talked about a lot of changes in the industry. And I want to get your perspective on the role or those changes. And are they just going to happen to us? Or what's our role in in producing the changes that we want to see as business owners and kind of goes in line with the kind of the social issues and in being ourselves, but at this broad scale? How can we help elicit positive changes in the industry, across technology across services across all this?
Natasha 1:53:15
For me, I've been showing people like what I do, like, I used to be the CEO that would put my systems out there, they ran on their own. And then I was standing in the dark hanging out. And like Dan said, we just kind of got introduced to like Facebook groups just a couple of years ago, I think I got my first Facebook group, I think maybe three years ago, I guess. And I just start noticing all these companies that were literally like, I'm dying. I'm burnt out. I don't know what's going on. I'm not hitting the nail. I'm just working on working and working. And I was like, You know what, I'll just show you guys what I do. I'll show you my style. I show that it can run you can make money you can travel you can have babies, like I think for us kind of leading by example, then you're kind of changing the thought process. So we ran a whole campaign changing the pet game like beating my people who who nice to me, we are all about lifestyle. Like we're not hustling and grinding. We're living life. We are taking the vacation and drink and drink. Okay? Like for us, it's not going to be like if you come in and the animals like well, I want to hustle boss, I'm like, I'm not gonna be the right person. But I'll show you how to strategize. So you're no longer hustle, but you can still make lucrative income. Right? So once you start kind of leading by example, I think your people will flock to you. And that's what we do in our b2c business every day. My clients know that what I say and what I promise they're going to get the trust and respect is very well earned. And even when done saying you know, him being gay, well, I'm black and I was like, well do I gotta do brock obama of the pet business now? People are gonna be weird about me coming in their houses, I have those same insecurities. But I was like, You know what, I will be the ultimate pet care provider and I'll crush anyone that comes next to me and my client saw that they were like she me business. We like her she's blue, purple, green, black, we're rocking with her. Right? So you just lead by example, whoever it is you are, what do you stand for it, and like they say be unapologetic.
Dan 1:55:13
I definitely agree with that. I think when I first started, I was young enough and arrogant enough to think I knew what I was doing. So I had this mindset of like, Okay, I'm going to do this, and I did it. Like, I think when you're very young and you start a business, you don't really think of all the things that can go wrong. Now, like any new venture, I get into I like, I sit down at the Mac, I look at this, I'm like, I'm gonna take this money stay. Okay, we can do this. Whereas when I was like, I started when I was 22. Like for businesses. In one year, I started the nonprofit tech company, dog walking business. And I had a use of flip textbook. And I was just go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But I think I just got into this mindset of, I'm just going to try different things. Like if you go back and look at my social media posts, from when I first started, and I tell people don't look at it, it's horrible. I made it in life. I think, with this, not Photoshop, definitely not Photoshop, I did it in like PowerPoint. And I made like, he's awful great. Like, it was terrible. But I just kept going and going and going. And I think I got into that mindset of not realizing there's other people out there like me. And so I've kind of always had this like drive forward mentality. And you know, like detach the same Be who you are, do what works for you like, again, I think we are total opposites and where we operate, like as soon as I have free time, and like books and other projects, and other projects and other projects. I'm constantly just adding more and more to my plate. But I think it's helping me grow and evolve. So that I hope that you know, people right now even still, I think the average person looks at like dog walking as like a side hustle. I plan on buying one day, and I'm not a materialistic guy was the one thing I've wanted to does little kid, a matte black, black on black, Bentley convertible. And then the bottom, I want to have my license plates as dog walker. And that's my goal. Because I want to change the perspective. And I think you can create a multi million, multi billion dollar pet care brand. And I want this to continue to grow and evolve. And like I hope that I could add value to people's lives with whatever I'm doing, whether it's through my business, or just even like chatting with other people in the industry. I mean, I've been working with Dan over in the UK, he has an amazing eco friendly pet care company. He just randomly hit me up in a Facebook group and was like, Hey, dude, can I I'd love to do like a mentorship with you. interview. him and I have great friends. Now he wrote he posts, he actually is the one who puts up all of our social media. So he actually works for me now. And we do a ton of back and forth. So just like any way I can be of service to help people I want to do that. But the end of the day is things like Natasha saying, lead by example, try new things. Don't be scared. We're already dead one day matters in a million years. none of this matters. We are so insignificant in like the grand scheme of time. But you can impact the world around you by trying and doing new things. That means I hope to be able to do amazing things. My goal is to be able to impact a million people in my lifetime. And I don't know exactly how I do that. I do know that, you know, amassing resources will help me with it. But I think just pushing and pushing and pushing continue to grow our industry is the way that we're going to help things grow and evolve and get better. I love that you
