192: Integrity and Your Reputation
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary
What does it mean to run a business with integrity? How do I build and maintain my reputation?
Collin details the connections between consistency in service, communications, and valuing your integrity as a business. When it comes to un-marketing, understanding that we have a reputation to build and maintain is key to building relationships.
We break down a recent article describing the four major factors in building trust and your reputation. It all comes back to being consistent.
Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “What’s your favorite hiring question?”
Topics on this episode:
Consistency and your integrity
Building your reputation
A recent example from us
Ask a Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: We aren’t in business for public opinion.
Links:
Fear Free Pet Sitter Certification Program
Jeff Bezos 4 Tips for Building Trust
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, pet, clients, pet sitters, values, reputation, integrity, expect, important, consistent, policies, dog, person, recognize, stick, work, service, true, company
SPEAKERS
Collin, Natasha
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.
Collin 00:30
Hello, and welcome to Episode 192. As a reminder, on episode 200, we are going to be doing an Ask Us Anything episode. So if it's anything you've ever wanted to know about us the podcast about our pet sitting business, get those questions in, and we will do our best to answer all of them on the show. Coming up on the 200th episode. We want to thank our sponsors today pet sitters associates, and our wonderful Patreon supporters. And we have two new ones this week. We are so thankful for Becky and Doug. And if you want to learn more about what it means to be a Patreon supporter, you can go to pet sitter confessional comm forward slash support. And if you hear that and you go, Oh, I don't really have the money right now it's not a good time. For me, that's totally fine. Just listening and sharing the episodes are the single best way to support us and to help others get information and be connected and be part of the community. That's what we want this podcast to be a connected group of passionate pet sitters learning and supporting one another. We also wanted to let you all know that the very long awaited for fear free pet sitter certification program has just launched. Now, if you're not familiar with fear free Is this a way to interact with pets in a manner that reduces stress and anxiety and puts the pet first. Prior to this coming out. There was a veterinary specific certification. And we know many pet sitters have taken that however, this is a pet sitter specific version. So there's a lot that goes into this. So if you're looking for ways to add to your skills, and to market those skills as well, fear free really is a growing way to do that philosophy. Again, it's being able to read cat and dog body language, it really focuses on the enrichment for them. So you can go to fear free pets.com slash fear free pet sitter certification program. And I'll make sure to have a link to that in the show notes so that you can get right to that. Click on that. And the signup cost is I believe, $99 if you don't have a previous certification through them, and there is an annual fee of $40 a year to renew. And it does have some additional training opportunities and responsibilities to remain certified. So it's not just a one and done. There's a little bit of a commitment here. But Megan and I are actually going to be signing up for this one. And we feel like it's a great way to work as a community together to help the industry be a lot better, and being able to communicate to pet owners what we value. Well, Megan, and the kids are still celebrating the Fourth of July. So it's going to be a solo episode today with just me. Today we are talking about integrity and our reputation as professionals. And this really comes on the heels of our last episode talking about on marketing, and one of the core tenants of that was having integrity. And when we think about integrity as a business, there are many branches that come from this. And I guess why we are so concerned about this to begin with is because when we are focused more on building relationships, as opposed to pushing out ads, in order to build those relationships, people have to trust us, we have to be able to trust. And part of that is having integrity as a business and as a person. And what's really important here is that whether you are a solopreneur, or whether you have multiple employees across different locations, integrity is mission critical to our business. To what what is integrity, integrity is basically saying it's sticking to your word, right? It's when we say yes, it's going to be yes. When we say no, it's no. And we stand up for our beliefs and our values. And that's why we talk an awful lot about understanding our values as a person and our values as a company. Because when we have a firm grounding in those, we know what to stand for. At the end of the day, we need to be predictable to our clients. They need to know what to expect from us and how we will react. Because that's part of building trust with somebody when you know what to expect from them. And we want to be dependable. We want to be the person that people can predict what we're going to do next and next after that. And so part of this is sticking to and being consistent, having consistent reactions and sticking to our operating procedures, our policies. It's so important to have those because, as we've talked about before, yes, the policies are for your clients so that they know what to expect. They're also for you to know it to stick to it. So that you're not having to make stuff up on the fly all of the time. But the key here is that the more you stick to