210: Coming Together
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary
More and more people are entering the pet care space. At a time when many uncertainties plague the industry, we’re facing questions and challenges.
To overcome these, and help the industry stay around for a long time, we need to be reaching out and building everyone up. There is no reason to tear others down simply because they do things differently.
We should be inviting, mentoring, and educating. We share our thoughts on the importance of organizing and self-regulating, and why building community is crucial. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do you deal with all the phone calls?”
Topics on this episode:
Slinging mud
Building community
Educating
Coming to the table
Ask a Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Be a proponent for what you stand for and for what you are, not for what others are not.
Links:
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
industry, people, pet, clients, business, sitters, pet sitters, started, educating, confessional, phones, organizing, rover, dog walker, run, operate, area, auto reply, community, message
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 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. Hello, welcome to Episode 210 210. Hello, thank you to our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members. If you would like to learn more about supporting us every month with the price of a cup of coffee and helping to continue this show, you can go to petsitter confessional comm slash support
Collin 00:52
and just for our Patreon supporters, we are releasing modules about podcasting for your pet sitting business. The next module will be module three on how to rock an interview for your podcast, whether you're an extrovert or not.
Meghan 01:06
Also, a couple weeks ago, you may have heard us mention website templates that were specifically designed for pet sitters and dog walkers. Well, Michaela with pet marketing unleashed, she was on back in Episode 143, she has created these templates and she walks you through exactly how to customize them for your business, and exactly how to use them for the future. So you can just set it up and go. If you are interested in checking these out and getting a discount. You can go to petsitter confessional comm slash Listen, and it's right at the top of the screen. And if you want the discount, it's PSC 10 for 10% off.
Collin 01:42
We have quite a doozy of a topic today. And I am very interested in hearing everybody's thoughts.
Meghan 01:48
Yeah, today is about coming together as an industry. So we have seen a little bit of a disturbing trend in the last several months. And in, you know, the past few years. As more and more people have entered the industry, particularly last year, existing providers have really looked for ways of differentiation for themselves. And that's not bad. You know, we're all trying to find ways to set ourselves apart and find our niche of services and clientele. But the disturbing part is how people are starting to do this,
Collin 02:23
we've seen an increase in putting others down or making fun of others in their advertisements. Basically, these look like showing what a quote unquote new sitter or a part time sitter would looks like in their quality of work. And it's usually shown to be terrible and not reliable. So let's be really clear about this. Attempts to make yourself look better by slinging mud and tearing others down will only hurt you and your business in the long term. It's really not okay, and it's really not cool. It may come across as you may try to do it in a funny way. But many of these rely on stereotypes and really at the end of the day marginalize others in this industry.
Meghan 03:05
Yeah, I think we need to stop putting others down. Make other pet sitters for doing it differently, then we run our businesses different doesn't mean bad, it just means different. And honestly, many of these attacks against other sitters and other walkers are based on either fear of losing business or feelings of superiority. So we have to remember two important things. One, there is plenty of business for everyone. There are so many, there are so many dogs and cats, there are not enough providers to take care of all of the pets. And then we also need to remember that everyone starts somewhere, like we talked about on the social media episode. Everybody starts at zero, everybody starts with not knowing anything in their business.
Collin 03:50
Looking back to where we started and what we knew 10 years ago, it's almost embarrassing to think about just how little we knew about pet care.
Meghan 03:59
Yeah, basically nothing.
Collin 04:00
Yeah. And And really, the vast majority of people coming into pet care these days probably know about 10 times more than what we did back then. And everyone is like that, as you just said, Megan, everyone starts somewhere. So why attack them and tear them down for starting and trying something. Part of being in business for a long time is that you've learned way more things and you've probably forgotten and sometimes it's hard to even remember what we don't know. Additionally, these kind of negative ads are talking about about others directly reflects you and your business. I can't stress that enough. A very real statistic is that there is a huge number of people entering the industry through non traditional means through app based platforms or other websites. And I actually recently read a stat from a rover investment call that said something like 93% of their providers are brand new to the industry and less than 1% were existing businesses. So who mentoring those 93%. We all wish we would have had help when we started. So where is that coming from? Nagin. You mentioned that last year in 2020, saw a massive number of people leaving their job or starting a side hustle and many turned to the pet care space.
