272: Growing and Scaling Your Pet Business
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Summary:
We all think we want to grow and grow our businesses. Just growing without a plan means we’re spending a lot of money and having a lot more headaches than we should be having. If you feel like you’re wasting time on tasks in your business and looking for a better way, you’re ready to scale. When we scale our businesses and processes, it means we can grow with less headache. We break down several examples of scaling in pet care and walk through four steps to use on everything you’d like to scale.
Topics on this episode:
What is growth?
How is it different than scaling?
Defining the 10x rule?
Scaling processes in your business
Main takeaway: You have to scale up, before you can grow up.
Links:
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, scaling, business, scalable, process, service, grow, pet, add, schedule, book, walks, staff, mileage tracking, check, website, increasing, means, implement, pet sitters
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. Hi, welcome to episode 272. Hello, thank you to our Patreon members, and pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode, we have a new $5, a month patron member named Anna, thank you so much. Thank
Collin 00:33
you. We have to get a sound effect in there somewhere. Yeah, I think. But no, we really do appreciate it. We appreciate it so much, and all of you who support the show in all the numerous ways that you do to make this show possible. We have gotten quite a few inquiries about our Kansas City Business slash personal retreat the weekend of August 26, through the 28th, this year of this year 2022. Thank you, we would love for you to join us. So we wanted to talk a little bit about what this weekend actually is and why we're doing this. And really, it's born out of us feeling frustrated at not being able to breathe at times. And we haven't really been able to step back and look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. So we really wanted a weekend, just make sure that we as people, as business owners, that we're staying on track. And so to do that the first day, we're going to break down all of the roles in our lives, both personal and in the business. So for us, it's parents, dog owner, business owner, spouse, marketer, podcaster, whatever that is, we're going to list all of those out. Because on the second day, we're going to start doing the hard work, we'll look at each one of the roles and ask really deep questions about this. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is assess how that rolls either filling us or draining us. And if so, why? What in the what can we do to overcome that, and that maybe frustrations with our role in business, we need to develop new processes to overcome that role, or personal life doing things and setting boundaries, whatever that is. And on the last day, we're going to work on those plans, we're going to work on goal setting to make changes and each one of those roles. And all along the way. This is going to be a combination of both personal work and group work, and really leaning into the expertise and ideas and camaraderie of other people around us to implement and start brainstorming some of these ideas. And so while it is called a retreat, we've themed this, it's gonna be completely opposite. It's instead of retreating from things, we're actually pursuing excellence, we're running towards excellence in every area of our life, it's going to be a lot of work. And once again, with everybody there, we'll be able to benefit from the group work from brainstorming together, as we work through all of this.
Meghan 02:51
Well, especially since we're all pet business owners. It's not like you have a lawyer and a doctor. And oh, here's a pet business owner, it's we are all in the same boat going through the same things not maybe not at the same time. But we have all dealt with very similar things. And we're going to be able to help each other and collaborate with one another. Now
Collin 03:07
as our first run at this and first stab at what this is actually going to look like we are limiting the number of spots, because we want to keep it small, the first go round to make sure that everything is working well before we continue to do this. And we do hope to make this an annual
Meghan 03:21
event. So if you would like to learn even more or attend, we would love that you can let us know through an email or social media, and we will get your name put on a list and start contacting you about it. Yeah, as you notice by the title today, we're going to be talking about growing and scaling in business. So we talk a lot about growth, we talk a lot about being busy, going nonstop, having full schedules, long days, early mornings, late nights. Typically growth is very linear, you do 10 More walks and you make 10 times more money. That's what we do in our businesses, we grow by getting more clients, we grow our income by filling our calendars in a kind of one for one kind of way. But a lot of times this is not sustainable, because making one extra dollar by doing more things means that you have to be there doing it. Even if you go down the road of hiring staff. It's basically growing one for one, you add more staff so you can walk more dogs as a business. So the growth refers to increasing your revenue as a result of being in business. It's also about the number of clients or staff the number of inquiries