those, the more you have consistency and response to those, that you start building trust and familiarity with your clients. As a business owner, when you tell somebody one thing, and you do another, or you tell one response to one client and a different response to a different client, people can pick up on that people can see that, and you're not being consistent as to what you said you would do. Your your integrity becomes at stake, and people start feeling like they can't trust you. So there's this policy aspect, but there's also the values aspect. And a lot of times our policies are outgrowth of what we value. This is really true. And this is why we hammer home that a lot of times, really a really good example for Megan, and it is that we have a minimum requirement of three visits a day for a dog, and one visit a day minimum for a cat. That's what we believe can be the best level of care for the pets. Yes, there's some evidence and research to back that up. But deep in our core, that's the minimum we'd be willing to do. That's the value. And we have that written in our contract. Now if our policies say that there's a minimum of three, and somebody comes along and says, Well, what about too? And we say, Yes. What have we just done? Well, we've told that person that we are willing to go against our word. We've now told them that we're willing to compromise. And as a client, if you're willing to compromise for that, what else are you willing to compromise on? If you're willing to go back on your word for something? Where does it end, and that trust just starts slipping. When our integrity is not there, we stopped being predictable, our clients stopped being able to see what we're going to do next. And they don't know what to expect. And honestly, many clients will probably never be bothered by this. They're there. And they need your services so badly, and they don't care, or they don't notice it's not important to them. And you could really do whatever you'd want with those kinds of clients. Now, we're not saying to do that, because that's not respecting them. And that's not holding yourself accountable to your word. But yes, it is true that many clients wouldn't even notice, however, you will have those clients that pick up on those things. And they do notice when they start questioning, and all of a sudden, they're not quite so sure about your services, and whether your word is actually worth anything. It's hard, because as businesses, unfortunately, there are times where a business is because unfortunately, there are times where a business decision might not exactly align with our personal decision. Or we may feel like we're having to do things for the business that we don't personally believe in. It's a really tough situation to be in, right? A good example here is your business needs money, right? Just Let's go. Let's go basic here, your business needs money. So you start doing pack walks, even though at a personal level, you're not comfortable with that. And you'd really want it to stick to just doing one dog at a time. Right? these are just examples. This is not saying the value judgment based on anything or your business. Again, a lot of these come down to just needing money or needing to try and do things for one reason or another with this recent busy holiday weekend. A lot of us packed in way more, or try to accommodate more people that maybe we were comfortable with. And maybe we prioritized sticking to maybe we prioritized taking on new clients as opposed to our personal well being and our mental health. And it really stresses us out, right? So the business said, we need to double the amount of effort here. And at the personal level, you're sitting back here going, I actually don't feel comfortable with that. So no, it's not easy. It's not easy to balance these things. And this is another reason why we are so adamant about lining out, not just your policies, not just your procedures, but understanding what you as a company are going to value what are your business values. And the great thing about being an entrepreneur is that we get to dictate that. Right? That's, that's something that we have control of. So you get to set these you get to determine what those values are. And as you add employees bring on independent contractors for a short period of time, you get to help bring them into the fold and help educate them about what your values are. And they get to be a part of that too. And you can build from there because it's just what your company does. And when we put our values out there, I know we've talked about this before, but when we put our values out there, and we start being true to those, we start attracting people who are more in line with what we believe. And so we talked about this from the business side, understanding who your values are, what your core values are, what you stand for. And these can be anything. They can be the level of animal care that you're willing to give it like we've already discussed, they can be social issues, they can be personal issues. And these can be just how you view you you're operating. A lot of people have the word honesty, as a core value for their business. They've got word like hard work, dedication, all sorts of descriptive words that describe what their values are, and how they're going to go about doing their business. And we get to set those. The next step is that once we've lined those out, and we've built our policies out of those so that we are aligned with our values, when we start being consistent, when we start being consistent, and how we approach those, and both apply and respond to those, we are building integrity. through that. We are building integrity through that process. And it takes time. That's what part of this is, is it's not just doing it one time, it's not just doing it two times, it's doing it over and over. So before we move on