268: Why You Need Thick Skin in Business
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Summary:
We had a client abruptly stop using our services recently. It hurt. In the pet care industry, we invest so much of ourselves, which means we’re more vulnerable. However, when we step back and assess a critique, we begin to not take things personally. On this episode we discuss ways to overcome being hurt by business transactions and why being thick skinned in your business is important. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I build my brand?”
Main topics:
What does “thick skinned” mean?
Why it’s needed in business
Steps to strengthen you
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main takeaway: When you are thick-skinned in business, you respond to challenges with a clear mind and thoughtfulness.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
client, business, thick skin, people, pet, pet sitters, true, develop, negative comments, criticism, hurt, pushback, situation, emotions, unfollowed, understand, confessional, feel, react, false
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan I'm Collin and this is Pet Sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to episode 268. Hello, and thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode. And our awesome Patreon members like Beth, Jennifer and Claire, thank you guys so much for helping to produce the show, and get some awesome things like a monthly meetup and ongoing
Collin 00:39
podcasting course for pet sitters. And if that sounds like something that you're interested in, go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:47
So if you've been in this business or any other business for a long time, and you've been the CEO, there are likely times when your feelings have been hurt, it's not fun to experience. But it is part of being a business owner did a client leave you and it made you feel terrible, or you were rejected by a potential client. And you didn't feel great about that either. Know that that's totally normal, especially in this industry, where passionate people help pet parents, we really invest 110% of ourselves into everything we do. So it's only natural to feel a little bit attacked. When somebody tells us something didn't go right, or a client isn't happy with what we did. We actually recently had a client leave us, we took care of his dog for daycare multiple times a week for over a year, we went out of town, we offered our employee to do the drop in visits instead. And the client agreed to this. But apparently he didn't realize the price of the visits, even though he had confirmed the booking and accepted the request. But at the end of the day of those visits, he messaged us asking to confirm the price for the three visits that we had done, we confirmed that that indeed was the price. And at that point, he said no more. He wanted to cancel all daycares and any other bookings for the future. He he abruptly stopped all services, and is never going to use us again. So that hurt a lot. We had grown to love his dog, we and him too. He had given our kids Christmas presents, and he was very kind to us, we would banter back and forth when he would come to pick up his dog. So it was really jolting for him to just say no, I'm good. I don't want anything. I know, no more services. But it was a good reminder for us that for clients. This is transactional.
Collin 02:39
Yeah, we put our heart and soul into this business. But as much as we are a part of our clients, families, it's still a business transaction. At the end of the day, maybe this client got fired or is going through some hardship that we don't know about. We are a business people pay us, they are free to not use us at any point in time. It's really just that simple. And a vast majority of the time. It's not personal at all.
Meghan 03:06
Now that that doesn't minimize the hurt, though, that it does to us. But it should remind us that there are always more paths to love. And the next client is just around the corner. And sometimes that's literally the case. But when we invest so much of ourselves into what we do, when someone doesn't like us or wants to critique us or thinks we don't do something correct or the right way, we tend to take it personally. But that isn't necessarily a healthy way to operate. Because if we continue to allow ourselves to be deeply impacted by these things in business, will stop trying new things, which is at the center of business is being able to be adaptable, and to try new things. We also may stop sticking up for ourselves because we're worried about making people angry or what they may think of us. Or maybe they won't refer us to the next person if we say this thing or do this thing. So developing a thick skin when running your business is about having the mental and emotional ability to withstand the stress and the pressure of negative situations that come up. It also means having the ability to potentially prevent yourself from getting upset or depressed by negative comments or behavior from other people. So in a nutshell, being thick skin is about being mentally and emotionally tough. It's very important because most of us believe that we have an empathetic nature, which helps us really connect with our clients and their pets and we feel a lot of feels a lot of times when we develop the when we develop these relationships with our clients and our pets.
