250: Stop Overcomplicating Marketing with Jane Harrell
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Summary:
Do you ever feel guilty that you should be doing more in your marketing? đ˘With as many hats as we wear as business owners, it's common to start feeling like you're not doing enough. In this episode, Jane Harrell, from Working with Dog and Cause Digital Marketing, shared ways we can market efficiently, use time effectively, and learn to forgive ourselves when we don't get everything done.
Topics on this episode:
Mindfulness
Publish once, distribute everywhere
Making email simple
Preparing for busy times
Main take away: I don't need to be everywhere. I don't need to do everything. I don't need to be everything to everyone. Everything works better when I'm not.
About our guest:
Jane's been rocking it out in the pet industry for 18+ years, leading content strategy and marketing as former Editor-in-Chief of IDEXXâs Pet Health Network, Head of Consumer Communication for IDEXX, head of the consumer side of Petfinder.com, and with many other leading pet brands like Animal Planet and Petco. Sheâs a regular industry speaker and has had work featured in AAHA Trends, DVM360, INC.com, SheKnows, Pets+ Magazine, The Humane Society of the United States and more.
As President of 'cause Digital Marketing, co-owner of Social Media for Animals and co-owner of Working with Dog, Janeâs happy place is helping pet and socially focused businesses profit and change the world - at the same time. When not traveling and speaking, Jane lives in Maine with her loving partner, large brood of adopted pets and occasional foster child. In her âoffâ time, Jane enjoys gardening and doing volunteer wildlife transport for two local rehabs.
Links:
Janeâs article on newsletters
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, people, newsletter, brain, thinking, dog, clients, love, delegate, working, post, marketing, blog, tick tock, printers, helps, hire, funnel, spend
SPEAKERS
Collin, Jane Harrell
Jane Harrell 00:00
We are all really good at the things that we're good at. And we don't need to do this alone.
00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm calling and this is Pet Sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter
Collin 00:17
brought to you by type two pet and pet perennials, the feeling that you should be doing more is not uncommon, especially for pet business owners. There's always something extra on our plate that we quote, think we should be doing. But do we really need to do that? And how can we take a step back and stop feeling guilty about focusing on some things while not addressing others? Today, we're really excited to have Jane Harrell from cause digital marketing back on the show, to discuss exactly some steps that we can take to stop feeling guilty when it comes to marketing and putting our business out there. Jane was previously back on episode 99. And I really encourage you to also go back and listen to that. We start today's conversation talking about being mindful and present every day in our business. And then we move into talking about things we can do some practical application of steps we can take to stop over complicating marketing in our business. Let's get started. At this point in the year, it's like I'm not even going to bother with much until like the second
Jane Harrell 01:23
exam. That's actually the advice that we're giving people that I'm telling people specifically, as I know, this is your crazy time of year. It's mine, too. Yeah. And this is not the time to take on additional stuff or feel guilty about shedding things and putting them on your calendar for later. This is not the time to stress yourself out, this is the time just to get work done well. Enjoy being busy. That's the one thing that I do put on their list is if you're busy and you're feeling that overwhelm, do something to give yourself a little bonus, and then put on your schedule. The things that are, you know, in your brain keeping you awake at night, actually put it into your calendar for the end of January, so that you can get it off your head and know that it has its place. That's something
Collin 02:19
I started, oh, gosh, it's been a while now of like waking up in the middle night in a cold sweat. And then like stressing that I had something to do and then stressing that I was gonna forget about the thing to do. And it was like, my brain is meant for one of the best piece of advice I got was like just a self realization, like, my brain is meant for creating, not remembering. And so I have places to put things where I need to remember that way I don't have to stress about them.
Jane Harrell 02:42
Oh my god, Collin, you're so right. And I mean, when you look at brain science, so I'm you know, I'm an unabashed data geek and brain like novice who loves all the brain articles that I come out ever. And, you know, we have two different kinds of memory, right, we have working memory, and then we have long term memory. And when we're trying to keep something top of mind, meaning we're worrying about it, you're, you could say we're spinning on it, we're trying to remember to do it, that stays in our working memory. And there's only so much that can stay in our working memory. So that's where we start feeling really, really overwhelmed. And that's why things like lists, or things like taking an activity and putting it on the schedule to think about later are so powerful, because it gets it out of the working memory, it doesn't make your brain think, Oh, I have to push this then into long term memory, it's like, Nope, I don't even have to have this in my brain at all. Because I am I know it's taking care of I know, I'm gonna be able to take care of it when I need to.
Collin 03:52
I hear a lot of people who say, you know, like, I have a list to remember my lists of don't forget my list. And but I think but that's good, too, right? Like, you have to have to build a system about that. Because again, you're trying to just totally off board, the remembering part and put systems in your life. So that you can work on other things. Working memory is it's there for a reason. It's meant to address the concerns and needs of actions happening right now, not about long term. So let your full brain and attention focus on those things. I'll sit down to work on a project. And sometimes it feels like I have to spend several minutes to just empty everything else out all those worries and stresses, just so I can focus on the task at hand. And that gets a little bit easier when you do have those lists and the systems in place that can help you focus more and be more present to
Jane Harrell 04:41
absolutely and when you're doing something to kind of add to that where I counsel a lot of people to do a little bit of a mindfulness exercise or some kind of meditation to kind of bring themself to that place in time where they need to be present. We, we really encourage lots of different kinds of meditation at working with dog. And the reason being, if you're, if you're scattered, if you have your head in 10 different places, you are just not going to be able to be as good at whatever it is you need to be good at right now. So doing just a one or two minute, guided meditation, or just slowing down can really help you recenter and let go of those thoughts, but writing it in your list or putting it in your calendar, so important, because otherwise the meditations just not going to work.