to talk about how this can influence our reputation as business owners and our business, I want to tell you about our sponsor today, pet sitters associates, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, pet sitters associates has provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, which you do, or you want to take 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 and running your business. Learn my pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pets at LLC calm. our listeners can get a discount when joining by clicking membership, pet sitter confessional and use the code professional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, I pets it llc.com. So we've worked through how being in alignment with our values and being consistent in those starts to build our integrity, and how people begin to trust those because we are predictable, they start being able to rely on us. And this then starts building into how people view our business and how people respond to us. And think of who our business is. And this gets into our reputation, reputation. When we think of reputation, it's really trying to when we think of reputation, it's really how others view your business and how others respond to react to or think of your business and discuss your business. And this gets into another core tenet of what it means to unmark it our business, it's understanding that we have that reputation that people begin to believe things about our business, true, different or otherwise. And obviously, we can only control so much of how things happen. And that's what people start to believe about us. And that can be really scary. Being a business owner. It's scary, because you know that, while we applaud, and we are so thankful when people share about our business when we're not present. They give recommendations without us having to prompt, we also have to know and recognize that the is that the inverse is also true. People are having other experiences or perceived experiences with our business that they might not be happy with. And they are telling others about that as well. And I just think at a fundamental level, we have to accept that. That we're not going to be for everybody, not everybody is going to be 100% pleased or happy with the service, no matter how hard we try, and that we have to focus on doing our best. Because in the world of all the advancements in marketing and technologies, this still is primarily a word of mouth business, our reputation is essential to how do we build that? Well, we do that by as I mentioned providing excellent service, both to the client and to the pet. We do that through how we get training like a fear free certification. We do that by excellent customer service, easy onboarding processes. And looking at this at a holistic level. We can also build a reputation in our communities by partnering with other businesses, and associating ourselves with causes that we believe in, this starts getting the word out about what we stand for, it's being an outward expression of those values of those core values that I mentioned earlier. And I think we just have to also be honest with ourselves and recognize that at some point, you will let a client down accidents happen, whether it's your fault, or the clients, and you won't be able to please everybody all the time because of this. And we have to recognize again, what's in our control, and what's not in our control, we can only control our end, we can only control how we act and operate as a business. And that's part of that, why it's so important to be consistent when we are out there operating and sticking to our policies and staying true to our word. Because ultimately we can't control what others say about us. Good, bad or indifferent. We can only provide the best service possible and stay true to who we are. And part of this having a leveled perspective about ourselves and having a balance about how perceive ourselves and our business is not getting too caught up in the hype when somebody applauds us, or congratulates us, it's really easy to do we love focusing on those five star reviews. We love it whenever people call us and say, oh, my goodness, we couldn't do this without you. You're the only person that my pet likes. We love that kind of feedback, don't we, we also have to balance this because we're saying, Don't focus, don't drag yourself down or beat yourself up in that bad review comes in, or when somebody doesn't recommend your service. If we're going to have a level head and have a good healthy perspective about our place as a business, we have to make sure that we don't get too caught up in the high highs, or get dragged down into the low lows. Having this balanced perspective about ourselves is important. And actually, it's so important for our personal sanity for our own mental health. And it's okay to recognize that it's genuinely, perfectly fine. Yes, we're recognizing that some people out there will just never like us. The important part is, is to recognize that we are not doing this job in the first place for other people's approval. We are not pet sitters, so that other people can give us praise. Yes, we're also not in this job. Because of the negative feedback, we are in this job. Because we want to be in this job. This is our industry, this is where we have a connection, this is where our giftings are, this is where we find purpose and meaning and connection to others. Notice where that control center lies that's on us, that's on us. So yes, we have this balance perspective. People will love us, some people won't, we're not doing it for any of them, we're doing it for ourselves. And we're holding ourselves to the standard that we're going to hold ourselves to. And we're going to be consistent in that. And this is something that we all have to work on. Right, this is a journey. Nobody is born with these kinds of abilities