Collin 04:43
And we may have the misconception that with we develop a thick skin it means we become crusty, angry people and cold natured which we don't want in this industry but that but that's just not true. When we develop a thick skin we become better at handling constructive criticisms, we develop better mental strength to handle or maybe outright ignore destructive criticisms. By becoming thick skinned, you'll be better at able handling challenges that come along your way. And you'll be more resilient and bounce back a lot faster when tough times come.
Meghan 05:18
The first important part here is developing a positive mindset. So you see the challenges that come your way and the critiques that people may say or do as learning opportunities, you try to flip them on their head, it's not a negative that's happening to you, it's a positive you embrace the challenging experiences that you have.
Collin 05:37
A big challenge right now in the industry is the size of your service radius, and how far out you go. And you may get pushback from clients who want you to go out further so that you can service them. By embracing that challenge and that experience and turning that into a learning experience, you can better understand why it's so important to hold true to those boundaries that you set for yourself, so that you're not running yourself ragged, and you're not wasting all that money and gas for people who might not even use you next time.
Meghan 06:04
Which is why it's important to know your triggers and your vulnerabilities. Because you know, you best you, when situations happen, that you're uncomfortable or criticisms happen. You feel your blood pressure coming up, you feel your mood dropping, negative comments can get under your skin, it's we're human, it's natural, because you're vulnerable. When you know where these things are, where your triggers are, you can be ready to overcome them, you can be more mentally prepared. So for example, when a client may leave a bad review, how are you going to handle that when somebody says your prices are too high? How are you going to handle that, and this is not saying that you'd have to have a scenario planned out for everything that somebody may come to you with a negative thing about your business, but knowing where your triggers are. So if you are a little sensitive about raising your prices, knowing that there is probably going to be some pushback, so preparing beforehand will help you to combat that when that does happen.
Collin 07:05
And that actually has happened to us. Not too long ago, we raised our rates. And we since raised our race considerably since we did this in this scenario. But we had raised our race and we knew that it was high, there was a big for a big jump for a lot of people. So we prepare for that we understood, okay, people are going to have comments on this. And we started to develop the process of how we were going to respond how we were going to react so that when the lady did laugh in my face about our prices, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was pretty much on autopilot for my response by reaction, and then closing down the conversation and moving on. And that's what we're talking about here. as Megan said, you can't prepare for every single possible scenario, but you do know and understand where you feel a little vulnerable. And that's what this is about.
Meghan 07:52
The next step in developing thick skin is about taking responsibility. And this is crucial when something is your fault. Maybe you're late to a client or gave the wrong medication, the blame game can become real. So to avoid the bad feelings or make them go away, we blame others or we blame the busy day or a full schedule or a high maintenance client, whatever it is, but we step we need to step back. We need to acknowledge where we had agency and where we made those decisions. So it was the back door left open and the dog got out. Well, sure, it was a crazy busy day. And it was the last stop on your day after you've been up since 5am. And you had done 20 visits already. But who let you get that busy and who left the door open. We even had one client. One time a dog actually opened the door. It wasn't locked. I had forgotten to lock it. But the dog got out so but I was the one that left the door unlocked. But keep in mind we're not overly criticizing ourselves here. We're not constantly living in self condemnation. We just mean learning to recognize your faults what happened in the situation taking responsibility for them and then coming up with a solution. And by doing this, we will bounce back quicker from the negative situation that happened before we continue. 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've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connection and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today I pets it 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 petsfit llc.com. Even if you've never done anything wrong in your business, you will still likely face criticism, whatever it is that you do not everyone will like you for who you are and your processes or how you do things in your business. You can't please everyone, you are not for everyone. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how perfect or carefully organized you are. Because tough times will come,
Collin 10:16
you could be fear free certified, and a new client wants you to use a prong collar on the walk, you have to give pushback on that because you believe something different. And the client may not like that, they may go out and say bad things about you that you weren't willing to work with them or you didn't understand the process. Embracing that kind of criticism means you got that criticism because you stood your ground, you stood true to your morals, your ethics, what you firmly believe to be true and right. And people push back against that they will do that when they don't believe the same thing that you do. And when you get that criticism, it's okay because it means you're staying true to who you are.
Meghan 10:52
And on that if you are in a conversation or confrontation, it gets pretty heated. Remember, you are in charge of your emotions. people's words and actions cannot hurt you unless you let them. We always say to our kids, when they come to us and they say my brother made me feel sad when he pushed me, we say no, you let him make you feel that way. You can choose something different. Only you determine how you react to certain situations in your life. So stop giving people and situations more power over your emotions than they deserve. By allowing things to get to you. You are in charge of your emotions. We recently had a client, unfollow us on Instagram. And that may sound trite and very silly, but it hurt a little bit. But keeping in mind that we were no longer the right fit for them helped me to understand that it's okay, it's going to be okay. It's just silly Instagram. But I needed to sit with my feelings of being sad for a little bit. And then I was able to move on.
Collin 12:00
Well, and a big part of this kind of interaction was understanding that sometimes when things happen in business, whether that's a client leads, or they give feedback, or they cancel services, whatever that means is that we have to take a look at that situation and assess what's true. And what's false about that's going on. So people sometimes get offended by the mere presence of a criticism or the mere presence of pushback, it was very, it could have been very easy for Megan and I to get offended by this person unfollowing us just because it happened and we take that personally, and we get and we allow ourselves to be offended and hurt by that. However, if you take time out, it's you step back. And you consider what actually happened in that moment. What did the person actually say about you? What did that person actually do? What were the facts about that, and we get to decide we get to choose, we get to understand what was true and false about that. So when this person unfollowed us what was true about that they unfollowed us plain and simple. They unfollowed us because we were no longer a good fit for them. as Megan said, they did not unfollow us because of all of the negative talk that was going on in our head that that they maybe they followed us because we personally offended him or because they just didn't like us or because this was in retaliation for something. Sometimes the false statements come from within our own mind as we catastrophize the situations before us as we start to try and make a scenario worse than it actually is. So understanding the difference between the truth and the false statements. And then of the false statements that somebody actually say something false, or am I putting myself in my own beliefs on this situation that are actually false and assuming things. We all know what happens when we make assumptions about people or situations. So it's best to avoid that and stick to the facts. So when we're looking for truth, and falsehoods, if there is any truth at all in what's being said, or what's happening before you be courageous and accept those as true that they did, in fact happen. And if there's no truth, if those are actually false statements that are coming from somebody or in a situation or the fact that we are imposing our own beliefs on this, there are false, you have to discard those and move on and view them basically as a false perception of your personality, which has nothing to do with you. That's not the real part of you that you know, and that you believe, and this happens all the time when people get bad reviews. There's usually two parts to bad reviews, either. It's bad because they said malicious stuff. Or maybe they lied about something on that review. And we know what's true, we know what's false, and we know it's malicious. And we can start to freak out about people also viewing that and not understanding what the difference is. But trust that because you can understand what is fact what is false and what's malicious. Other people will see that too and other people be able to judge for themselves. What's going on.
Meghan 14:51
As I had mentioned earlier, when we are in charge of our emotions, no one can hurt you emotionally unless you let them and so that applies here as well. No one can make you feel bad about your abilities unless you let them. What negative comments that people said about you? Have you been criticized because you've failed at something or made a mistake? Or have you been called the worst petsitter ever, you must understand that people are entitled to hold different opinions of you. They don't always have to like you. And it doesn't matter what they've said, Oh, it matters most is what you believe what your internal thoughts say, if they've called you a failure, and you believe it, then you shouldn't feel hurt, because they only affirmed what you believe. But obviously, we know that's not true. However, if you believe that you are worth more, and you are, then what they say you are, then you are. Hence you have a strong sense of self belief. And this way, you'll be able to quickly brush off and get over any negative comments about you that they make, which then leads into resiliency, which is the ability to withstand and quickly recover from tough situations. Because you need resiliency in order to move forward and work through the goals that you've set for your business.