Meghan 05:18
Yeah, if you go on indeed, right now, which we
Collin 05:21
have been doing,
Meghan 05:22
or you do a Google search for dog walker job, you'll probably see ads in there from major chains and major players. And in our tiny area of 30, something 1000 people rover is taking out job ads in every small town in the county and the surrounding counties. And we actually just talked to a lady recently in our area, who had quote, applied for the job. She was super excited about getting started. And she had tons of questions. And so we answered some of those for her. But it was just interesting, this rhetoric of I applied for the job, you know, to be a rover sitter or a wag Walker, but
Collin 05:59
she was really interested in testing the waters, but didn't know how to get started or where to turn for help. So instead of making fun of her or talking bad about, quote, those sitters to our clients in our community, we openly are asking for help getting connected with more people exactly like her. And why is that? Because we are really passionate about making sure everyone that is working in pet care is educated, connected, and as equipped as possible for their job.
Meghan 06:31
Yeah, you are the representative for the pet care industry. in your town. Even if you have 1000s of dog walkers in your city, you are the representation of what it means to be a pet sitter and dog walker. And we have to remember that there are exceptional pet care providers on rover, there are exceptional pet care providers on wag. There are exceptional pet care providers that are independent and run their own businesses. So regardless of how you are listed whether you do this as your only thing full time, or it's among others, there are people out there who take this very seriously and try to constantly improve.
Collin 07:12
Yeah, there are people taking an interest in actively trying to learn more and raise the bar for themselves. What more could you ask for? And I even saw the other day on a Facebook group something about how you can't call yourself a professional since there's no industry standard?
Meghan 07:26
Yeah, I think I saw that it was in the dogs. For dog trainers. There's no industry standard for dog trainers. And same goes for pet sitters and dog walker, that's
Collin 07:34
really, really hard to hear, because we don't like hearing that. So as an industry, what does that mean to us? What does being a professional mean? We've actually talked about this many times on the podcast, but it definitely fits here to being a professional means you're trying to improve your skills, you're putting in effort to do better and try new things. And there are people who take this extremely seriously and do very well for themselves. Regardless of how they're listed or how they operate their business. They are for all intents and purposes, industry professionals because of how they treat their clients, how they treat their continued education and the training that they do to continue to better themselves.
Meghan 08:10
Something that will help you to be better is insurance. 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 they have 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 pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. So we have to recognize that there are people coming into the industry in different and new ways than before.
Collin 08:59
Yeah, and if you are currently in the industry, and you are passionate about the industry and want to see it to continue to for another 30 or more years, we need to be educating more people,
Meghan 09:11
right? If we demonize people tear people down because of how they came into being a pet sitter. And for their maybe lack of knowledge, which could be no fault of their own. We're really cutting ourselves off at the knees here because that is where the growth is coming from 93% of people are coming from outside the industry.
Collin 09:33
Yeah, whether whether you agree with that or not, whether you recognize that as reality or not. More people are coming into the industry and there are 1000s of people listed on these services that are just waiting to be tapped in brought into the community. And I know you'll say well, you know, I've tried that before. I can't tell you really how many times we've heard that but at least you try. And that's all this is. It's providing open door opportunities for people Come and seek out help if they need it.
Meghan 10:02
When we had started in 2012, in Lubbock, we had some private clients. But we were also listed on rover. And we literally knew nothing about dog walking in petsitting, we had started from zero. But we knew that we wanted to walk dogs and be around pets. And so if somebody had reached out to us, I can venture to say that we probably would have said yes, that we do want to network with you, we will refer clients back and forth to you, we do want to collaborate on social media posts and tag each other, we do want to attend monthly meetups and share and learn more, because really, this is a lonely industry, it's unregulated. And because it's unregulated, there are no steps from zero to successful,
Collin 10:46
if you want to see change. And if you want to, you know, whatever that change may be, but if you want to see the industry continue and change and evolve, raise everybody up and help them thrive. In order to do that we all need to come together. If you put it this way, do you think you run an amazing business?
Meghan 11:04
Obviously, everybody's gonna say yes.
Collin 11:07
We all recognize that we have strengths. So Wouldn't you like to see more people running an amazing business like yours? Yeah, yes, yes, we have to look at people as collaborators, instead of competition, you have to look at new people entering into the industry, regardless of how they do that, as collaborators as ways to help and bolster and increase, not just the popularity of petsitting, but the robustness of it, as well,
Meghan 11:33
well. And so we do that through mentoring and educating Yeah, giving back that's really where this comes from. The title of this episode is called coming together, sharing things. And I think a lot of this is giving back and extending ourselves. And that can be hard, it can be hard to give back when you're insanely busy, like most of us were this summer, it was crazy, overwhelmed and potentially burned out, it's hard to give back when you're burned out. But that's literally the last thing you want to do. Because you're giving everything to your business. And so it's important, I think, to ultimately run your business with the goal in mind, maybe a new goal, to build community with other pet sitters and educate them and give ourselves basically to the industry in that way.