Natasha 1:58:33
said that because people I love that you just squash like a money mind block that so many pet care professionals have that we shouldn't need 10k months we shouldn't need 50k months we shouldn't need 200k months. Well why do you need that much money or you're here to love on the dogs? Well, I just love that you said we can love on more dogs even get a grander impact with people who actually care about them that are going to teach these be integrity within the company. And you can be successful in the way to provide the best impact is with money. I would be one Natasha working in Africa on a missionary trip one soul, but the money that I make in the pet care industry, I can then donate a couple 100,000 how much more impact do you think I'm gonna make by bringing in more souls. So if we all flock together and make an impact and make great businesses, we can do even more with what comes behind it. They always say you do what she loves and the Money Follows they never lie. That's true. True. True. Yeah, I love that. I
Doug 1:59:41
love that I have right on board with both of you. Dan, I started bad at the bone in 19 years old. I mean, I had literally just graduated high school. I had never managed the person before. I had never handled money before. I mean I literally didn't know anything about anything. And I've constantly learned day by day the hard way. And I tell everybody that I speak to, if I can teach myself this stuff, then you can, too. You know, the resources are out there. And that's why we do things like this now as we see the power of connecting with people and sharing what we know and and just putting that positive energy out there into the world. It's such an amazing thing. That's why I started making these YouTube videos is I see, I just want to help I want to help in any and every way that I can. And if I can help one dog walker somewhere, make a better decision, then that's made my whole day.
Dan 2:00:48
I love your videos. By the way, thanks for making it like I've always given him topics. I'm like, like, I'm sure if you like getting them into the groups, man, you are definitely helping so many people because like I look at them, Oh, I wish I had that. I wish they knew this information instead of having to stumble blindly through this. Yeah, during the beginning, oh, my God, especially as young as you and I were just like, Oh, my God, I never managed anybody before, either. But yeah, keep going with those videos. They're definitely helped. Yeah. Thanks, Jordan. Thank
Doug 2:01:22
you. Yeah, it's just amazing how much I have learned over the over the past few years. And I love it. I think the power of knowledge is one of the biggest things that I've learned through growing my business, the more that you know, the more that you can help people. And the more that you help people, the more every life is better across the globe. And that is, that's that's such a powerful thing. Ah,
Collin Funkhouser 2:01:50
well, that's why I'm so happy to have you all on this Roundtable. Because the more that we can know about not just the current state of the healthcare industry, but also start having some ideas about where it's going, the more that we can prepare and start making those differences and making those changes. You know, we're talking about the future. And that's why I wanted to talk to the future and bring you all on because of the work that you're doing and doing everything that you're involved in. So I want to thank each and every one of you, Dan, Doug, Natasha, for for coming on and having this conversation for for slogging through this time and really giving all of your great insights. But I know as we've talked about, that you're all open and available to have more conversations and to help other people out. So how can people get connected? Where should they hunt you down and start stalking you and learning?
Dan 2:02:39
First calm I do want to say thank you to both of you for the podcasts that you guys do. I think it is super valuable resource for the industry as a whole. You guys are bringing together a lot of amazing voices, and a lot of really insightful stuff. So I think the whole industry is loving what you're doing. So thank you for putting this together getting all of us in this digital room. To keep it up, man, we'd love it. In terms of me, you've got obviously you could dm Dan texcare I'm on there. But if you want to contact me personally, my Instagram super boring. Just Daniel reitman. It's just pictures of mountains and sunsets, and occasionally a puppy or my fiance, but I'm more than happy to help hit me up on Facebook if we're not already friends yet, because I'm pretty sure in front of every single person, every single Facebook group. But drill if you have a question, I'm super accessible. I might not get back to you right away. But like I am more than happy to answer any and all questions. I do some consulting on the side. Nothing too crazy. It's more kind of like alla carte. But if you're looking for operation stuff you might want to go with we were here trying to dazzle
Collin Funkhouser 2:03:52
podcast listeners thoroughly come
Dan 2:03:54
ask me to help the dance back here and Instagram Deanna reitman and everything else. But hit me up if you have any questions at all.