Collin 16:02
And all of this may sound like a lot, and well, it is it's a lot for us to keep track of and understand because we are trying to view ourselves in control ourselves in our emotions and take agency responsibility. And if we're run ragged, if we're not eating right, if we have no sleep, and if we have no time in our day for space, or ability to look after ourselves, none of this will actually be possible. So one of the biggest components of building a tough skin and a thick skin is actually taking care of yourself some self care, and we talk about that a lot on the podcast. And yet again, it comes in surfaces back up as another reason another important part of life as a pet sitter, because if we aren't looking after ourselves, in the good times, we will not be able to take care of ourselves and look after ourselves. When those difficult times come. If I do not have enough self awareness to take some time out of my day to be mindful to be present. I will not be mindful whenever I want to react to that bad review. Doing that bad news comes in when that client says your prices are too high. I'll always be reacting. We've talked about needing time and needing to understand what triggers us and where we're vulnerable. You're only able to do that whenever you're at peace when you have some quiet times in your day to reflect, to think to write to journal, talk to other people. If you don't have that ability, you'll never miss you'll miss all of those things that come up and you'll never be able to stop reacting and be more proactive.
Meghan 17:34
But developing a thick skin is not about changing who you are. Keep that in mind. It's not about changing your demeanor. It's learning the process of recovering or managing your emotions. When people push back on you. The more of yourself you put into this business, the more vulnerable you potentially are. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. We just need to know how to manage it, and how to make the best of it. Do you feel like you have a thick skin in your pet business? What does that mean to you? How quickly do you rebound when your feelings get hurt? We would love to know you can send us a message on Facebook or Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional.
Collin 18:15
On this week's Ask a pet biz co segment with Natasha baby, she answers the question how do you develop your brand in your business?
Natasha 18:22
When I'm in love in my brand, I usually think about how I would like my clients to feel when they work with me. I really like to provide a feeling and experience with people when it comes to business. And my brand is going to be based around providing a transformation. You know you need dog walking? How can my business comment and make you feel wholeheartedly at peace with trust and love? What am I doing to show you not just tell you because I know a lot of us get in the tail and it's on our website. Now what are you doing to actually show them that this is smooth, premium? And well thought out? Write those steps down. That is your branding and business. Then after they work with you. How do they feel with referring you? Those are the two things that I think really helped measure where you are, if I were to refer you to a best friend or trusted neighbor? Do I trust that you are going to provide a great experience for them as well? Or is this referral going to go on death's tone, because your business is inconsistent. It's only measured by how much you can hold. Because that's what happens. We're really cool. When we're small, we're running and we're flowing. And it's like it's great, and people love us. And then we all of a sudden get an influx of business and we're like, wow, this is totally changed the dynamic and then things start to go by the wayside. That is equally part of your brand. Can you keep up with what's going on you providing that same experience at scale? And people will start to say the same thing about your brand. It was amazing in the beginning. It's amazing. Five years later, it's amazing. 10 years later, it's still amazing. 20 years later So Brandon, I want to have
Meghan 20:05
if you would like to be part of Natasha's membership group, you can do so at start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off. If you have gotten value out of this show or any of the previous 267 episodes, we would love it if you would share it with a fellow pet sitter or dog walker. We appreciate you always listening every week. This is a lot of fun to make and hopefully it's beneficial for you in your pet business. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our awesome Patreon members. If you are not a Patreon member, we would love for you to join us there financially supporting the show, getting some goodies on the back end. We would love
Collin 20:45
it again. You can go to pet sitter confessional comm slash support for that,
Meghan 20:49
and we hope you join us next time.
20:50
Bye
