292: How to Handle Inflation as a Pet Business
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Summary:
How are you handling inflation and high gas prices? Prices on everything continue to rise and businesses are feeling the pinch more and more. Unfortunately, most economists aren’t seeing any bright spots in the future. So how do we tackle these concerns and make sure our businesses continue to operate and provide us a living? We break down four things you should be considering in the days and months ahead to make sure you’re positioned to weather the storms.
Main topics:
Is raising prices enough?
Cutting costs
Locking in your expenses
Going premium
Ask a Biz Coach
Main takeaway: In a high inflation economy, controlling costs and having a long-term view of your business is critically important.
Links:
Episode 266: Rising Costs and Uncertainty
Gas Prices: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/business/energy-environment/gasoline-price.html
What’s driving the increase: https://fortune.com/2022/06/11/why-is-the-price-of-gas-so-high/
Tackling inflation as a business: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2022/03/18/business-strategy-for-the-high-inflation-economy/?sh=3dd9316e64f6
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, business, people, prices, costs, service, months, raise, work, pet, booking, offer, gas, rates, support, recession, lockdowns, talked, buy, dog
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 another episode of pet sitter, confessional
Collin 00:22
low, happy Monday, or Tuesday or whatever you're listening to this.
Meghan 00:27
Thank you to pet sitters associates and our wonderful stupendous Patreon members who support us financially every month. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Savannah, and all of the other people thank you very much.
Collin 00:43
Absolutely, it means so much to us to keep the show moving forward and to get your input and be part of the community with you. If you're interested in joining and becoming a monthly Patreon supporter, you can go to Pitzer confessional.com Ford slash support,
Meghan 00:59
we probably don't have to mention the current prices of literally everything, including gas. I mean, us gas prices just hit a record of an average of $5 a gallon, like across the board and all states. And it's up more than 50% from a year ago. And I think we are all kind of reeling from that and definitely feeling it.
Collin 01:20
Yeah, it's not easy. Every time we go back to the pump, it's more and more expensive. Thankfully, when it comes to every other kind of expense that we have, as a dog walking business, we don't carry a lot of burden or carry a lot of overhead like a lot of other businesses do or even other service based businesses. But that doesn't mean that our costs aren't going up, things aren't getting cheaper, software, gear, gas, all of those are on the rise these days, even more so than really, we've last talked about this on a previous episode. And then we're not just being hit on the business level, we're also getting hit at the personal level too. So the food that we buy the entertainment that we go see the clothing that we need, all of those are also on their way up.
Meghan 02:06
So unfortunately, we get pinched kind of on both ends, both running our business and personally. We were just actually just talking about this last night. What on earth do we do? What on earth do you do as a pet sitter? And I think the first one we always come back to is raising prices. That's kind of the go to answer when everything else is rising in cost when gas especially gas because that's integral to our business. We go okay, let's raise prices. But it really can be hard, because we know that our clients are also feeling the same pain in their wallet, you know, a hamburger costs as much as you know, the same for us as it does them. And it's all of us are in this more expensive pot.
Collin 02:44
And if we are feeling the pain of rising prices, we know that our clients are as well. And for the most part, people are continuing to purchase and spend that the way that they've always done. But there's only so high that prices can go before people start to push back and look for alternatives. We do it in business, we look for other things to do with our business, we like to change things up. And people do that in their lives as well. And as far as gas prices go, people are starting to change their driving habits, at least to some extent, there is the necessary travel that they have to do for work or family emergencies or things like that. But people are cutting back on more discretionary spending things that they would have gone out and seeing the movie, they are now directing that money to their gas fund because their gas bills are going through the roof. And so we can only really raise prices so much before it's does start to impact the clients and get pushed back from them.
Meghan 03:35
Well, and that's the conundrum there is if I raise prices, our fear is always am I going to lose clients. And so in the Facebook group dog walker dog walker, Walt Galvin really made a interesting comment. He said, I predict many of us will lower our rates rather than lose clients. And that's something that I hadn't really considered before is, would we ever decrease our prices?