Collin 05:38
Yeah, kind of is wasted time because you know, brains are good at creating things. And we tend to worry about what's going to happen to those where do those go? What do I do with that kind of like, we kind of need an action step into to implement it a lot of times. And then yeah, have those have those systems to capture those so that you can be free to do the do the mindfulness, do those exercises, be creative, and then not be bogged down with the steps 345? Through infinity, right, you can create and then spend other dedicated time on actually implementing in the doing part of it? Right,
Jane Harrell 06:15
right, exactly. And like, what a lot of people don't realize I've found is how much when you have that, that spinning going on in the back of your brain, how much that actually affects everything in your life, like eating, sleeping, being able to be present with your family. For me, oh, my gosh, when I start to spin, and I'm really bad at this, like, you know, I think we all live with a little bit of over anxiety in today's world. And as soon as I start to recognize that I'm like, a little bit too far, I need to work on some stress relief and put things on my calendar and get them out of my brain. I am up at two in the morning, I'm tossing and turning in bed. I'm as you said, like cold sweats at night. You know, being a woman, like you can blame that on hormones to not to say anything bad about women. But you know, you never really know which is which but one of the first things I go to, is not hormones, it's like, Okay, I am a professional woman who's successful, who's running three different three different businesses, and, you know, have 2014 members, and I'm stressed about something. So let's instead of thinking this as biology, let's think about getting stuff out of my brain getting rid of the worry. And then coming back to center and then seeing like, is this actually affecting my physical health, which is what a lot of people don't realize it's stress, spinning deeply affects your physical health, your hormones, your just wellness in general.
Collin 08:03
I really enjoy a good brain dump kind of what you're dealing with here of like, something is gnawing at me, I kind of sometimes I'll refer to it kind of like the demon dogs are Nying at my brain and kind of like, my brain is on a bone and it's not letting go of something and I have to be recenter myself become more aware of exactly what that is. And that sometimes it's hard to just sit down there and think about it. I love sitting down, just physically writing out or putting in a Notes app or something, writing everything that's on your brain at the moment, because that does two things, as we mentioned, it takes these, these the working memory and relaxes that a little bit. Because it's no, no, no, it's going somewhere. And then secondly, you're actually able to physically it's kind of a manifestation of everything that's on your brain. And then the logical brain can come in and assess how severe all of these things are. And you can really do this quick assessment of okay, here they are, I recognize how either severe or not severe that they are. And I can now focus on on other things and it is this process of forcing the the literal brain to recognize what's going on and allow it to make that assessment so that you can relax your shoulders a little bit and actually go go to sleep at
Jane Harrell 09:22
night talking about you know, demon dogs and sleeping and I actually have my little dog who I call my demon dog and she is suffering next to me.
Collin 09:33
Wow, who knew? That's amazing. This is
Jane Harrell 09:37
Oh, yeah, yeah, her name's Liza. We should post a photo of her.
Collin 09:42
I love it. Yeah. Send a photo over.
Jane Harrell 09:45
Yeah, absolutely. She's this funny little terrier demon dog. And, man, if I could be able to just like, let go of my stress and sleep like her. I would be so happy
Collin 10:02
I know, I know, well, it's one of those things where, where you do, I think just as, as entrepreneurs, you naturally feel like you need to be like, doing all the time. And you don't, you don't stop. And just be, you know, for a little bit.
Jane Harrell 10:23
That's so true. I mean, one of the mantras that I'm always teaching and I, I got this from the animal shelter world. So when I was when I started in the pet industry, 18 years, 18 plus years ago, almost 20 years ago, now, I was working boots on the ground in an animal shelter, open admission, you know, constantly overwhelmed, constantly feeling like so many pet printers feel, you know, if I don't do this pets will suffer. And I just had to come up with this mantra of, you know, I don't need to be everywhere, I don't need to do everything. I don't need to be everything to everyone. Everything is better when I'm not. And being able to just say that to myself. And when I teach classes, like this is something that I often have people repeat back to me, you know, I don't need to be everywhere, I don't need to do everything. I don't need to be everything to everyone. Everything works better when I'm not. And it's going to that pure, we are all really good at the things that we're good at. And we don't need to do this alone. We don't need to constantly feel guilty that we're not good enough, or we're not doing enough, or we're not being enough in this space. And I mean, my gosh, pet printers, pet sitters, dog walkers, you know, anyone in this space, we all have a little bit of that, because we don't get into this business to be millionaires, we get into this business, because we have this deep, deep connection to pets and the people who love them. And we want to improve lives. And this is the way that we've found to be able to monetize so that we can do that. But we always have this like not enoughness or imposter syndrome, which comes out and being able to quiet that little voice and recognize, okay, thank you for looking out. For me, thank you for looking out for the world. But we got this, you know, we're okay. And that's where, you know, coming into January, the end of January, after your busy season, being able to say, Okay, Now is my time to really think things through Now is my time to really reassess. My busy season is not the time to do that, you know, my busy season is just the time to give myself the space and grace and permission to get things done, and to take great care of my clients. But now I need to take care of me I need to take care of the future of my business and look at what do I really need to do, you know, not get overwhelmed in Oh, I feel like I should be doing all this you know, the i should i where I should be on tick tock, I should be sending newsletters, I should have a better website, I should be hosting classes or whatever that is. Everyone tends to come into the new year with this feeling of overwhelming feeling of not enough ness and being able to thank that voice so that they can quiet and you can really focus on what matters is a really important step to creating your path forward.