that you receive on a daily basis, your services or your service area. These are all things that you can grow. You may be thinking, Well, yeah, but what's the problem? Isn't that the point to grow? Yes, well, but here's the thing, growing like that takes a lot of resources to sustain and to maintain. You want to double your income while you take on twice as many clients. So it's not as easy as it sounds and even more difficult to maintain when you think of the scheduling nightmare that could turn into if you get twice as many clients. Especially if you're solo, can you physically do that every day. So I'm continually reminded of this, when I look at our total client list, it's a lot. And if I go, Okay, if 20% of them need me tomorrow, we are going to have a hard time meeting that demand even when it's calling and I, that's, that's a hard demand. So as you can imagine, and I'm sure you've experienced growth is not without stress and headache, or cost. It's especially true with businesses like ours in the service industry there are, they are chronically difficult to grow and sustain while still making money because labor costs are astronomical, we are pure,
Collin 05:45
uncontrolled growth isn't sustainable, it's actually what leads to burnout and compassion fatigue in this industry. So we have to be smart about our growth. The one thing we tend to not think about, though, is Scaling. Scaling is the process of increasing your business without a commensurate increase in work or
Meghan 06:07
costs. And so what that means, basically, is, you get one extra dollar, and you don't have to put in as much work as you did for the previous dollar. So the biggest example of this, and one of the most simplest things you can do for scaling your business is to get a CRM, and I had no idea what that meant, for the longest time. Customer Relationship Management, something that handles all of the scheduling and the billing, if you have any kind of software, this is what it is, you can add a new client without a lot of hands on work on your part, they can book it all from their end. And that is scaling. When you you don't have to do twice as much work to get twice as many clients and income. So as you probably can imagine, growth and scaling go hand in hand here. When you get the software, you'd lay the foundation to grow your client base, then you grow your client base. So you hire staff, which means you're growing. And then you bring on a payroll company, which means you're scaling and to manage staff without increasing your workload. When you lay the foundations build the scaffolding, and then you can add clients, and it's not going to be as much work for you or it's not going to cost you as much.
Collin 07:18
Basically, we have to scale up before we can grow up growing without scaling without setting that foundation and building that scaffolding that Megan just mentioned means that your operating costs and your headaches go through the roof. As you add more and more to your plate. Adding one new client is relatively easy. But making more money off that client is the hard part, when looking at our industry growing and filling our schedules pretty much just happens to us without too much effort and work if we're good at what we do. And we have solid customer service. And a good price point.
Meghan 07:50
Well, and especially if we've been doing this for years and years, we have a roster of a whole bunch of clients. And like this past weekend, we didn't have any clients and then all of a sudden a few days before they just kept rolling in. And then we were came out
Collin 08:02
of the woodwork. But it's like what then what do I do when my schedules full. And it's just happening to me? What if we want more than that, that's when you're interested in scaling as a business. So just one way to scale here, we've got tons of examples. One way to scale is through add on services to your clients that you already have. Because it's much easier to get an existing client to spend money with you than it is to bring on a new client, you're already going to the client's home. So why not do something like trim their nails for an added fee. The sunk costs of travel and time are already there for that walk or that drop in that they scheduled you initially for. So adding the nail trim actually scales your income without growing your costs, because they're already sunk into that first service?
Meghan 08:50
Well, and you can do this for boarding and daycare as well. If you want to offer nail trims or a hygiene package or bath if they get super dirty plain in your backyard during daycare.
Collin 09:00
Yeah, exactly. You we look at our business and we start looking for ways to make more money without linearly increasing the associated costs or headaches. But what does that mean for us? It means that we need to start looking at our businesses and understanding what we can grow versus what's scalable, and the best way to do that is by applying what we call the 10x rule.
Meghan 09:20
But before we get to that, as pet care professionals that 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 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 using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 09:59
So what Is that 10x rule? Basically, it's saying looking going, Okay, I did a task, I did something in my business, can I do that task? 10 more times? Is it scalable? Am I able to do that realistically, 10 more times for anything I do in my business.