Collin 03:59
I think there's always an option. And you see that done to larger companies as well. Businesses need to raise prices when they need to. But it also means that they will lower prices when they need to. If you are in a slump, and you're trying to get clients, what do you do you offer discounts, sales, sales, what is that that's lowering your prices, when companies that have a lot of inventory of particular products, when they need to get those out and they move those they lower the prices on those when people are trying to increase the number of people coming in for hair or nails or massages or things like that they will run sales and give coupons out which is effectively lowering your prices.
Meghan 04:38
But we've always said that, you know, don't offer discounts because your time is worth a lot and the you know if you're aborting the second dog is the same as the first dog and if you're doing walks, you have multiple dogs. It's
Collin 04:51
a calculated bet though you're not always you're not going to consistently give that person that reduced price. That's why a coupon with an expiration date is very powerful. It gets them in the door and using your services and use to them so that when it goes back to the normal price, there they sit. And so you are always making that calculation how much of a hit Can I take right now for the future potential payoff of a customer who's paying my normal rate or my increased rate as I move forward. And so right now, as we were looking and heading into some really rocky territory, there's a lot of people most economists are talking about recessions ahead and some really, really tough times, right now maybe a really good opportunity to grow your base beyond what you would normally be expecting or comfortable with. Because when 60% of them leave during the recession, or when 40% of them leave during the recession, you know, 40% of 100 is a very different business model than 40% of 300. And so having that business structure, they're capable and able to take on those clients. So yeah, it may be a one time client that you offer that to now, but now they're on your roster. Now they're on your email list. Now they're following you. And that is somebody that you can tap into down the line if you need to. So pricing is very, very iffy, right? We are always talking about how do I cover my costs. And it's always tricky. If you have staff, you have employees, they're more cost associated with that. And you have to make sure that they're taken care of. So raising prices is one thing, if you're trying to grow your base to weather a storm that's coming, you may lower your prices temporarily through coupons and discounts. So that you can reach more people so that when the winnowing comes, you have more people to pool from,
Meghan 06:27
yeah, but my point was going to be the recession. So isn't that I mean, that's not for like, a couple of weeks, right? That's, you know, many could be many, many years. And so if you're lowering your price now, because you want to grow your client base, isn't that kind of antithetical to,
Collin 06:41
yeah, that's why the low that's why the lower cost is for a very short period of time, hey, if you book within the next three weeks, you get this price.
Meghan 06:49
So then you hope that your service is exceptional, and your pet care is outstanding, and the communication that you provide and all the credentials and everything that goes into your business, it outweighs the discount that you're giving, that's
Collin 07:01
the calculated risk that you're taking short term pain versus long term benefit, and only really, you know, you who are running your business, know where your risk lies, and that you may be willing to bet it all and go, you know, I want as many clients in my on my roster as possible on my client list as possible. So I'll go down to $5, a walk just to get people in the door, get as many people I can in for a month. And then I can I have a calculated raising my rates over the time on everybody who came in through the door, or maybe you offer tons of coupons to people to make sure that they're happy, they're continuing to use you, and you're reaching new people, then at some point, you do have to stop that, to start actually earning money back from those people. So what are you willing to invest now, to get that long term payoff to get that benefit down the road?
Meghan 07:45
Well, and as you mentioned, if you have staff, this is not impossible, but very, very hard. Because you still have to make a profit at the end of the day,
Collin 07:53
you absolutely do and you need to be you need to be caring for your staff well and treating them well. They
Meghan 08:00
as they're also having the same price hamburger that you are in the same, you know, their gas is being used up just as much as everybody else's
Collin 08:06
Exactly. So whether that's raising wages, or maybe another way around that, because every time you raise $1 on a wage of somebody, you have to pay taxes on that. So instead of giving them $1 Raise, you may give them $1 in gas cards or $1 in bonus or something along those lines to help alleviate some of those pain points for them. Again, making that calculated assessment of how much money can I invest now to keep people with me to weather the storm so that when the growth comes on the back end, I have that support. And so it's all about pricing and knowing exactly what where your pain points are, what your price point has to be what your breakeven point is. And hopefully over the last several months as a business, you've been able to pool and stockpile a little bit of emergency fund a little bit of reserve to help weather some of this stuff. So maybe you can spend an extra two $300 a month that you weren't anticipating, but you can do that to take care of your staff take care of your clients treat them well, so that when those tough times comes they're there for you in return. It's not always a guarantee. That's where that calculated risk comes in. Everything's a risk, especially right now with so many uncertainties with inflation with gas prices with with a potential recession that's becoming more and more likely, every single day. We're making those calculated risks.