that yes, some are better than others at this ability to not care about what other people think I for 1am, not one of those, I tend to place an outsized weight on the opinion of others. And those opinions contribute heavily to my mind. And I can get sometimes obsessed with how others view me. And that's something that I have to battle with, I really have to work on not getting caught up in because it's extremely easy for me to do, and it can hamper my ability to move forward to change your own make decisions. And so while we have to recognize that we're not doing this job in the first place for public opinion, we're doing this job for whatever reasons that you've lined out for what your y is, that's inherent in running your business. We have a reputation that we carry around, there's this public opinion about us whether we recognize it or not. Now, we've just talked about how we shouldn't let that public opinion affect us at the personal mental health level. However, as a business level, we do have to try our best to manage that. And I've already talked about two ways of doing that is having excellent service to the client in the pet and partnering with others. And what's really interesting here is that, again, with an marketing, it's having a good reputation is one of the single best things you can do for your company. Because it is at the very end of a holistic slice this this different approach to understanding what your business is, and what the takeaways are from it. And so, this week, I actually came across an article that was outlining a four step method to build trust and reputation in our businesses. And it was written by the CEO of a little startup, you probably haven't heard or know this person, but his name is Jeff Bezos, I think he owns and operates an online book company or something. Anyway, he talks about these four things that as a business and as a person we can do to build our reputation and to maintain it. And that's kind of where I wanted to camp out for the remainder of this episode. So the first thing that he talks about here is doing hard things. And for me, the key here is, is that it's really important for us to do hard things over and over again, it's not just doing it one time, here that here's this consistency, bringing in again, doesn't it? It's the delight that you can bring to your clients for your services, whether they thank you for them or not, whether they even recognize them that you did them or not. Because you get to set that bar of what excellence looks like for you. And you get to set that bar of what the minimum for your company is willing to do. It's like for us when a cat owner says, Oh, you don't need to skip that litter box. I'm only gone for two days. And I respond with what was good the litter box every time we come over. That's just what we do. And if they say no, please, you don't have to worry about that. And they could be saying this because they don't want it to be an inconvenience or they think I'm not going to charge them as much or whatever. I scoop the litter box. I it's just what we're going to do. That's what we've decided our level of excellence is and I'm always going to bring in the mail or packages whenever I see them. We're always going to make sure that the light is on for somebody if we know they're getting home late or really early in the morning. Those are things that we are all We're going to do as a company, whether the owners thank us for them or not. Because again, we're in this business for ourselves, we're always going to take high quality photos. And it's these doing things well, because people start to know what to expect from you. Remember, consistency starts breeding familiarity with your company. Now, the second point that he brings up here is actually one that I mentioned earlier of, if you say you're going to do something, do it. This starts building from the integrity that we talked about earlier. It's not just, it's not just doing something over and over again, it's sticking true to your word, letting your yes be yes. And your no be no, this is really simple. It's also really complicated. To stay true to our word, even though sometimes we don't think it would be because you have to deliver on what you say you're going to do. It's not optional, we have to do that. If you say you're going to be there at a certain time, now, we would actually recommend doing time windows for service would be rendered so that you're not held to as tight of a standard as that. However, we do recognize that we have these clients too, that there are some clients that need medications at certain times. So we have this one client who needs his insulin shots at very specific times, because that's the schedule that he's on. So we have to be there at that time to give him those shots, or he's going to be thrown off. And that's what the client expects. So that's what we deliver. Every single time I say, I'm going to be there at eight, I'm there at Eight with shot administered, the standard that you set for yourself is totally up to you. And again, that gets back to one of the great things about running our own businesses. But this can go across the board. It's not just rendering the service that we say we're going to render, if you say your company values diversity and inclusion, are you doing that? What does that look like? How does that manifest itself and how your business operates? Is there a visual component from that, that people can see and interact with and experience? Once you put it out there in the public that you're going to do something, you better do it because people are going to notice when you don't, you can't just hope to sweep it under the rug. Because when you say you're going to go to the moon and you don't they look at it, they notice that I feel like of all the things that we're talking about here, this is again, one of the simplest things