Natasha 2:04:00
If you guys want to contact me, I'm going to say it's attached to me and you guys know. I am the Monday guest coach on pet sitter confessional, and I love doing it literally when you you and I call and talk. I was like, I can do a guest. I told I told Doug that I was like done three podcast. I'm like, No, let's just keep going. I was like, that's a win win. So definitely, I love the podcast. I love that you guys bring voices in that we would never ever hear or experiences from people. And again, I love this little pod that we got going on. I'm like, Hey, we should do a coaching pod together. And I'll send you to Doug for this and we'll listen to Dan. fallen for this right. So we all have a little bit of everything different perspectives. Absolutely. But we're all here for the greater good, but I prefer DMS that's my style. I will send you a video message if you've ever DM me
2:04:55
for you and be like, wow, send me video. So yeah, send me a DM. That's the best Nitasha opionion
Doug 2:05:01
I love the podcast call. And I mean, this is such an amazing resource that you guys are putting out. And, man, I listened to every episode religiously. I follow your schedule. I know when it's coming out, I got my earbuds ready. Like, I love it. It's completely widened my perspective of the pet care industry of like Dan said, You know, I didn't know that there are other people out here dealing with the same issues. And it's one thing to see it in a Facebook post that they hear it on the podcast in someone's own voice. It's such an amazing thing. And we learned so much that Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. If anybody wants to reach out to me, I'm Doug Keeling. You can find me on Facebook just Doug Keeling, or bad to the bone Petcare on Facebook. Bad at the moment, pet care on Instagram, all spelled out bad to the bone pet care. And then I'm also the wandering pet sitter. That's one of my other sub brands. So you can find me there as well. I'm always always available to answer questions help in any way that I can. I love doing it. I love doing it. So hit me up.
Dan 2:06:09
Oh, I got one last thing. This is my shameless plug. Go check out let's talk about cool animals. The podcast myself in Morrow, we have a new segment out called cool animal people. We've had amazing like guests that I had no idea would say Yes, Captain Paul Watson from Sea Shepherd. We just had Dr. Evan anthon on or as I like, found Dr. Hansen, who the coolest dude in the world like him and I nerd it out about lizards for legit like an hour. We've Cesar Milan coming on later this year. So check that out. We would be honored if you'd listened to a shameless plug over.
Collin Funkhouser 2:06:46
That's, that's absolutely right. And then and definitely check out Doug's YouTube channel and attach everything that you've got going on. It's hard skill sale to guys. I mean, use these people's
Natasha 2:06:56
resources, join our membership group. My high touch program automated see,
Collin Funkhouser 2:07:01
yeah, there's a lot of resources here and definitely reach out and get connected with them all. Dan, Doug, Natasha, again, always, always a pleasure, and always wonderful insights. Thank you so much.
Dan 2:07:14
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Collin.
Collin Funkhouser 2:07:17
What is your hope for the future of pet care? And what role do you see yourself playing in bringing about that change? We covered a lot of topics on this episode, from technology to social issues and the role that each of those plays in pet care. It's a big, big world with lots and lots of changes, but lots of lots of really cool people doing awesome things. And Megan, and I want to thank you for listening and for being a part of that wonderful, awesome community doing those things, and helping to make the industry be better. We want to thank our sponsors, time to pet pet sitters international and pet sitters associates for making this week's show possible. If you liked this episode, and this kind of discussion with more people involved, let us know. And we'd love to get your feedback and hear how you would like to have topics covered moving forward. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. This is the only episode that we've got going on. So we'll be back again next week.