Meghan 09:24
But it is kind of tough to think about this right now. We are in June we a lot of us, including us are incredibly busy working very very hard. sunup to sundown. And it's very hard to think about a time when kind of kind of the well is going to be dry again. But it is something that we need to be preparing for right now. Because they you know, the economists are saying this is coming this is coming.
Collin 09:46
We roared out of the recovery from the lockdowns from COVID is happening globally. Right this is not just a US thing if you're listening to this in the EU if you're listening to this on Australia, wherever you're listening to this you are experiencing this to some extent where the UK don't always come back hot and fast. And we're kind of overcooking a lot of things which are going to lead to a slowdown eventually. And that's what that slowdown is. That's the recession that's coming, which means business isn't going to be as busy as it currently is. So what lessons can we bring back? Right? Can we raise back up from when COVID was happening? What things would you wish you would have known back then that you can apply today, that includes the emergency fund that includes growing that client list and satisfying them. And so we're gonna get into a lot of these other things as well that we can be applying that are our lessons that we learned from the lock downs that we learned from COVID that are actually just basic business tools that we have access to, things we could start implementing and having a strategy to move forward with.
Meghan 10:42
So another option that you have is looking to cut costs. But as we mentioned, already, we don't have a whole lot to cut here, because we are dog walking and pet sitting businesses. And if you especially if you don't have products, then you don't really have anywhere to cut.
Collin 10:56
Exactly. And I will say that one aspect of cutting costs is actually locking in your costs right now. We know everything's going up. So if there's anything that you can do right now in your business to pre buy, pre purchase, get on an order or a waitlist, do it well, that
Meghan 11:13
can mean tennis balls, if you're going to an event to market your business Exactly.
Collin 11:16
Or if you know that you go through a lot of I don't know, bags, boot bags, right? Pre buy a year supply of poop bags, if you can't, or six months, if you can, basically what you're doing is you're going I know prices are gonna go through the roof. And I still need to buy these products. So I need to lock in my costs right now. Because again, I'm assuming that they're going to go up. So is it going to be kind of absurd that you're spending $700 or whatever on poop bags? Yeah. But it's better to spend that now than wait and spend possibly, you know, $1,000 on pullbacks, that's actually saving you $300 Over the course of the next year or six months, however, you know, however many you go through, look at what your budget what you can absorb right now, and make an estimate, make a guess predict what you're going to have to spend in order to lock in that price. Because another six months, you're probably going to wish you would have already bought them again, because they could be out they could be more expensive.
Meghan 12:12
I feel like this is kind of a doomsday talk.
Collin 12:15
It's prepping. Right. It's things that we wish it's applying lessons that we wish we would have known back when the recession back when COVID happened, right? All of this is actually just business basics, how do I prepare my business for a high inflationary, high price, high cost environment, I pre buy and I pre purchase as much as I can. That's what that is. Now you can only do that if you have that emergency fund if you have that extra wiggle room to spend. And so again, look at your budget, look at your finances, how much can you absorb here, okay, it might be worth to take a hit of $300 out of my coffers right now. But that's gonna save me potentially $200 down the line or whatever that is, because I know I'm gonna have to buy that eventually, prices are only going to go up. So I can pre buy lock in my prices. That's what a lot of very large companies do. Apple does this all the time when they need a lot of RAM or they need a lot of CPU chips. They go in and they lock down millions of the things. Right now they pre buy years into the future, because they know in three years time prices are going to go up. So it actually saves them a lot of money to chunk a whole bunch of money at it right now. As opposed to buying $1 or two a day. Right? You could do this with gas if you had lots of reserves, I guess. But if you bought gas every single day, you had spent a lot of money versus if you would have bought 100 gallons of it six months ago and you have just been stored and siphoning off of it. That's it. Yeah, how long is gas good for not very long. So don't don't, you can do preservatives and stuff. But I wouldn't recommend would recommend doing that for too long.