Meghan 10:15
So for example, you onboarding a client, can you realistically do that process 10 More times without increasing your stress? That the last part, the last part is really key, increasing your dress, you don't want to do that. Okay, so you brought on 10 new clients this week, can you realistically do that process 10, more times, dog walks. And petsitting is sometimes hard to scale because someone has to do the work, we are a service industry. And often we do it one at a time, especially for solo, we don't have staff. So one way to scale is possibly adding group walks. So now instead of one dog, you're walking for 30 minutes or an hour, you're walking four or five. And obviously, you would have to do some logistical thinking here of your service area, and really honing in on who you want to target. By adding that gripwalk, you have scaled your hour. But it's not all about revenue and income. It's also partially about processes and saving time. So let's go back to onboarding. Some people love the high touch process of walking the client through everything booking for them, filling out the forms for them, which is totally fine. If you love to do that, that is not something that we want to be doing. Not not interested in that at all. So if you're frustrated with that, and you don't like spending the time of doing that, you can add a fillable form to your website, or send them a Google link for the client to fill that in. Or if your software already has that forms, you can just send it to them through there, that process is scalable.
Collin 11:48
Which brings us to a good point in this discussion about growth versus scale in our businesses, do you even want to scale or grow, you may look at your processes, you may look at your income or your client satisfaction and all the reviews that you have. And you may look at that and you go, you know what, I'm actually 100% Fine with how everything that I'm doing and how it's operating for me right now. That's great. That's, that's amazing.
Meghan 12:14
Well, and that's something we talked about with the hiring as well. If you enjoy this every day, you don't ever want to manage people, it is understandable. But if you love being solo, then keep doing that.
Collin 12:26
Yeah, the the issue comes up is when we start feeling frustrated or aggravated or like feel like you keep hitting a wall. So if you have those feelings and you feel like you're wasting time with the high touch onboarding process, or the the back and forth, that everything entails, you feel like you're not getting anything else done in your business. It's hard to set up processes that scale so that you don't have to do everything on your own or do one on one anymore. Another great example
Meghan 12:51
of this is SEO, a well, SEO website, and Google My Business is amazing. Instead of going out and doing door hangers and flyers, and really boots on the ground stuff, you have this machine turning in the background for potential clients to find you, you don't necessarily even have to do anything other than keep up with your website and post pictures to Google My Business, make sure that's updated. But it's working in the background for you. You're scaling your marketing at that point and doing that through automation. An example of this is if you don't have time windows, and for clients ask for their dog to be walked at noon, that's not scalable, you you then you need to have time windows, whatever that may be one hour, four hours, whatever it is. Another example is if a client requests their key back after every pet set, and you don't charge a return fee. Is that worth your time and gas? Can you do that? 10 times over?
Collin 13:51
Yeah, so key management, how do we make key management scalable? There are different options here. One, you keep copies in a lockbox that you have people come and go to and that you keep control over like at your office. Yep. Another way to make key management scalable is just to go and do lock boxes at every client's door. I know a lot of people go to that because that's that's very scalable, as far as time cost attention and headache is having it kept and managed by them. And you're gonna oversee the entire process.
Meghan 14:21
If you tend to go back and forth with a client about when to schedule a meeting great if they contact you and you say hey, is this a good time? And they say I don't know I need to check my schedule and you keep waiting for them to respond or if they have to ask about if you are available for their vacation. Are you able to do that if 10 clients reach out to you at the same time?
Collin 14:41
So you could scale this by getting the software having your calendar on your website and having the clients go somewhere to check this for you because again like Megan said, it may be okay one here one there every now and then. But if 50% of your clients contact you today wanting to know if you are available for a schedule, that would be a nightmare. And that would not be scalable.
Meghan 15:04
When it comes to staff, if you are having to explain a process or review material for each individual employee that's not scalable. So you could create training videos, so they can watch it on their own time or have weekly meetings. So you can build that company culture, and everyone can attend and know the information.
Collin 15:22
Basically, you can look at everything that your business does every process, every service, every aspect of it, and ask yourself, if this has to be done 10 more times that just the way that it's done right now, could it do that? Would it take too many things? And so that's a big question that we have to ask ourselves is, is this process is this thing? Is it actually scalable? And that's that's hard, right? That's, that's really difficult.
Meghan 15:48
Well, and probably if you ask yourself that the answer coming back to you is going to be very daunting. Because I mean, speaking for our business, it's not as efficient. It's not as scalable as we would like it to be. It's always in flux. And in progress.
Collin 16:03
Yeah. But there are some things that we can look at. There are four basic categories and processes that we need to work through for everything that our business does when it comes to us asking, Is this scalable? And if it is, how do I make it better? And the first one is actually understanding the current process in place? Do you even know all of the steps that it takes to onboard a client? Do you even know all the processes and steps that it takes to do a particular service? So really take your time at each of the things that you do and drill down to make sure you understand what's going on?