Collin 14:08
I know for me sometimes that voice of concern or the alarm that raises in my brain about things that are doing that I'm not doing enough. I can beat myself up about that and feel like I'm failing because I'm concerned about it. And I kind of get into the cycle of being concerned about something then admonishing myself for being concerned because I know I shouldn't be concerned. And then I'm concerned that I was concerned and you kind of in this in this, but to what my brain does. And I love that idea of stepping back and thinking that voice because and thinking that concern because part of that is that's the drive. That's why in a lot of cases we are six as successful as we are because we are concerned, been through counseling a couple times and one of the things I would always mention of like, I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to do this. And remember the counselor at that time going the fact that you are worried means that you are going to do this and read And recognizing that, and it took me a while to understand exactly what that meant was like, but I'm worried about it. Like, yes. Because you're thinking about it you could you care that much, you and that voice that's talking to you and those concerns that you have, that means that that everything's gonna be okay. And that, you know, I got this that's where those systems come in where we talked about earlier of now I can put this somewhere, I can hit it to a team member, I can get the help that I need. Thank you for alerting to me this. That's part of what helps me makes us so successful so we can focus on other things, as you mentioned, that we actually should be doing. Have you heard of tied to pet Susan from The Beckel has this to say
Susan 15:38
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Collin 15:55
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Jane Harrell 16:07
So thinking about, you know, what should we be doing?
Collin 16:11
Yes, in January
Jane Harrell 16:12
and thinking about what, where does this year go? What we found and as I was telling you a little bit about cause digital marketing, which is the marketing firm that I own and at working with dog, which is our club for solopreneurs pet printers, we see a lot of pet businesses, especially dog walkers, pet sitters, really struggling with Okay, where is the kind of correct mix these days? You know, where where do I spend time you know this question right now of tick tock? Should I be on tick tock? Well, chances are, if you own a local dog business, no, it's not gonna give you the current payoff at this moment, unless you really love doing it. And that's something that is going to bring you personally a lot of joy, or it's going to feed the long term vision of your business, meaning you're thinking about going national, you're thinking about creating more of a lifestyle brand. You know, those are things that something like tick tock as a marketing channel can be great at, I mean, so amazing, but the fact is that that channel specifically is so time intensive. And really to do it well. You are creating videos all the time, you're constantly on the platform, it's not kind of a set it and forget it marketing channel at all. And the the reality of it is when you're on tick tock, you are marketing to the world, you're not necessarily marketing to local customers. So if you have a local small business, and that's where you want to stay, it's probably going to take up way more time than it's worth for you. So just like get that off your list. And give yourself permission not to have to do you know, every social channel, usually we counsel and we say pick one or two, at most. And the way that we we actually have a tool on cars digital marketing, where it's a free tool will give it to your listeners to if they want they just can go to cause digital marketing.com and do pets it confessionals. And you know, you tell me exactly what that should say if it should say something else. But the the tool is all about how to figure out which marketing channels are best for your business based on your business goals based on who your customers are and what you need to do. Where in the marketing funnel, you're kind of bringing them in and where they're getting stuck and how to get them out out of that all the way to the point of purchase with you. And hopefully, the point of re repurchase and ongoing services with you as your pet sitting business and your dog walking business grows. So that's a free resource that we provide because we do see so much overwhelm and we do see so many pet printers getting so stuck up or stuck in this. I should I should I should or I'm not enough I'm not enough. And I think it is just so core to saying to ourselves, thank you and I am enough and now I don't have to do it alone. You know here here's an extra Right here with 18 years of experience in this space growing businesses in this space saying no, you don't have to do it all, you need to do a lot less. Yeah. And that will help bring you a lot more peace.
Collin 20:14
Yeah, and I'll get that link from you, too. So listeners can go right to there. And we'll have that in the show notes. And on the website, too. You know, and I think part of part of what that really struggle is you gave a really good example of tick tock is it's hot right now a lot of people are on it, we hear about things about doing it. I think what gets missed a lot of times is, as Kenzie alluded to is like, what's my end goal for this? What do I actually want the outcome to be? So what are some? What are some thought processes that I can do from the marketing that I want to do? How do I connect the dots? Or how do I draw that line to that the outcome or the goal that I want for that?
Jane Harrell 20:55
Yes, I love it. I love the question. I love the question, because it really does lend itself to thinking about the whole user journey. And this is something a lot of pet printers struggle with thinking about. There's a lot of versions of say, a sales funnel out there. And I tend to teach one that's very, very simple. And it's just the three core stages of what your customer is contemplating as they get to know who you are, why they should care, or why they should trust you. And then what you can do to help them you know, what you can do to make their lives easier, or take away some of those pressure points that they're feeling or bring more joy into their life. So thinking of pet sitting and dog walking specifically, you know, you have the top of the funnel. And when you're thinking of a funnel, it's like a cone. And at the top of the funnel, you really need to pour in as many people as possible, who are your ideal client, who just don't know you, like if you're a new business, you're you're not established yet. No one knows about you, if no one knows about you, well, then they can't trust you, and then they can't buy from you. So that's the first stage to think about is how are you going out there? And how are you meeting them where they already are. And this is where something like social media, or being a guest, guest blogger, Guest writer for your local paper, or having you know, a blog that helps really get you at the top of SEO, like the top of Google rankings when someone searches for a pet sitter near them. That's all about that top level of the funnel. It's how am I going out and meeting people where they are, so that they can learn about me, and that they can learn about why they should trust me. And then that second stage is really about staying top of mind and building trust with that audience. And this can happen on some of those same channels. This can happen on your website, blog. This can happen by printing a newsletter, and putting it up at your local dog park where someone has something fun to read at the you know, on the board. This could happen via a social media channel, any social media channel that targets your local audience or your specific audience. But the core there is how do I stay in front of people and continue to establish myself as a pet authority in this area. So continue to establish myself basically, as someone you can trust with your pet, for whatever area and then the last bit, so the third smallest area of the funnel is okay, now, what can you do for me and why should I buy and this is where talking about your specific services, sometimes offering a sales promotion or an incentive to buy now to kind of get them off the fence or giving them some kind of special incentive that helps your business grow. Like for example, Hey, if you buy a pack of 10 sets, then you're gonna have a you know, discount of this or you get a level you know, an 11th Free or you're going to get this extra special service that we're going to do like we're going to clip your kiddies nails if that's something you want to do as an added bonus, if they buy a pack of 10 which helps your business because it of course brings in additional revenue and helps you project out that you're going to have this right revenue as well. So thinking of those kind of three stages, you know, who are you? Why should I care? Why should I trust you? And how are you going to stay top of mind? And then how are you going to help me? And why should I buy now, those are really the three core questions and looking at your marketing funnel and making sure that at each stage, you're answering those questions at each stage, you have some kind of channel that is answering that for you. And that's where that tool that I mentioned, really helps you kind of outline, I may have people, you know, have people at the top of the funnel, and I may have my services outlined, but I'm not staying top of mind with them in any way. So when they're actually ready to buy, they're not thinking of me. And that's a big problem. That's one of the biggest problems that we often see, actually with, with pet businesses is that they're not keeping top of mind, they're not staying in front of them. So when the pet printer, or when the pet owner, pet parent is ready to buy, they think of someone else, because they're staying top of mind and you're not.