Meghan 13:44
So we've talked about raising prices, we talked about cutting costs, but then there's another one, you could just absorb the cost and kind of bite the bullet, you can choose to do nothing, you can do A, B or C use nothing. And so that would mean having the extra fuel costs eat into your profit. It's a short term solution, definitely not a long term solution. And because you can only take so much.
Collin 14:04
And unfortunately, this is where a lot of us find ourselves basically out of indecision, we get stuck in a point where we don't know what to do. And so this is where people end up for the next year, or the next six months where they will I didn't know how to raise I was afraid to raise. I didn't want to cut my costs. I didn't know how to approach this because I didn't know what my options were. And so they become stagnant. And so by not acting, they have decided to absorb the costs and bite the bullet and they feel stuck with that eventually, because they've waited so long, they waited too long. And if you're not tracking your expenses, if you're not tracking your income, you may still feel like you're super busy. They may still be really busy. But you are probably not making as nearly as much money as you expect that you would be given if you haven't looked at your numbers recently or within the past six months.
Meghan 14:48
A cost that you should absolutely not cut is your insurance. As pet care professionals. Your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. 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 and 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 by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at petsfit llc.com. There's a few other things that we regularly talk about that would also apply here. And one of those is reducing your service area to really limit driving, if you live in a big city, taking the bus taking a bike, whatever you can do to not spend as much on gas, although I guess if you're taking the bus there that requires gas. So those prices might go up to
Collin 15:46
exactly depending on how much they're willing to absorb. But basically one way to control your costs as a service based business is actually to eliminate work. And that may be counterintuitive, you may be thinking but I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to make as much work as possible. But if your expenses are outweighing the income that you're making, from the work that you're doing, it's not getting you anywhere. So the first way to reduce the amount of work or eliminate the work you're doing is making the already said was to reduce your service area, maybe you can also set a limit or a cap on the number of clients to take on because you just recognize that the costs per client are getting too exorbitant that I can't take on any more clients. And then I stopped breaking even or I stopped earning a profit profit because of the expenses associated with every single client that I bring on.
Meghan 16:32
But we had just talked about maybe growing your base. So it's all about what you want for your business. Do you want a smaller service area? Do you want more clients? What is going to be most profitable for you in the coming year or so?
Collin 16:46
Yeah, exactly. If you're able to right now reduce your rates, so that you can bring on clients because you have a six 711 month emergency fund, and you can afford to eat into that because you know, I may I may get a bigger payoff at the end. That's that's a strategy that you could take on another strategy is to reduce the service radius, reduce the number of clients, maybe it's actually reducing and cutting out entire services that aren't actually bringing in enough profits for you. If you have one of those menu option lists of tons and tons of services really seriously right now take a look at those and, and understand and make sure that you have line item your cost per service, what does it cost me to give this service to my clients to provide this to them, and then scrutinize both what activities are performed and how those activities are performed. So it's not just I'm providing dog walks and nail trims and groupings and I'm doing these adventure walks and I'm doing these other things as I'm doing this and and and cut all those down and go what, how much money do these make me? How much money do they cost me? And then go How am I performing? Those? Am I performing those in a concentrated area are they really super spread apart? And make sure you find that balance? Right now if you don't know your numbers is the best time in the world to really drill down and get those nailed down so you know exactly what you're doing. When we talk about why you know your numbers, you know your numbers so you can make good decisions. Why would we ever need to know that? Well, right now we're in a time where we need to be having a really hyper focused strategy for the next six months for the next year. So that we can adapt and we can ride the waves that are coming. And if we don't know our numbers, we're just going to be guessing in the wind.
Meghan 18:28
Another way that you can look to control costs is to automate it will save you time and your staff time if you have them with things like automated Client Onboarding, or pre recorded videos to explain things. So you aren't having to take your time and your staffs time going over these things. Especially if you're trying to hire multiple people at one time. The videos are great.