that we can do today, right now. And in many, many times, the hardest person that we have to convince is ourselves, holding ourselves accountable to that standard that we set. We're business owners running pet care company, nobody else is around except for ourselves for vast hours and stretches of the day. We said we'd be there at eight, right? Are they really going to know? What if I just slept it an extra 10 minutes, you know, oh, I'm I'm the only one that's going to notice or realize that I didn't leave the light on that time. So it's not that big of a deal, right? It's holding ourselves accountable, which is something that I also struggle with. I'm pretty bad at this, especially for things like deadlines, and it's something that I've had to grow into. And I've had to work really hard on and recognizing that, especially as a business while I say I'm I'm only gonna be the one that notices, we have to do things in secret as if they were in public. That's a really good way to think about this. Do things in secret as if they were in public? Would we act this way? Would we perform the service this way if the client was standing there watching you. And that's, you know, one, you know, I know, a lot of times we get frustrated about the cameras, but it's a good reminder that our services are being noticed. And this is another good reason for taking training like a fear free program that we mentioned earlier, or learning processes to be consistent with the level of care for pets, and in treating them in a different manner than a lot of people expect and surprising them with just how you're able to handle them. Is the client ever going to see how you read the body language of the pet? Is the client ever going to recognize that you put on the hardest differently for a pet in a stressful situation, or how you give them space or how you work with them? Absolutely not, your client will nine times out of 10 never see those little actions that you do or recognize them. But that's part of doing something that you say you're going to do. If you're going to treat the pet with respect at all times, you're going to do it at all times whether there's a camera or person in the room or not. And for many of us, that's exactly how we operate, it's very easy for us to do. Unfortunately, those little things can be pushed to the side if they're not important if the training that we have for an independent contractor for an employee wasn't quite sufficient to instill those values, or maybe we're having a rough day because we don't view it as impactful or helpful or important sometimes, but those little things absolutely are. It's being consistent, and it's doing something once you've said it is by far and away the easiest way to gain trust, but it's also the quickest way to lose it and hurt your reputation if you don't. So the third thing that he says here is to take controversial stances to build your reputation. And this is Probably not what many of you were are going to expect to hear this is actually getting back to those values that you have as a company, like, I'm not going to come over one time a day to check on your dog for a week, I know you want me to do that. But I'm not going to come over three times a day minimum to check on your dog to take them on a walk, let them out, give them food, we have to start sometimes pushing back against assumptions and norms that many people have, especially in pet care. I know you've encountered those kinds of clients. And I, we've encountered them time and time again, those those kinds of clients who just say, Oh, just throw some of the food down and leave it or come over once, one time a day. And I think we've talked about this on the podcast, very early on in petsitting. When we started off as a business, we had a client ask us to do one time a day for the dog. And we did it. And we have vowed to never do that again. And it was extremely early in our career. Like I mentioned, we were extremely naive, we were desperate for clients. And now we realize just how horrible that was. And so if they disagree with a statement that you have on a policy or something that we have on our website, we stick to that we hold ourselves to that, and they might not agree with you. But hopefully they can respect you for your beliefs, they can respect you for being consistent. We all know these people personally, especially in the political arena, or in higher offices, or in other companies, people who we don't agree with on the exact issues, but we can respect them for at least being consistent and staying true to their values. We've all had clients who disagree with what they expected the level of care to be. And for the example that I keep bringing up of the coming over one time a day for a visit. I know I bring that up a lot. But that's so foundational and how it formed and structured our minds and our mindset about how we vowed to run our business moving forward that that's what I keep coming back to that. But you know if that for that person, when people ask for us to come over one time a day, and we say no, we're not going to do that, what's that person going to do? Or they're gonna leave us a one star review and say, Man, these people didn't want to come over one time a day to let my dog out, they wanted to do three. Okay. Right, what's so what's so bad about that they don't really have a lot to fall back on. And so that's what's important is to recognize that when we stay true to our values, when we're consistent, that's going to carry us through, it could also be a training method that you believe in or a hardest that you require. We know many people who require certain sets of harnesses or gear and you say, you know, I'm not going to walk your dog, unless you have this kind of thing. And you can say, I believe it's because of safety, predictability, control the situation if it's in welfare policies and procedures. And if they say, they don't want that they use this one that I have on the wall, you can say no, and you've stuck to your ground, you've taken a stance, you've taken a controversial stance in that person's mind, on an issue that somebody might not agree with, they might not even understand it, but they know what to expect. And they can respect you for sticking to your grounds, because you wrote it down in black and white and your policies and procedures. And you stay true to that. And the fourth one here that Jeff Bezos brings up here, and I think this is also really important is to have clarity, have clarity of what we believe in and what we stand for. So people know whether they can agree with us. And it's not being wishy washy in our statements, because that actually pits people against us when we are wishy washy and unclear and have gray areas. If you have a statement in your policy that people could read both ways, or multiple ways, that gets into some really bad territory that starts eating away and eroding your reputation and your respect and your integrity. So let's go back to our visit example, if we said we highly suggest a minimum of three visits a day, if you don't say you require them, people are going to ask for two visits a day. It's it's okay for them to do that. Because you highly suggested, and you have to tell them Actually, no, it's three is what we want to do. And they'll say, Well, why didn't you say you require them. And you get into these situations where you keep having to explain yourself, and it gets harder and harder for you to stick your ground because people are interpreting your values one way and your statements in multiple ways. And there's lots of confusion that can go into this. So as a business and running an operating and even at the personal level, there's going to be places for disagreement, there's going to be places for different viewpoints and perspectives. What we want as a business is to make sure that there is no space for misunderstanding that with the clarity of communications, of expectations of values and the consistency in our business. There is no possibility for misunderstanding anything about us. We have no possibility for misunderstanding that it is extremely clear when people contact you and when they are in communications with you. So there you go. Again, people know what to expect. There's no wiggle room or gray info area for misinformation for what your business is communicating and putting out there. All of this, all of these things that we've discussed these build in with our understanding of our values, they build off of our values, our core tenants as a business, we stick to them as a business, and then clearly communicate those to the world around us. I believe that when we do that, it puts us well on our way to having a good reputation and being seen as a business and as a person who has integrity. So we want to know how you build things with integrity, and how you would describe your reputation of your business. You can contact us, you can dm us, maybe even like last week, post a short video on social media describing those values and how you sticks to them and tag us in it, we'd love to see that and learn more about how others are doing that in their business as well. Because while it's all pretty straightforward, right? There are situations out there that get really hairy, and are not easy at all to deal with his companies. There can be these uncomfortable situations that with all these things, right, that we don't expect to have ever have to deal with in our entire business career. And all of a sudden, you feel like you're in this PR battle, trying to manage that reputation, trying to stick up for your values and trying to make sure everybody's happy and do the best possible. And I think in those situations, you know, one way to handle that is to try and distill everything down to the simplest mode possible, the simplest form possible, again, having as much clarity as possible, not just whenever we are communicating about our business, but when we are problem solving, right, so recently for our business, so we do drop ins, we do walks and we do some boarding in our house as well. Right. So we require everybody to be up to date on their vaccinations and everything, which we know we're not 100% effective all the time. It's just a great way to reduce possibility of transmissions. So we had a client come in for daycare, and they are towards the end of their period for their bordetella shot and they were coming up on the time to renew it and they hadn't reacted quite yet the schedule was coming up. Well, their dog had it, but nobody knew it while they were over with us. And it was only after they had left and exposed a couple dogs that a few days later, the owner contacted us and said that the dog had come down with it. So unfortunately, because it had been a few days since they had been over multiple dogs had the possibility of having of having been exposed in our home. While that owner had discovered that their dog had kennel cough. Because we had daycares coming over we had some boardings coming in and out and all total around eight dogs over the course of that time period, had potentially been exposed through changeovers and through interactions, then all of a sudden, we were contacting and reaching out. We had to be communicating with all of these clients, some in the past and some coming up in the future to communicate with them and let them know what was going on. And we were waiting through public opinion through this process. We were having to do a lot of education. And you know, helping people understand why we were doing this and we are trying our best to communicate as clearly as possible. We're being upfront and honest and and early in our communication and updates and overly cautious in how we were handling the situation. And we had to