Collin 26:11
So on that. I know for me, I see a lot of people who like just thinking back to social media, a lot people may still be in business, but the last post on Instagram or Facebook was from six, seven months ago. At that point, I start thinking, Are they are they open? You know, I don't find any other information about this. So are social media posts a good way to do that? Or should we really be thinking about other avenues for staying top of mind?
Jane Harrell 26:38
Social media can be really helpful. But I find that social media is more helpful for that first level of the funnel like who are you? Why should I care? Then staying top of mind, and the the reason for that is that more and more social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, everything are really pay for play these days. So you can get someone to find you on Facebook or Instagram or wherever. Tick tock, for example, but and they might even follow your page there. But the chances of them continuing to see your stuff is lower and lower and lower. And this has been happening for you know, 10 plus years unless you're doing some some kind of small ad spend. So that is an option. You can do small Facebook ad spend, and there are ways to do it very economically. But ultimately, the way that we find and recommend as the cheapest, most effective way is that good old standard email newsletter. And everyone's like, Oh, no. Why? Why are you making me put in a newsletter? I don't no one wants more email in this world, right? I certainly don't. But the truth is that if you can provide value, and convince someone that your newsletter provides enough value, whether it's fun enough, or it provides interesting information, or maybe it helps them solve a problem, or it gives them something novel that no one else has been able to offer. Whatever it is, we find that email conversion rates are way higher than really any other channel that we work on. As far as sales as far as direct sales. And we also find that it's one of the most economical ways to do it, because you can drive people to sign up for your newsletter, kind of standard cost per Newsletter Signup that we try to target at cause digital marketing is about $2 per newsletter, email signup. And that means you know, you spend $2 on acquiring someone to your newsletter, then you're spending, you know, well, we can talk about ways to make the newsletter simple in a minute, but you're you're hopefully spending very little time on your newsletter each month. And then when that person is ready to buy, you've really only spent, you know, like $10 on acquisition cost for that individual. Instead of the way, way, way higher cost for continual social media. Now, I do want to say though, on social media channels, it is important to show that you're still alive and that you're still present. You definitely don't want the experience of someone checking you out for the first time and being like, oh, yeah, they haven't posted in six months. Hmm, I wonder if they got hit by a bus?
Collin 30:04
Yeah. Whatever, right. Yeah, there's a lot that come in which, which part of that helps helps explain a very common complaint that I see all the time is, I have, I have 1000. I have 2000 social media followers. But I don't get any clients from that. And it sounds like the reason that is, is that's not a good channel for that final conversion into that third funnel, because you're not staying top of mind, because you're not doing this stuff. Because of the behavior of people that you can still it sounds like you might be able to still use it for some of those things. But relying on that solely, especially for a local business and service area based business, that that might explain where why some of that frustration is is there for that particular channel?
Jane Harrell 30:48
Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head is that's so true. So one of the things that I teach, and this comes way back from me being editor in chief of Pet Health Network, and you know, running the consumer side of petfinder.com is a publish once distributed everywhere model. And this is kind of going back to making this simple. A lot of people think, Oh, well, I should publish a blog, and then I should send out a newsletter on a different topic. And then I should send social media posts on yet more topics, different topics, and I can never repeat them. And none of that's true. Really, if you are spending the time to create a blog, if you are spending the time to create a newsletter first, you know, make your blog, your newsletter, make whatever you're sending out on your blog for SEO, the con, the same content that you're sending out for your newsletter. because how else are people going to actually know that the blog exists, you need to go and tell them that, hey, there's a new blog here. There's this new, you know, dog guide for local dog lovers that I just created with all my favorite pet stops throughout the neighborhood and all the you know, little goodies that I know, because guess what, I'm out there every day, and I'm talking to other pet owners and I'm in this business and I'm in the know, and what does that do that shows, hey, you should trust me, I'm an authority on this topic. If you are not taking that same post and sharing it, at least, you know, three times to social media over the next three weeks. And then once a month over the next three months, then you are wasting money you are burning it, it is just being left on the table. People that I speak to are often initially really shy about reposting things and about resharing things, you know, doing the same blog as a newsletter. And what they don't realize is they often feel like oh my gosh, I'm overloading people, you know, people are going to see the same thing over and over and over again, and they're going to get frustrated. But the chance of the same person actually seeing you cross post, that same post is so low, what we need to do is actually make it easy for our clients to find us. And they don't realize they're thinking like the Coca Cola ad that's on TV, every you know, every single commercial break. That's not what's gonna happen. For you, if you're cross posting the same content once a week, or once a month, or sending it out on your newsletter that is like minimum you need to do just to get the eyeballs so that they even are aware that it exists.
Collin 33:51
Yeah. And I think it's important to remember that even though you have, let's say you've got 500 people on your email list, if you have a 30%, open rate of 40%. Open every week, you're still missing a huge chunk of people. And that's not even thinking, you know, I know for us, for our newsletter, a good chunk of people who are on our newsletter, don't follow us on social media or only follow us on one platform or in some way so you don't get it. It's not a perfect overlap of everybody every time. And that's why getting those messages out there is so important because as you said it's staying top of mind is releasing information it's getting in front of people, and you do have to kind of work all of your channels and reuse and repurpose and that's it's such a load off of your your mind when you're sit down and go okay, I've got to put my newsletter together. Well, it's great when most of the newsletter has already been built for you based off of your previous posts or based off of your blog or based off this other information. At one point it just becomes kind of copy and paste and send out because it's it's a combination. It can be a combination of other things that you've already done.
Jane Harrell 34:55
Exactly, exactly. And that's so I have to talk Talk a little bit about something that I'm really excited about with working with dog. Yeah. So we looked at this issue, and we especially looked at this issue as people are coming out of quarantine, right? Like, we are, hopefully getting our lives back a little bit by now. And I think that what happened with with COVID is, suddenly, the world of online marketing not only felt important, because it always felt important, because we have this, you know, idea of I should, I should, I should. But it became really, really clear how critical it is for moving forward. And a lot of pet businesses actually moved into a lot more online marketing than they done previously, but they also had a lot more time on their plate. So you know, we were not necessarily doing our services during quarantine, or at least doing them in a much lower level than we had before. So a lot of businesses have have kind of reached this point where they're facing coming out of COVID, running their day to day business, but now having even more of a feeling of guilt. And I should, because they no longer can run the social media or their blog, or their newsletter, or, you know, their guest posts for whoever, whatever media outlet, they can't do all of that all at once anymore. So what we did at working with dog was we actually started releasing done for you templates, where pet businesses, basically each month, we provide a template, to template blog posts, to template newsletters, to template flyers and infographics. And then a whole bunch of social media posts like 10, to 20 social media posts, that we then train people to take and customize for your business and way less time than it takes to create. And I mean, these templates are created by the same people who have worked on all the big businesses that we've worked on, you know, we we work for some of the largest pet businesses in the country and create the content marketing and the research for them. So you know, you're getting like really quality stuff. And it's 20 minutes instead of two hours to customize these things and get them out. So those templates are now available to working with dog members. And we will be opening the doors to work to new working with dog members to get access to those in January as well. So we may have a special for your numbers that we'd love to offer as well. Because though we created those specifically to deal with this idea of not enoughness. And I am personally training the members how to move more into a practice mindset, instead of a perfect mindset. How do you let go of this needs to be perfect and recognize that all marketing is practice. And all marketing is, you know, just getting out there and doing it and learning what works. And this is, as I said, created by the same guys who do the big marketing for the big businesses.
Collin 38:32
That's a that's a huge component of, of running a business, especially as you mentioned in advertising or anything that we're producing, it is hard to know sometimes. Is this done right? Can I post this? Should I post this? Should I click Send on email, which is something I stress about even though they're automated every week for us, I still stressing out when it goes out because I wonder if it was enough if it provided enough value if it did enough for people or if I spell checked it enough times. And I will say on the email side of things when we talk about providing value. If you have enough components in the email, somebody will find value somewhere, maybe the whole thing isn't valuable to them. But I know like a lot of our clients, one of the things that they most love about the email is updates about availability or changes going on moving forward or updates ahead of time. You know, they don't really most a lot of people might not click on the blog or read this or go to this tip or whatever, but somebody will find value in there for them. And that takes understanding who you're talking to who your audience is, and then being consistent with it so they can eventually find it.
Jane Harrell 39:41
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you know it I think that a lot of pet printers, especially a lot of pet printers who writing is not their fun place. They they look at a blank page and they go oh my gosh, what now So one of the things that we created for them were these Mad Libs style blog posts. Because, you know, we can't provide a piece of content that's completely done for you, that is the same as everyone else for SEO. Like for Google, that's not a best practice. So what we looked at was, how do we help you basically we pick the topic, we provide the research, and then we give you this madlib style outline that we bring you through in 20 minutes. And I'm serious. When I say 20 minutes, I'm like, hardcore about saying we're gonna spend 20 minutes on this and no more. Yeah. But then they're able to put in their expertise and say, oh, yeah, you know, I know this great thing to add to this, or this great bullet point to add, and they're getting it done. And being able to focus on other things in their business that are really going to make a much bigger difference. So as you said, like, someone will be able to find value. And sometimes it's just about being present in their inbox, even if they don't open it. That time. It's being like, oh, yeah, okay, they still exist, they're still around. This is a cool topic, maybe I'll open this one, or maybe I'm not gonna open this one. But even if they're not, you're being present, you're being seen. And that means when they're ready for purchase, or when you provide some kind of incentive for them to purchase. Now, they will think of you. And that's the core thing. It's not about having every email read or every blog read or shared, or, you know, every social media post commented on
Collin 41:52
running a business it can get, you can start to beat yourself up whenever something is doesn't go as well. Oh, only one person like this, or only one person clicked on the blog this week, or whatever. And I think stepping back and recognizing, yeah, it helped one person, one person was interested in this one person was helped by this one person was impacted by something that I produced. And that's stepping back and going. Okay, I did my job. I my purpose of putting this information out there is yes, there's the staying on top of mine, there's introducing ourselves, but it's it's helping other people. It's equipping them to be better pet parents in some way. I accomplish that done and I can move on to other things.
Jane Harrell 42:33
Exactly. And even just being able to look at that and be like, Oh, well, so one post got, or one email newsletter got 10 opens, and this one only got one? Well, let's look at that. Let's look at the topic. Let's look at the newsletter subject line and see oh, well, that one had fewer words, or this one had a bit of a cliffhanger subject line, or expressed more joy or something as little as had more emojis, you know, being able to look at that over time. It's not about that individual post, but it's being able to look back at the 12 new newsletters that you sent, and recognizing oh, these, these ones tend to do better with my audience. And you can't do that if you're not sending out regular communications, you can't look at the trends. And the trends really are important for keeping you top of mind. So if you're if you're only getting one email open every month, then there's something wrong. Yeah. But if you get one month or you know, two months out of 12, where your open rates dip that tells you something,
Collin 43:51
you got to figure out what that is. And that comes back to what you were talking about earlier about practice versus perfection in what we're doing, not just in the actual writing or in the production of it, but in the reception of it in thinking about going okay, that didn't work. Instead of going, you know, I'm never doing this again. That's it and closing it all down. I'm deleting all my Facebook accounts or whatever going. Okay, I wonder why you're just diving in just a little bit to start asking some more questions.
Jane Harrell 44:17
Exactly. And that's one of those things because, as I, as I said before, I'm a big data geek. So one of the things that we do at working with dog is we have data dates. And even if you as a pet printer are kind of afraid of Google Analytics, or your MailChimp, stats or whatever it is, we actually ask members to give us the the honor of having access to their data, which helps us do two things. One, we look at trends across the board. So we're looking at everyone's open rates. We're looking at everyone's traffic we're looking at what are the channels that are working for everyone. And we're able to, you know, share that data to our members. Where, you know, we're not talking about anyone's individual business traits, but looking at across the board, what works, yeah. And then to if they show up to these data dates with me, and they say, Hey, Jane, can you take a peek at my five most recent newsletters and see if anything sticks out? That's literally a question I get a lot. I dive into their specific account. And I say, yeah, here you go. And here's your homework for next time. And here's how you can interpret that data to let's do a little trial. And then let's check in at my next day to date with you. And we can see if it worked or not. And that has just been so powerful for a lot of our members who don't necessarily love diving into or trying to glean those specific things themselves. Well, to
Collin 46:03
I'm sure it helps whenever you're sitting there going, because I know I look at our data and I go, Oh, is this? I don't know. I sure Yeah, I got 37%. That's a number. That means something to someone for some reason, but that's what I got. And to be able to, I think a lot of those things, especially just to be able to put it into context of what's going on. Just see, what are other people experiencing? Is this some Is this a common? Is this abnormally high, abnormally low? Because then then you can start going, Okay, now I know what to do with it. But if I open something, and I go 37 I don't I don't do it that I can write it down. But, but I think that that also becomes really powerful when you start having context
Jane Harrell 46:48
for a lot of these things, too. Yes, absolutely. And I'll tell you 37% open rate is fantastic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if I went into an account, I saw that I'd be like, Yes, you are doing something, right. Okay, here.
Collin 47:09
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Jane Harrell 48:31
And the first thing I'm going to say is look at what you can delegate. So this gets a little scary during our slow seasons, right? Because we are fearful that the next busy season won't happen. And I love asking this question right after the busy season in January because you still feel the pain of what it's like to try to do it all alone. Or with your current team, you still remember oh my gosh, I really wish I could have gotten that off my plate. Or I really wish that I didn't have to stop doing X. But I had to because there were other areas of my business that I needed to focus on during my busy season. What a lot of people try to do is during our busy seasons we try to hire because, hey, that's our busy season, right? We feel flushed with cash. We're feeling like we're overwhelmed. We just need to get everything off our plate. That is the worst time to hire. And, you know, I've done this in the last year to a few of my own team members. I actually went on maternity leave. And I brought in two people right before I left and I went oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to do this to you. Because I wasn't able to properly train them. Yeah, right. So they went in they went into the deep end it was really really hard, it was really painful. And thankfully they haven't left me. But, you know, frankly, I didn't get everything I needed done. And I didn't quite get as much time off as I needed from those two. And we've talked about it because I didn't have the time to train them, it had nothing to do with them or their skill sets, or whether or not they were really good at their job. They're great at their job. Now, now that I'm back, now that I'm out of my busy season, I've been spending a lot more time with them. And they're totally up to speed and awesome. But I love bringing in people and really giving them at least a six month kind of roadmap of here, we're gonna spend time together help you understand the business, help you understand where I'm gonna stay the heck out of your way, which is very often one of the hardest things for us to do, you know, as, as business owners as entrepreneurs, we want to have oversight over everything and letting go a little bit of that control is important. So this is one of the things I coach people on, is how do you recognize what are those things that you can delegate that you can get off your plate really easily? Even things that you could monetize in a different way that you haven't thought of? I love doing that. When I'm like, wait a second, I need this thing done once a quarter for me. But I have other clients who need this thing done every month or every week? Hmm, what if I create a new offering, and basically, my clients pay this person salary, and then that person is there, the once a quarter that I need them to take care of this for me. A lot of pet printers will try to bring someone in, especially around like petsitting, where you bring someone in, you just bring them in for the holidays, well, they're not going to get you, they're not going to get your culture, you're not going to be available to them again, it's like throwing them into the fire. And you're just not going to get the results that you want. And what I often see is people try to hire during those times. And they just say, Oh, well, it didn't work, it was a nightmare, it was awful. Well, that's why it's not looking at the lead time, or looking at the specific tasks that are going to be easiest for you to delegate and giving them that lead time so that they're there with you constantly, not just a flash in the pan hire,
Collin 52:44
it is difficult to know when to pull that trigger, because you feel like I've got to be busy enough to bring this person on. So I can pay for all this stuff, and I can afford it. But looking back at these more logistics personnel side of things of going, how would you like to be brought in to a crazy busy, Madhouse and go well see on the other side, we like we don't, we don't want to do that to people. And and it can be you know, sometimes the the quote that the numbers might not make sense on the first appearance. But you know, you have things for them to do I know we just went through a hiring process. And one of the first things that we got off of our plate was the writing of the blogs was some other admin stuff. And the first week while I sat down and we go through the editing process with them, but the first week that I sat down to publish the blog, and all I had to do is copy and paste it into it, I was like, oh, all of that was worth it. Oh my goodness, that was like, you're free, you're free. And the person that we hired, you know, we let them know, like, hey, we this is these are the tasks that you will be writing blogs, you will be helping with social media posts and the petsitting as well. And the people, they loved it because it was a skill set that they got to use, they got to use some of their interest and write about certain things. And we really saw just just immensely how much helpful that was to us. And how how, really, it was using a skill set of this person that they weren't, I think initially expecting when they apply to a quote, dog walker Pet Sitter position, get to be creative. And so you can look at these positions or you can look at part time or, you know, the seeking other help, right? That's maybe not hiring somebody but finding someone to partner with whether it's a virtual assistant, whether that's going to, you know, with working with dog and going, Hey, this is the help that I need, and starting that process now. So that both of you have a handle on it, and you can start you know, again, working towards that busy
Jane Harrell 54:44
time. Absolutely. And by doing things like combining tasks or recognizing that hey, you know, this staffer has this creative side to them. They're really good at this. They have This talent that we haven't thought about by, by looking at things that way, you're able to offer them potentially more hours and more stability. And in that way, you can actually cut a lot of your costs. So what a lot of people never think of is if you hire someone one time for one thing, it's going to be way more expensive for that one thing than if you're hiring them on an ongoing basis with some kind of guarantee of work. So if you're saying, I'm going to give you you know, a minimum of this many hours or a minimum of this many blog posts this year, that lets them relax a little bit about their own income. Just like having a client come to you and say, hey, I want to buy at least one set, or at least a daily walk for the next three to six months, you know, that really helps us look at our financials of our business in a way better way, and have a little bit more confidence in being able to hire or invest in our business. While it does the same thing for our staff, it does the same thing, whether our staff, our contractors, or employees, it helps them feel a little bit more secure. And in that way, you can use it as a negotiating point where you're saying, Hey, I get that I'm not paying, you know, as much as I would love to be able to pay. And to be clear, I do believe in paying people what they're worth. I do believe in paying market rate for things. But market rate is also needs to take into consideration things like length of being able to provide a guarantee of employment. And that is a way to get your costs reduced.
Collin 56:55
Now, if someone is listening and going, I'm really not ready to delegate or to hire somebody. What else are some things I can be doing right now can during this during this downtime? For my marketing that I know I'm going to be needing later? Well, the
Jane Harrell 57:10
number one thing I'd say is definitely check out your channel selector. So the link that I mentioned before cars, digital marketing, COMM And we're going to do pets it confessionals or, you know, we're going to tell you, which link is best there. Yeah. But if you have any questions about whether you are currently hitting the right channels for your marketing, or if you are not sure whether you're hitting all the points in the funnel that you need to hit, go there, or if you're feeling any of that I should I feel like I should be on Tik Tok, I should do more Facebook posting, I should do this, I should do that. Go there, that is the first thing that I think you need to do. The second thing to consider where you're feeling the overwhelm in your business, consider where during your business, your busy season, you felt those pain points. And think about are there ways to make it easier, but high value for you. And this is something that a lot of us, you know, we all kind of feel the pain point during our, our busiest season. But then we don't actually go back and think about, okay, this worked really well, or this really didn't, and I need to find a new way to do it. So end of January, early February is a great time if you're on your own. Or if you have some team members to just get together clear your head and say, let's look at this process is this working. And you can look at that for any part of your business, whether it is your marketing funnel, whether it is how you fulfill for customers, whether it is getting those testimonials from customers for Google and Facebook and all those other juicy review sites, whatever it is going back and just asking that question like does this still make sense to do this this way? Does this even still make sense to do, period? I think way too few businesses ask those two questions.
Collin 59:29
Yeah, especially that should I still be doing this because we tend to forget that stop doing something is always an option. And we were like because we get we'd love putting things on our plate and we love saying well I've got to keep doing this keep doing this can do this can be consistent, but fairly regularly. Do we forget that? I I can actually just not do this anymore. That is a perfectly viable option. And I absolutely agree is I think that's one of the best things we can ask of ourselves of our business of our staff. What can I stop doing it to make my life easier to make us more efficient to make sure we're investing our time, money and talent more wisely and be getting actual, the actual results we want?
Jane Harrell 1:00:13
Absolutely. And then one of the other things that I have suggested suggest that pet businesses think about, especially pet sitters dog walkers, I mean, you guys have a bit of a head start on this, because dog walking does tend to lend itself to recurring revenue. But one of the best ways to grow your business over time is thinking about the three different kinds of revenue for your business. So as you're thinking about the next year, think about okay, there's these one off sales that I do that are very easy. I mean, this is like, oh, my gosh, I need someone to pet sit over Christmas while my family is away, well, that's a sale, that's going to happen. Easily. As long as you're top of mind, as long as you're findable as long as someone trusts you, as long as you have like the general funnel flow that we talked about going. But that is flash in the pan, you know, you know, it's going to happen, you know, it's going to happen once you don't have to work too hard for it, it's not a big sale, but it's something that you have to sell over and over and over again, then the other kind of revenues, that can really help bring you to that next level where you actually are feeling more comfortable and being able to delegate perhaps higher, perhaps, take a few more hours off every week, which would be nice. For a lot of us, oh, yes, you know, maybe not do all the sits or walks yourself. Well, my gosh, are the recurring revenue, meaning, this is revenue that you can plan in your business, you know, for example, that you have this recurring dog walk that happens every Friday afternoon. And you know that that client has signed a three month contract for that, or has been has signed a six month contract. If you're not doing those kinds of incentives, if your clients are not guaranteeing that, thinking about ways to give them an incentive, hey, if you come on board, and you guarantee you're going to buy this every Friday, for the next three months, then you are going to get this extra thing. Or you're going to get a discount, or you know, something that's really easy for you to provide that doesn't really take much explanation, but that your client understands right away, that becomes revenue that you know is gonna happen. So guess what, you can bring someone in to help fulfill it. And suddenly, you're delegating, suddenly, you're less scared about bringing someone in, who can help with your blog posts and your pets or you know, who's going to be more connected to your business all the time. And as I said, dog walking businesses have a little bit of a head start on that, like you guys are really well positioned to do that kind of revenue. So you're really well positioned to, to delegate and to bring in teams. And then the third kind of revenue is always like the Holy Grail, you know, this is what everyone ends up talking about. But they don't really understand how to get there. And that's the passive revenue. And the way I have always taught it, and the way that I've seen it in studying, you know, the smallest pet businesses, and then the largest ones that have been around for 100 plus years, is you need the recurring revenue to get to the passive income in any predictable way. So there are a lot of pet businesses who, you know, pet business owners, we dream about, oh, you know, I just want to do this one thing, and then be able to resell it over and over and over again. And I don't have to do anything more. It's just resold. Well, what they don't realize is that reselling actually takes a lot of work in and of itself. And creating that thing that you're going to sell as passive income takes a lot of work. It's a lot of upfront work without any guaranteed income during that space and time that you're working on it. So if you are just doing one off sales, and you have to take time away from your revenue to build something that's passive, it's going to be a huge chunk of your income that you're losing in the meantime, and there's no guarantee that you're actually going to successfully sale sell it at the end of the day. So where we see businesses much more predictably succeed is when They have the one off income, then they move into the PLANTABLE or recurring revenue. And then they start working on their passive revenue. So if they're not thinking about that, if they're not thinking about that, at least as like a five or 10 year plan, this is a fantastic time to just start noodling on it
Collin 1:05:18
and have that motivation, as you mentioned earlier of coming out of that season, busy season going, Okay, now let's do let's change things. What did I like? What did I not like? What can we do better, it really is a great time, because we're in a good mindset, where we're where we have the time to address these issues, to start taking these things that we're concerned about that are gnawing at our brain that maybe we were concerned about during the busy time to sit down with our team or somebody else, to put it all on paper and start in a relaxed, cohesive manner, start approaching that and and start setting up some really good goals as both short term and long term moving forward.
Jane Harrell 1:05:57
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, the pain can be a real motivator.
Collin 1:06:04
It can, it really can. And sometimes, unfortunately, that's where we find ourselves about is, is going, Oh, that decision hurt, or that lack of decision hurt me. Now, I need to learn from that and move forward. And that's it's the learning process. Again, this this, we're the process. It's, it's it's not it's not perfection, every time we've got it, we have to learn from that.
Jane Harrell 1:06:24
Right? Exactly. It's it's all about practice, it's practice and preparation. And then eventually, you get to something that feels pretty close to perfection. I do promise that you can get there. I've gotten there in my own businesses. And still, I mean, I'm still constantly doing this exercise of what can I stop, start continue? What went really well, what didn't? And where are areas that I can really just bring other people in. I mean, I've been in this industry, as I said, you know, 18 plus years, and one of my big passions that I never, ever thought I'd have is actually training other people and bringing people up. And this is where I love working with dogs so much. Because I am able to work with other pet printers who are just starting out or, you know, kind of at a critical juncture in their business deciding how to move forward and how to scale. And it's allowed me to express that new love that I've found, which otherwise, you know, I only get to do with my own team, which I still love to do. I still I really love to manage people and mentor people. But it's like, I need so much more of it, because that's where I'm finding my personal gratification these days. And guess what it's monetized. And it's wonderful. And I'm held accountable, because I have all these wonderful businesses that we work with. So it gets done. Because if I'm not accountable to something, it won't get done. Right. And, you know, it's it's a pretty great feeling.
Collin 1:08:12
It is good to have that feeling that pride in what you've done, which you're developing, which you continue to work on. Jane, I have really thoroughly enjoyed getting to talk with you today about, about mindfulness, about being present about the importance of not over complicating our lives, especially when it comes to marketing, which can so many times feel like a black box to many focusing on our on our ultimate goals. But I know it's a massive topic. It's always changing. And there are new things out there all the time, especially when it comes to our specific businesses. So how can people get in touch with you pick your brain and start getting getting help if that's what they need in this new year?
Jane Harrell 1:08:52
Oh, thank you so much, Collin. It is such a pleasure and an honor to be here. As always, I'm thrilled to be here and chat with you. It's just fun, going back and forth. And you You asked me to be back anytime you want. I'd be happy. Anyone who wants to chat with me or connect with the team in the meantime, can check us out at working with dog.com or we have our agency at cause Digital marketing.com. So that see a U S. E Digital marketing.com.
Collin 1:09:26
Jane, I really appreciate your time. And it is it was a real pleasure today.
Jane Harrell 1:09:31
Yeah. Thank you so much, Collin. It's a pleasure. And I'll talk to you soon again. I hope
Collin 1:09:36
right now is a slow time for the majority of us in our businesses. So it's a perfect time to take advantage of that. Now we have a little more time on our plate to plan for the rest of the year. Look at what you actually want to be doing Where have you seen success in the past and doubled down into that? Or maybe try and find a little bit of new space new opportunities for you to start marketing and messaging and getting connected with clients in a new and different way. Above all, stop feeling guilty about the things that you aren't able to do in your business right now. Instead, embrace and be thankful for the things that you can and that you have time to do. We want to thank our sponsors time to pet and pet perennials for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you for listening and we hope that you enjoyed this conversation if you've benefited from it, or if you know someone who has we'd really appreciate a rating and review on wherever you are listening to this podcast right now. Thank you so much. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. And we'll be back again soon.