Collin 18:48
Yeah, I did actually a screen recording of our booking process and the app that we use with a voiceover talking them from sign in to booked thing. And I say that video to our Google Drive so that I can just send that to any client who asks, or any team member who has that come up during a meet and greet, I can send that to them. It saves their time during that process. It saves a lot of back and forth so that I don't have to spend my time doing that. I don't have to waste my staffs time having them explain it over and over. Little things like that. We're talking about automation. It's not like your entire business, just one click and all the robots run it right. I'm sure you we can but we'll be there eventually. But an automation is screen recording yourself explaining something that you've had to explain 1000 times and giving that to people so that you don't have to waste your time doing it so that you can go do other time. You can spend more time doing things that are actually earning you money in a business.
Meghan 19:39
Another great thing to be thinking about right now is potentially going up market swimming upstream by making your services as high end as possible. There's premium services. You don't just do dog walks, you do adventure walks. You don't just come in for a 30 minute visit at the end of the day during a pet settings day you provide a tuck in service.
Collin 19:58
Yeah, the best way to hold align on your pricing, let's say you don't want to raise your prices too much, the best way to stick to that pricing and make it seem valuable to the client is to help make the clients understand that it doesn't make any sense for them to switch to a cheaper provider, we all get those people who contact us and they are basically price shopping. Expect that to increase as people become more and more price sensitive, which
Meghan 20:21
can be really frustrating, because you're taking your time to respond to them when they're just looking for a number. It's one
Collin 20:26
of the most annoying things that we do on any given day. But make it so that your service will make them question why on earth they would go to anybody else. Right going premium means means you're adding so much value, that the client doesn't really know what else to expect. They don't
Meghan 20:42
this is value for from your social media posts. This is value from your email newsletter, this is value from the blogs that you put out, this is value from your actual service that you provide,
Collin 20:52
right? Exactly. Many people when they think, Oh, I've got to go premium, I've got to go up, they just think of raising your prices. And this is not it. When you it's more than just raising your prices. It's about making and changing the kind of service that you offer to bring a higher level of value and uniqueness that is not currently offered by you or anybody else in your category. So what does that email service look like? What do these private groups look like? What does the community look like that you're bringing? What did the products look like that you're giving away to people? All of that? Well, you know, we recently did an episode about having really high quality touchpoints a really magical experience. That's where this kind of stuff starts to hit the road as being very practical. Of going yeah, I'm expensive. Have you experienced me? Right, one of the things that I know more and more about whenever we interact with different companies is what is their customer service? Like? What's it like to talk to the people on the phone? or chat with them? On their website? Do I like that? Do they actively respond to me? Do they understand my needs as a paying customer, if they don't, all of a sudden that experience gets ruined, they may actually be solving my need, but if their customer service is awful, I'm gonna go find somebody else who's going to treat me better?
Meghan 22:04
Well, that's particularly important in this industry, where we're so personal, we're so you know, high touch with the client, because we are in their home, and we're meeting them and getting to know their pet and them. And it's very personal.
Collin 22:16
Well, it's a tactic that a lot of companies and businesses use to make a product, make it premium, and then it raises their profit margins. You see this all the time. And things like car models, if you look at the car model sold, very few of them are actually base models. They really only sell a handful of those base models year after year. And so the cheap people, the very, very, very price sensitive people, they have ways and tactics of upselling people into these premium models. And why do they even bother doing that? Doesn't the premium model cost more for them to make? Well, sure it does. But it doesn't cost a linear increase in price to them, it costs a marginal price increase to get that premium difference to them that then they can sell it a premium to you and recoup those higher models, this higher profit margins from you. And if you look at the majority of vehicles out there are actually at the higher tier levels. Because people perceive that higher value, they want that higher value. And actually they're just more available. Most car makers make more of the higher end models than they do the base end models, it's harder to find a bog standard version of any car, right? It's I don't know what that is, the people, people over in the UK will will understand that the base models, right? It then we need to think about that for our services, what can we do to our services to make them as premium as possible for that value to be there to be seen and perceived by people as well.
Meghan 23:42
It's important to note that in high inflation economies, controlling costs and having a long term view of your business are critically important. It's as we've been talking about, you may even consider shortening the amount of time a client can book out for services. So instead of accepting new bookings a year out, you may shorten that down to six months or four months, this would try to prevent them from locking in your cheaper prices, and instead be susceptible to your price increases.