Meghan 16:37
I feel like that could be an entire episode in itself, writing that down right now. So if you track mileage, which either gas or mileage, you should track one of those, you can use a pen and paper logbook to do this. But you can also use an app to automatically log your books like mile IQ, what is more scalable on a busy day? So again, we're asking the question, Can I do this 10 times over? Okay, I manually logged my mileage. What if I have to do that 10 more times today, that would be burdensome.
Collin 17:08
The second thing that we look at, we need to identify are the success gaps. Success Gaps are the gaps in your process or operations or your services that are preventing them from meeting your goals or meeting them for being accomplished, how you want them done. So let's go back to manually tracking our miles. Is this something that's consistent and repeatable? Is that process something that can be done over and over again? What if you asked someone else to do the process? What if you brought on a staff or team member and asked them to do that? Would it be completed regularly into your standards? Success Gaps usually fall into three big categories. And they've kind of come up throughout this entire episode. So far, the first one is time. This could be that the current process takes too much time, like onboarding a client that can work like that, that process takes a lot money, it takes too much money, or there's too much of an opportunity cost by how you currently operate. And then the third one is resources, maybe I don't have enough resources, the right resources, the tools or whatever it takes to get this done. Mileage tracking is actually a bit of time and resources. It's time consuming to manually track our time. And it's also resource heavy on me having to have that logbook on hand at all times. So I don't always have the tools available to me to get that done.
Meghan 18:23
The third step in scaling your business is automating the processes as much as possible. And I feel like we talk about this a lot. It's an extremely powerful step, you want to automate your work as much as possible. Because what makes a process truly scalable is its ability for others to produce a more desired outcome or a faster result or a better result. The best kind of processes are the ones that you don't have to think too hard about or remember, or you've already written them down so that when your staff or somebody else has to come in and take over that process, they can do it clean and easy and simple.
Collin 19:03
And that's the magic of creating a process that scales it eliminates both the pressure of the process. And importantly, here the the potential for human error. Going back to our mileage tracking example here, if you were to get an app that would automatically do this for you something like a mile IQ, it means that you, thankfully, would be cut out from the process entirely. Now, you'll still have to likely sit down and review the log and check for errors. But that doesn't take nearly as much time as manually tracking everything. And it's easier to do if you had staff and team members checking that versus trying to be in their heads whenever they're logging that manually. And then the last step when it comes to scaling is iterating on the process. This is checking our work. It's iterating everything that we've just walked through, it's continuing to look at what you've built to assess maybe some new success gaps or changes in the needs or outcomes. in your business, it's reviewing and constantly going back and asking your questions. How could this be better? Where are the pain points, maybe there's a new or even more accurate mileage tracking app or a better way to have it auto generate reports that sync with your expenses. That would be something that you'd want to integrate as fast as possible, so that you wouldn't have to worry about this even more.
Meghan 20:23
I feel like as much as we try to though business is never really a set it and forget it kind of thing. We need to always be looking to make sure we're operating the best possible way to make our lives easier to make our staff lives easier. And obviously, our clients need to have a seamless onboarding process and thorough communication at all times. So we've talked about growing, we've talked about scaling, and we've talked about how they're different and how they're intertwined. Are there times for growing? And are there times for scaling?
Collin 20:53
I'm going to say yes, because I think very naturally, we hit the growth phase very early on. In business, we get that business license, we get the insurance, we start putting out some ads or some posts on Facebook and that website, and we start attracting a lot of clients, we start getting a lot of attention. That's the growth phase of our business. And that's where many of us hit and we stride for years and years. Then, though some of those things, some of those questions about how do I avoid burnout? How do I do more than this? How do I make this more efficient? How do I bring on more people to help my team? Or how do I do more than what I'm currently doing? That's when the scaling hits, when those frustrations start to come up? That's when we start thinking about scaling our business. And we look at what we've built. We look at our current clients and we go, how do I make this better? I think that's what scaling to me, personally is all about is looking at everything that we've done in business and going, I want to make this better, so that I me, calling you, Megan, don't have to do as much work, we don't have as much headache. And then you kind of grow. And you repeat this because when you scale you set yourself up to be able to grow even better. And then you relook at your processes again, or in this iterative process of looking at what you've built, then doing it and then looking at it again. And it's this continual cycle of growing and then scaling appropriately, and to set yourself up for even better growth, and then re looking at it and going, how do I grow even more. And so you kind of go back and forth between those.