Collin 12:21
Yeah, instead of just focusing on our business and how it's doing, it's really means contributing to something whether it's taking a position at naps, getting involved in psi ibpsa other large national organizations, or it could really be just organizing local meetups, giving talks and helping organize statewide professional societies, local professional societies or groups, the more we can organize now, that the less we'll be catching up to this kind of thing later.
Meghan 12:52
And this goes back to the discussion we had back in Episode 87, about industry standards. And you had said that in that episode that if we ever want to have industry regulations, it needs to really come from within our industry versus government regulators telling us how to do it.
Collin 13:09
And the only way that that is going to be possible is if we start networking and raising the bar right now, bringing sitters across the different cities, having them come together and creating statewide organizations to like in Texas, or a new one is coming up in Florida or Arizona, Pennsylvania, all these places are really coming together and helping to set the bar for how they envision the pet care industry being
Meghan 13:34
the only way that we can self regulate is by being self organized. And not that we're trying to build up more gatekeepers in this industry. We're trying to set the level of expectations for us what I do and what I hold myself accountable to. And that's the discussion that we all have to have as a collective as a community, because everybody's answers are going to be different. And that's fine. Everybody runs their business the way they want to, some people are going to want to go above and beyond that. And some people are gonna say, I don't know if I can do that. That's too high for me, you know, those discussions have to happen. And it's more powerful when we all have them together. Even if it's just in your local community, maybe there's only two other pet sitters, or just one other pet sitter that you know in your community will reach out to them and try to get to know them come together in a sense of organizing and a sense of educating each other not that you have all the answers. You don't need to come in and say I have come down from on high. And here's my book of answers that I have. And this is how you should run your business to know it's about give and take. It's about educating and networking
Collin 14:42
well, because there are also a lot of headwinds facing the industry. There's a lot of new money moving into this space takeovers, coming innovations, investments, a lot of changing of client expectations and having to have businesses change and adapt in response to that. And that's on top of the technical and advancements that are happening all around us, there's a lot of change happening. And if the industry is going to be adapting and responding to that, we need to be doing that together. And that's really going to get the best possible outcome for everybody.
Meghan 15:18
Yeah, last year, a lot of people closed up their business and got out of the pet care industry. But I would venture to say that a ton more people came into the industry, because they wanted flexibility. They wanted to be around pets all day. So the industry is really primed right now for education and educating the new people that are coming in. But also, of course, the businesses that are under five years old, and even if you've been in business, 30 years, I'm sure that you can still learn something from others.
Collin 15:48
I know I mentioned national organizations, but it's not really thinking about national, it's your city. It's your neighborhood. That's where we need to be starting. That's where the power is going to be
Meghan 15:59
starting to have these conversations and organizing.
Collin 16:01
Yeah, something where we are we are doing this right now where we are gathering the the pet sitters in our area and trying to get down to meet once a month, just to start having these kinds of conversations, getting to know one another saying, Hey, this is where we are, this is how we work. How do you work? What are the things you're doing? How can we help you exactly. And again, start educating people on different things leaning on each other's strengths to fill our weaknesses, because everybody's going to operate their businesses completely differently. And that is totally 100% fine.
Meghan 16:33
Some people are doing this part time, some people are doing this full time. Some people use platform, some people don't. It's come one come all, we just need to be together and be the face of the pet care industry. And let people know that hey, this thing does exist a pet sitter does exist a dog walker will come to your home and walk your dog. And here are the faces of that industry. Because that's another thing. It's educating the public on this, most people still don't even know what we do, that there are pet sitters out there.
Collin 17:04
And this, this really get geeky here for a minute. But this really does remind me something from biology is Bateson and malaria and mimicry. What? So sorry for all this. But in malaria in mimicry, every noxious, venomous or poisonous animal in an area looks the same. And this really Jacks up the evolutionary advantage to looking that way. Because predators are constantly are constantly reinforcing to not eat those because everything they eat that looks orange, is poisonous, and they get really sick, because they're all toxic, and they all look the same, the impact of that messaging comes across a lot stronger. baiting in tends to have a much weaker advantage, because only one critter in the area is actually dangerous. Everything else just kind of looks like it. The others are harmless, so it gets reinforced less frequently, and predators will actually still try and eat one every now and then because it's still advantageous to them. So in business, let's bring it back to Petcare here, the more unified we are in our messaging, and our boundaries as an industry, the quicker our clients and community catch on, because you can't reach everyone, but get 1020 people together, saying all the same things constantly across their social media messages, and their networks and their newsletters, doing all the same stuff. That's really where this message starts getting strong and starts getting really cool
Meghan 18:30
well, and it'll be really crystal clear to the clients as well. And it may be a message of unity, what capacitors are willing to do what they're not willing to do. And that's up to you and the other sitters that you bring together to discuss what those things are. But that's the end goal. And it probably will be challenging to come to terms on what some of those things are, but hold each other accountable. And the end goal here is that we can self regulate as an industry instead of having to be forcefully regulated by people who have no idea about this industry at all.
Collin 19:03
Absolutely, when and if that time comes where there are regulations that are starting to head our way, we as an industry need to be able to walk up and sit on somebody's desk and go look, this is what we're already doing. This is these are the 10 things we agree. Because if we get late to that party, and you don't have something already drafted, guess what, you tend to not get a voice. But again, if you can walk up and show this is how the industry is already trying to do things. Here's this example. Here's this example. Here's another one, here's our manual, that is what the policymakers are actually looking for. Because truth be told here, lawmakers actually hate writing things from scratch. And if you can come and look and say look, it's already done here use this. That's wonderful. But having consistent messaging,
Meghan 19:49
it's gonna be a little difficult because everybody's prices are going to be different. And so the the things that you value and you hold may not be the same as somebody else's. And so There's, you know, the the primary things, the secondary things and the tertiary things.
Collin 20:05
It's kind of like us deciding where our dividing line is for us. So all of this discussion is really couched in going, we need to be welcoming people into the industry and bringing them and helping them be part of a broader conversation about what we want the industry to look out like. That is, of course, recognizing that these differences will occur and that people are going to have different opinions on all of them. And we have to recognize that that's going to make the industry a lot more robust and a lot stronger in the end. But there are primary beliefs that are unquestionable, that cannot change in our total deal breakers,
Meghan 20:36
like insurance, you need insurance to protect you and your business and your clients.
Collin 20:41
A secondary issue may be something like what harness you feel like is best to use, everybody's different. And you don't need to go on a full crusade and try and convert everybody here. The actual point is to educate and be open to being educated about different ways of doing things
Meghan 20:58
doesn't mean you have to agree that just means that you are at least open to hearing other people's opinions.
Collin 21:05
Yeah, it's going is this of primary importance to me and the industry? Or is this a secondary and tertiary thing. And that's a very personal decision about what you believe what you like, what you hold dear and was steadfast to you, and what you honestly believe is best for the industry. In the end, we have to come together and work on educating ourselves and each other, and exposing ourselves to new things. Because those things, education, exposure, change minds. So if you bring someone into your group that operates differently, through education through community, you'll be surprised at just how quickly people can change. And we have to be honest, and say more lessons are caught than taught, right? We get more through just being exposed and around different ways of operating and see how it can influence our lives, and how we can operate our businesses like that.
Meghan 21:54
Well, especially since you don't know what you don't know, like us. 10 years ago, we knew nothing. We didn't even know what we didn't know, at the time. It wasn't until we got a little more knowledge and started researching and googling and exactly what these terms were that we were learning that we understood that oh, this, the pet care is a lot bigger than we actually thought. And it's awesome.
Collin 22:18
I think that fundamentally, it's just going to be that the more people we can have at our table. Well, just like Judy Nunez we just had her on flashback Friday, about building your tribe. She told this beautiful story of going to her grandmother's house who said they were so poor, that they barely had enough food for themselves. But they always had room for more people, they would always invite more people, because as her grandmother said, there's always room at the table, when there are friends when they are family, there's always room. That's what we need to be doing of going there's room at the table. Because I am made better by interacting with new people and being exposed to new ideas and new ways of thinking. And they're being made better by being plugged into a community. And we're all being made better. Because we're at the table. And that's the point of this, not tearing one another down, not slinging mud or talking bad about how somebody is operating or the way they came into the industry or bit or that they're interested at all, and that they don't know what they don't know. It's about inviting them to the table, making them a part of the conversation, making them a peer in the industry so that we can be better and they can be better too.
Meghan 23:28
So like we said, this is a doozy of a topic. I'm sure you have maybe different opinions than we do and we would love to hear them. You can send us an email at feedback at petsitter confessional comm or you can get connected with us on LinkedIn and Instagram at petsitter. confessional pet business coach Natasha opionion is going to answer the question. How do you deal with phone calls? Yeah, so
Natasha 23:50
I use grasshopper. I've used them for years, and I've loved them. Google Voice nowadays G Suite offers the same features. But grasshopper has like the whole music and the press one, dial three. It has our cool intro. So when people call our phones, first of all it says Did you know you can book us directly online? Did you know? So first of all, when a client calls us half the time they end up hanging the phone up? Go call and the first thing that says thank you for calling walk events and Ruby Did you know you can book us directly online? So we're now directing clients to go to where we want them to go. I know a bunch of us are introverts and we we run from the phone like it's like it's the plague. I have a couple girlfriends who don't even set up their voicemail because they're like I don't even want a voicemail to text me. But we can direct the phones to go where it needs to go. So I typically do not get phone calls from clients. It usually will be like an emergency like oh my goodness, I forgot to turn the stove off. Can you tell the walker to turn the stove like it's something strange. We rarely get phone calls because our clients know they can book can talk to us in the app. So they typically go there. So for phones, I would try to redirect the client to where you want them to go, Hey, did you know you can go directly into time to pet into precise into check, pet pet check, you know, direct them on where you want them to go, because half of the things that they're calling for is usually, hey, I want to book something, or, hey, I want to cancel something Did you know you can actually access your account directly in our software, and they usually hang up and just go there. So the overwhelming of phone calls is only because you are telling the client to call you, I see this all the time. My clients are like, Oh, my gosh, I my phones are nuts. And I go on their website, I go on their Google, I go on their Yelp, and I say, well, you telling everyone to call you, everyone, every time I check for your business, it says to call you I look for a booking I look for something to move forward in the call of action is to call you. So clients are going to call you. It's literally as simple as that. Change the call to action. And I promise you your phones will decrease significantly, we service four states, and our phones hardly ring.
Collin 26:09
Yeah, it's being intentional about that, and not just changing it but give pointing them somewhere else of actually how you want them to interact with you. Because you are training them you are building in these systems you are building in these processes that people are going to remember and if you tell them to do something, the shockingly as you said they're going to do it. So we need to redirect just like we do with pets and dogs and other animals redirect to a better behavior that we actually want them to
Natasha 26:33
show you teach our clients how to treat us, we teach our clients how to act, our clients are more than capable of doing an app or a booking, they do this for every other company in the world. Okay, I can't hardly call anybody that I want to go to if I want to shop at nordstroms. I can't call somebody if I want to, you know get a quote on my house, I can't call someone half the time now, all businesses, you typically cannot call somebody they want you to go through their questionnaire, they want you to submit and then they will reach out to you if anything. So we do we do teach them and I find that a lot of clients are like, Oh my god, I have this software now. And I want to use it and my clients aren't using and I say listen, guys, give your clients some time, you've been telling them to call you for years, it's always going to be our old clients that are going to take the longest to transition because you've already created the habit for that. So give them a little bit of time, give them a little bit of grace and remind them hey, listen, we use the app now we use the app now and they will catch on. Also just a little life hack is that you can set yourself a little text message that says auto reply dot dot, this phone no longer this phone is no longer monitored, please visit us at your software. And I put that into my away message on my email. I put that on my way the message on my cell phone so somebody calls even if it's an hour later, I will send that message back to them. And they'll be like what about this was your cell phone I'm like auto reply. Please visit us at this link to talk to our team. So put that on your saved message. Put that on your Instagram dm saved messages, put that on your Facebook away message you can redirect everywhere.
Meghan 28:22
Natasha runs a dog walking business but she's also a powerhouse pet business coach and if you would like her to walk you through your own pet business and be your personal pet business coach. You can go to start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her coaching. We want to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our awesome Patreon members who support us every month. We thank you most of all though, because you listen you keep coming back. You keep sharing these episodes, you keep giving us topics and awesome people to interview. And we thank you very much for that
Collin 28:54
from the bottom of our hearts. We really thank you so much and we'll be back again next time