Collin 24:08
As a business. We don't like people who book in Christmas and in January. And then in June, we realize, oh, I actually have to raise my rates. And if I've already locked in their prices, and they've signed and promised the services at that rate, we all of a sudden become concerned about can I raise prices on people who have already booked or once they're locked in? Do I need to honor that existing price. And so that's for you to take a look at your booking and cancellation policies and procedures that you have in place to make sure that you're protecting yourself from these kind of situations that come up and also give you flexibility to adapt and change as you need to because although we may think what is going to happen a year from now, that might not actually be the case. So one way to get around this is to shorten that time window when people can book sort of being able to book out a year maybe it's only six months, maybe it's only three months. And then that way if you do an increase at three and a half If months, the people who are going to booking Christmas would never know the difference.
Meghan 25:03
But on the contrary, though, we do like people booking out far in advance, because that's how we know the predictable schedule that we can be on,
Collin 25:10
until I need to raise my rates to recoup my costs, my operating expenses in December are actually gonna be higher than my operating expenses in January. And if they're still at the same rate, I'm actually losing money on those bookings that were booked that are out in advance. And so I need to know, can I raise those rates? Or should I prevent them from booking that far out in advance as possible? Or do I need to say, Hey, you're booking right now, but this is does not lock in your price, your price will be locked in at time of service versus at time of booking, I'm not sure many clients would like that option, I don't think they would either. And so again, that's why shortening that time window, may help you get around that if you need to.
Meghan 25:44
Something that we haven't talked about through all this, but it's very important is the mental health side of this. So as we always say, you need to do what is best for your business, your goals that you have it and keep in mind that probably the next six months year, maybe two years are going to be pretty tough. And it's not quite going to be the pandemic, but it's going to be different, but we don't really know. Yeah, so making sure that whatever decision you make, in whatever aspect of your business is best for your mental health, because we've talked about growing your base, well, if you are maxed out right now, and you cannot handle any more clients, even, you know, a few months down the road, and you just don't want to grow anymore for your mental health do not do that. If you absolutely cannot stand giving discounts for whatever reason, then don't do that keep your prices the same or raise them, you have to do what you feel is best. And we
Collin 26:37
can't forget the mental, emotional spiritual strain, that the next six months that the next year are going to take on us. And we need to be accounting for that. In these decisions we've talked about in the past about there are business decisions, but those business decisions still play an emotional role and emotions take an emotional toll on me and my life, they still weigh on me. And to be very, very cognizant and aware of that as we move forward. Because you're right, we're moving into a space where mental health is going to be extremely important and extremely hard to manage with everything going on around us all the uncertainty, all the costs, all of the business decisions, the business, the decision, fatigue will be very real. As we continue to move forward and adapt to the changes that impacts our mental health. And if we don't have a community around us, if we are not self aware enough and touching base with ourselves, having those few quiet moments throughout the day to check in and see how we're doing. We'll miss that. We'll do go into burnout, we'll go into compassion fatigue, and we won't be running a business this time next year. And while that may sound again, this episode is not meant to be doom and gloom. It's to say, are you ready? Are we ready as business owners as people to tackle what's coming. And that's that's for us to decide and start planning right now. And to not miss these things like mental health?
Meghan 27:58
Well, because with the pandemic in March of 2020, basically all of our businesses collapsed within like a 72 hour span. And so I don't think it's going to be that way this time. So I wanted to talk about the differences between what we experienced two ish years ago, and what we're going to be experiencing coming up,
Collin 28:16
which is a good point, because then it was like ripping off the band aid. Over the course of 72 hours business went from booming to bust over the course of two three days. And we had the rest of the time to kind of recoup and recover and come to grips with what happened. What we're facing with a protracted recessionary period is years of a slow decline a slow SLOG and battle through the tough decisions through hard times and grinding on day after day and kind of either going down super slowly or barely maintaining or trying to eke out a little bit of an increase. All of those taken emotional and physical toll on us that we're gonna that is very different than the crash that happened because of all the lockdowns because of COVID versus this prolonged period that we're potentially facing them.
Meghan 29:04
So it's also going to be different because a lot of people at that time were staying home. And I know that rising gas prices are, you know, an issue for those who have a very long commute. But I think it's also going to be different this time, because people are still going to be working. They're not going in, they're going to be going to their jobs to work. Whereas before they were staying home.
Collin Funkhouser 29:26
Yeah. So it's going to be this weird thing where people are going to be still employed, but they're going to be more price sensitive, because of the value of their dollar that they earn from their job is not going as far as it did the day before. And so they still may have a need for these services. So what are they going to be looking into? So right now asking questions and getting ahead of that conversation with your clients have going, how can I best serve you send out those polls to your clients send out those questionnaires to see exactly what their needs are right now and continue to stay on top of that as we move forward. Word. If you never did that, do it right now, if you used to do it once a year, maybe think twice a year or more frequently, once a quarter, to get the pulse of what people are expecting so that you can be meaning that that you aren't caught off guard of going, Well, everybody's going to work, they're still making money. Why aren't they? Why don't they need me? Well, they might not need you because they right now are reallocating those funds to discretion to other discretionary spending, or to go to gas or to go to the food that their family needs to survive. Not because they don't like you or not, because they don't actually need you anymore. They're sacrificing in other ways. So how can we best serve them. And that's, you know, to work through a lot of the aspects that we've talked about to try and meet that need, or not.
Meghan 30:41
Yeah, so it's going to be more of a slow burn than a fast quickening this time. But as far
Collin 30:46
as vacations go, people may make more decisions to stay local, which people are also doing during the COVID lockdowns because they couldn't travel internationally, or they couldn't cross state lines or boundary lines. So all of those same aspects, all those same ideas that we had back in COVID, are still probably pretty applicable to these days. So dust off those blogs about the local camping and RV parks and the local hiking trails and the local hotel communities and get an idea of get that information out there now, so people can book those local ones, because they're not gonna be able to possibly afford bigger, more extravagant vacations, but they still need care for their pets. And or they
Meghan 31:22
may not they may take their dogs with them, or they may want their cats checked on every other day. And that's a policy that you have to set for your business, whatever you think about that, but it is a good reminder that maybe their home still needs care for they want to go on a week long camping trip with their dog, but their house still needs to be maintained. Yep, so
Collin 31:39
that gets back to our idea of eliminating the work, maybe the work that you need to eliminate or you're dropping and your daily dog walks. And instead, you need to change work to house care and garden care and other types of services that they need.
Meghan 31:52
Again, we're trying to control our costs from rising drastically while also trying to preserve our profit margin. And we do this through aggressively seeking after cost saving alternatives as much as we can, and a dog walking and pet sitting business. But there are things that we use every day poop bags, for instance, that maybe we can try to buy more of or try to cut costs or different brand you can buy. We're trying to also push into the higher market while raising prices or meeting expectations and generating new services that clients never even expected. If that's something that you want to do. We know that there are a million different ways to combat inflation and high gas prices, other than just raising your rates. So we'd love to know how you are planning on handling it and how you are handling it right now you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. Or we are on Facebook or Instagram at petsitter confessional for our Ask a business coach segment, Natasha opionion is going to answer what's the difference between front end and back end for my business.
32:50
So front end and back end is what I teach how to structure the front end back end. So it runs successfully without you. And it's literally a puzzle piece or a domino effect. If the front end is not aligned, there's no way the back end is going to work. That's just how it is. So we work on the front first. So what the front is your offer your container, and how you onboard your client. So your offer is your services, you know, are they scalable? Are they recurring? Can you duplicate income so that when we get to the back of the house, we actually have money to afford it? Is it priced properly? Is it easy to understand? Is it in high demand? Then what kind of container is it in? Is it something that it's a one off? Is it a drop in? Is it a subscription base? Is it something that clients actually want on a recurring basis? And then when you talk to your clients, do they understand it clearly? Like what I'm offering, who I am what I'm selling? Do you understand? And is this something that you can sign up with? You on board? They're like, yes, that's all how you structure the front end, looking at your website, looking at your client attraction system, how clients find you. You may have an amazing company, but are you even findable? Do they know about you? You're like this amazing gym hanging out in the background and no one knows about you. Are you on social media? Are you out there? That's your front end how how someone sees you in the front of the house. Then when you get to the back of the house, how do we even support all this? So now I committed to the services I committed to these clients. I look good outside, it's working. We're getting calls, we're in business. But now I just lost like a whole bald spot because I'm stressed out because I really can't support the demand that's coming in. So what do I need staff process systems? As a software, payroll. So it's like what I have on the front end, I'm making sure the back end is going to support. And also me as the CEO, am I continuing to grow the business and work outside the business, not inside the business? Because I have to keep the lights on. So what's your scalable process in marketing to actually repeat this? So it's all puzzle. But it makes sense at the end of the day when you can't do one without the other?
Collin 35:30
Yeah, well, and I think most of us encounter this when we start thinking about offering a new service, right? It's easy, it's free for me to add a new service to my website. But it's the moment somebody commits to wanting it. That now said, I feel like I've got all this work to do. And you're right playing catch up. It's like, okay, I want to offer adventure hikes, well, if I don't have a location, if I don't have the lease system, if I don't have the van to transport if I don't have the permission, and the training, and all of a sudden, three people want it, the back end is out of alignment with the front end that I was putting out there. It's attractable to people, they want it. But now I'm not able to service that. And you're right, I'm going bald and stressing out or maybe losing out on that business. Because I didn't do that planning ahead of time to make sure that those processes were in place.
36:14
Yeah, and more importantly, the client suffers, and then you suffer. And then this amazing brand that you used to have just tanked off of one wrong move. And that's usually what I see happening more often in business is like the brand was already amazing. But like one wrong move, one strategy that wasn't well thought out, is really what makes the whole business suffer. And I find in the pet industry, we have a hard time with breaking up with our services. You know, it's like, well, I don't want to miss out, I got FOMO, my other competitors are offering this and they're offering that and I'm going to be I'm not going to be as you know, highly sought out because I'm not going to look as attractive. And it's actually the opposite. You know, if you want to be an expert, you you you remain an expert. And what you do best, I had to go through that process with myself, I wasn't an expert at petsitting. Because at the end of the day, we just didn't want to tell our people to stop what they were doing to pick up a new shift. We just decided that our pet sitting was going to suffer because at the end of the day, we believed in our boarding, it worked for our family. So you have to kind of ask yourself, if you're offering dog walking, pet sitting taxi, weddings, photography, what part of the market do you do best? And then everything else that you don't do great cut it out, when we would have a client that will ask us for a four time pets and we were like, Oh, well, who's gonna go in the middle of the day? Well, who do we want to like what Suzy wants to go to a barbecue. And then Jeff said he's, you know, doing photography work, and but he'll maybe do the night shift. It just started to get crazy with doing four times. So we were like, You know what, three times feels good. Let's keep it at three. Yeah, yeah. And that worked. Then we were like, You know what? No weekend sound good. Actually, let's cut the whole weekends out. You know, holiday sounds good, too. Let's just cut that out, too. You just have to decide what part of the market you want to be on. And all of us are on different sides of it.
Collin 38:21
Yeah, I think often times, we may think, Oh, well, the services that I offer are very simple. I offer drop ins and blocks, but they're actually very complicated when applied to different situations and scenarios. And you're right, weekend drop ins are very different than midday drop pins, which are very different than daily dog walks. All those require a different front end and a different back end to make sure that they're supported. And like you said, it's actually what we want at the end of the day, too.
38:47
Yeah. And that's really what it came down to. I have a lot of clients right now that I coach and are like, I want to be like the Walmart of the pet industry. I want to make sure when they come to me they got daycare and they get pet sitting and they get boarding and they get grooming and they get training. Well that's all great. And I love it and I support it as long as what you're selling to the client and you can support without losing experience. That's what it's all about.
Meghan 39:15
If you would like to join her monthly membership group, you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off.
Collin 39:23
We want to thank our sponsor pet sitters associates for making today's show possible and for our amazing patrons for supporting us month after month began. If you want to learn more about what that is and become a supporting member, you can go to Pitzer confessional.com/support
Meghan 39:37
And thank you for listening. Bye bye