make the decision that for the July 4 weekend, we were closed. We had to send everybody home to their emergency contacts and convert as many people over from boarding or daycares into drop ins and walks which literally nobody wanted. Because otherwise they would have booked those in the first place. And it added to our schedule added hectic and added chaos. But the through line for us was pet health, pet safety, pet health, pet safety. You know I said many times over the course of the last several days doing phone calls, I understand that your pet isn't exhibiting any signs right now. But the best place for them is going to be in their home where we can be doing these services. I understand that this is a shock to you that you're in Florida right now. I do need you to reach out to your emergency contact and we will coordinate coordinate with them as well. I know it's not what you wanted. We understand that we understand this isn't how we saw this weekend going either. But in order to serve you in the best way possible for your pet's health. First safety to be put first and foremost. This is what we have to do. Y'all, it wasn't easy. It was not fun. It's not what we were expecting to do Thursday and Friday before the busiest weekend. And while and many people most people understood, most people thought that this was being cautious. They thanked us for being so cautious and for protecting their babies. And we did say a lot of a lot of times this is out of an overabundance of caution. This is why we're doing this and then even reaching back to clients that may have come into it saying hey, this is what happened. This dog have been diagnosed with kennel cough and we know your vaccines are up to date and we let them know that their pet was possibly exposed to it and to be looking out for these signs. This is the time I things that happen in walking them through all that information, we felt like was one of the single best things that we did was we didn't just tell them, oh, you might have been exposed and then hang up, right? We we stayed on line with him. We answered their questions, we talked to them about not just step zero, but Step three, four or five, outlining what to expect, how things might progress, how to manage it, when to contact the vet, how things are going to sound. And we worked through a lot, we managed a lot of clients fears and anxiety, but we distilled all of that chaos. Remember, the through line of our focus, as pet care providers, is the peace of mind of the owners and pet health and pet safety. And all of our decisions were built upon that we pointed everybody back to those. And well, again, it wasn't fun. We feel like it worked. And I'm not saying that any of this again. Again, I'm not saying that any of this process is easy. I just said it wasn't fun, and it wasn't easy. I'm saying that it is hard work to do these things. It is hard work to be consistent. It is hard work to have clarity of our messaging. But there are things that in business that we need to strive for. And it's because it helps us run a business that helps others know what to expect as well. So again, send us that feedback of how you've maybe managed a situation like that how you stay true to your messaging, and how you felt like it has impacted your reputation as a business. On this week's Ask a pet best coach segment with Natasha Albanian, she answered the question, what's her favorite question to ask during an interview
Natasha 36:36
with interviewing a new hire my favorite thing to ask? I mean, I have a knockout questions that I asked on there. I think my favorite one is really what they liked about their last job. I think that question really gives me the most detail on who this person really is. But people can interview really well, we all know that right? And then they get on the job. And it's a whole different thing. I really like them to tell me what they loved about their last job. Whether it was the camaraderie or the accountability, or the follow up or you know, the process, they really can show me how to be the best manager to them. Because I can put things in my business that outlines the things that they love, and that's how I can support them better. So that's really my favorite one. My other one is, you know, what's your goals? What's your goals, you know, in the next year, five years, 10 years, where do you Where would you like your career path to go from this point on, because I do like to talk about my vision with my employees, I feel like it's very important to share who you are as a company and where you would like to go and give them an opportunity to say, you know what, that's me, I would like to go on this journey with you. Because that's exactly what I'm looking for. And if they don't, that's fine, too. But it's important to kind of bring them along with you. So I like to know kind of what their goals are.
38:02
Yet again, you're you're building a little bit more of a relationship with them. You're making some of those connections and you're starting to see where they're gonna fit and how they're going to fit in the business direction and the culture that you are bringing on and grow.
Natasha 38:15
Yeah, and they appreciate they're like oh, wow, she wants to like really know about me. She really wants to learn like what my interests are. Yeah.
Collin 38:28
Natasha runs her pet business and is also a business coach. If you'd liked for to work with her, you can head on over to start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off. We want to thank our sponsor petsitter Associates, our patrons for supporting us and for you listening and sharing and everything that you do for the show. We hope you have a wonderful and enjoyable week ahead, maybe able to take some time to reflect and breathe this week and come down from the hectic craziness. That was the july fourth weekend. And we'll be back again soon.