Meghan 22:21
If this has triggered some thoughts in your head of how you've grown or scaled your business, we would love to talk with you, you can let us know on Facebook or Instagram at petsitter confessional or send us an email at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Someone who has the process of scaling down to a science is Natasha obedient. And today she's going to answer the question, how do I go about training my clients on my processes?
Natasha 22:47
Yeah, number one is you want to do a rollout letter is what I call it. So I tell my clients to think don't do a rollout letter, like every single month, that just gets too crazy. But think of like a few things. And that's why it's important to do quarterly business assessments with yourself to decide what's working and what's not working. So q4, we had so much feedback and q1 going into the new year, we want to implement all of that. So rollout letter, thank you calling for providing amazing feedback, you are the one that makes doing what I do so rewarding. Some feedback we received this month, and we're gonna be rolling out is the number one, we're going to implement lockboxes. Number two, we've changed our booking software from exhibit a to exhibit B. Number three, we've implemented time windows down versus having a set time, we will provide a two hour three hour four hour time window that the service is going to be performed. We're so excited to implement these we feel that we're going to be able to provide 123 and excitement, you know, you provide the thing we feel that we're going to be able to provide peace of mind love and trust and consistency with our new rollout. Can't wait to get it going. And they know what to expect. They're like, okay, great. How does this all work? When you implement different rollouts, you're gonna have a different step. So if you're implementing a software change, you do have to do screen recording on your phone to teach your clients what it looks like. Hello, call and thank you for coming into our software. Here's a quick screen record of how to quickly onboard. Add your information, your details, book, the services you want and check out this should take you around greement They're talking to the clients in like telling them what to do just show them. Did you know you can book us online pay Paul and here's our online link. Didn't that feel different? Go to our portal Oh, just go to our website, a call and here's the booking link, a call and here's our website right here. So that's why I really love canned messages and canned scripts, because you write all this out that you would say and then anyone on your team can just copy paste or send a canned message and It's all in there.
Collin 25:01
Yeah. And you do start to get again, it's predictable people understand. And I love that you're showing them because then they have agency and you're trusting them and kind of knowing, they start to feel good. Like, okay, I can't do this, right? You're empowering. Yes. You go to my website. And here's the direct link. And then they'll bookmark that. They'll save that so that they don't have to continue to reach out to you and say, Hey, are you available these dates? Like, like, you could start redirecting them all the way back into that system.
Natasha 25:28
And that's culture. Clients do not want to reach out to you. They really don't think about yourself high demand. If one person busy doing 1,000,001 things. Oh, yeah, I got a text my pet sitter Wait, pause, see if they're available. See if he can take me I mean, that's so stressful, guys. Like I just want to be able to go in but they really do not want to talk to you. If you can provide a streamlined system where they can book and chat and ask their quick questions they would never ever reach out to you. You just have to show them where it is to do so. Like I do this with my nanny right now with my children. I'm trying I'm almost like going to create a business for my nanny, because I'm like, Hey, listen, I know that I'm texting you and asking you if you can come do Nate date night. I'm asking you, if you can stay over if I want to travel, why don't we just put you on a booking link. It's free. And like, you can get more clients, I'm referring her to like photographers on referring her to other moms groups I'm using and I'm like, doing all the things I do in my business for her now because I'm like, just have a just have a software that can actually do this for you now, but you know, you actually don't have to wait around and like respond to us. It goes for all different facets of life.
26:36
It does. Even for lock
Natasha 26:37
boxes, you know, here's the link of the two recommended lock box that we use for the Amazon link. Okay, we'll put yourself an affiliate backlink on that to you and get yourself a little kickback and have the clients use the lock boxes that you really love. So now you don't have to train 5000 lock boxes that they bought because you didn't tell them which one to get.
Meghan 26:59
If you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at start scale sale.com and use the code P SC 20. For 15% off.
Collin 27:08
We want to thank our sponsor pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patrons for making today's show possible and we really, really, really want to thank you for listening and for showing up and doing all that you do. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye
