302: Considerations for Being a Full-Time Pet Sitter
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Summary
It’s been almost exactly a year since Collin joined me full time in our pet business😄 It was a heavy decision (but also very freeing!) and there was a lot to consider prior to making that step. On this episode, we discuss all the things you need to think about BEFORE you decide to quit your day job, and why having your end goal in mind is crucial. We share our story on why this was the best option for us, and discuss the practical implications of focusing primarily on your pet business. Then, business coach Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I fire a client?”
Main topics:
Do you WANT to go full time?
Set your budget
Greasing the wheels
Growing quickly
Ask a Business Coach
Main takeaway: Set realistic time-frame expectations and know your numbers!
Links
Episode 294: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/294
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, business, people, dog, pet, walks, working, income, full, months, job, important, numbers, industry, discount, agreement, step, full time job, question, snowball effect
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, welcome to episode 302. Hello, we had said that this topic was going to be advertising, but we switched it up. So look for that next week. Today, we're gonna be talking about going full time and the options there.
Collin 00:33
And before we do that, we do want to thank our amazing patreon supporters who every month help support the show, attend the monthly meetups, get access to content early in all sorts of stuff, and our today's sponsor, as well as pet sitters associates
Meghan 00:47
well into the Patreon members. Thank you very much your money every month that goes to buy microphones, and upgrade equipment, and help to keep us doing this podcast.
Collin 01:00
Exactly. We love your insights as well, we'll actually pull from some of that as we dive in today's topic,
Meghan 01:05
I also wanted to give a quick shout out to our Facebook group sitter confessionals. If you are not a part of that, go join. And I'm not just saying that because it's our group, but there are some amazing conversations that are happening to lift the industry up and make it better.
Collin 01:21
You find people in there who are just starting out who have been in the industry for 30 years and everyone in between, and they're global as well. So it's really nice to see the kind of perspectives and input that people have their business and what they're wanting to run and give you some ideas for yours.
Meghan 01:38
So some of those people are full time, some of those are not full time. And so that's something we're going to talk about today. How do you know when you're ready to go full time? It's a question we see a lot. And we've been asked it as well, because we decided to go full time last year. And that was pretty awesome. It's been rocking ever since. Yes. But what do you need to have in place? And what are things to consider? I think it's important to take a step back and ask yourself, do you want to go full time? Yeah, yeah, if you are content with your clients, and then the number of clients that you have, and you still like your other job, that you're working full time, why change anything, you don't have to, because petsitting doesn't have to be your only thing, the majority of people do other stuff, they either sell products have a part time job. You know, even people who run pet businesses will sometimes be a coach or a consultant on the side. So I would say the majority of the industry is probably not full time. And so going full time just means you're deciding to focus more on serving clients than you are currently able to. So again, ask yourself, do you really want to go into business for yourself full time?
Collin 02:48
It's a heavy, it's a heavy decision that you have to wait, you may enjoy it a lot. But when you think about, oh, do I really want to have the rent or the mortgage relying on me to bring in that income? Do I want that burden that mental strain on myself when I make this my only thing? Are you ready to bust it to get things done? Getting clients don't just magically show up to you, they won't magically fill your schedule, you are going to have to get out there and do things and work as soon as you make that decision.
Meghan 03:19
And another question to really ask yourself is Do I understand the ebbs and flows of this business? So if you are strictly dog walking? Would you be okay? If your clients don't use you from May till August, because a lot of them are teachers or have kids at home and they're out of school? You know, if you are doing predominantly petsitting Do you know which months people won't be traveling as much for us, it's usually February and October are pretty slow months, because people have gotten over the holidays or they're about to get into the holidays and they don't travel a lot.
Collin 03:50
And not just Do you know the ebbs and flows of the business. But do you know how you're going to survive those lean months to you, you have things in place that are going to get you through that. And I think it's really important to understand that there are ebbs and flows to this business. If you're new to this industry within the past several months, maybe within the past year, you're still experiencing a lot of new things,
Meghan 04:12
and a probably a very vast robust client list because, you know, after after the pandemic, everybody is traveling.
Collin 04:20
Exactly. So this this past year has been very weird for the industry as well. And are you going to be able to be in tune with that and make adjustments and go with that when you need to?
Meghan 04:33
And then if you offer pet taxi, do you have enough room to fit a lot of pups? Maybe you're doing that right now, but it's on the side and you can take one or two pups in your car. But can that is that scalable? If your car is not going to be able to fit more than a couple, are you going to buy a van or a bus? There are so many things that you have to consider before making that leap into being full time. We were actually just working with someone this past week who is deciding to go all in in In the business, and they love doing this, and they want to do more of it. So we haven't had that conversation of, okay, now go build your website, set up your Google My Business and your social media pages, you know, this person doesn't even have a personal Facebook page, they really aren't existent on social media. And so I said, you know, Facebook is really crucial, you have to be on there, in order to really get your name out there. It's one of the main ways to get there other than, you know, Google My Business,
Collin 05:27
or other than referrals, but it is referrals through a digital medium. And so it's a great way to get access to people looking for that in that context. Well,
Meghan 05:35
and of course, there's social proof to if they go to Google your name, and you're nowhere to be found. They're going to question it.
Collin 05:42
And all of these questions that we're asking are things that you have to decide how much effort you want to put in. Because when you have a second, or sometimes a third income, there's not as much pressure on you to work at increasing sales and your clients. Anytime you have a more a more diverse set of income, there's not as much pressure on any one of those in particular. So as soon as you decide, I'm going all in on this, all of that pressure of making that function work and provide for you is on that thing.
Meghan 06:13
Or maybe you have a spouse, and they also work but you guys are trying to flip incomes. That's kind of what happened to us.
Collin 06:21
Exactly, yeah, we had to make that decision of what does that look like for us, because when it's your only thing, it completely changes your perspective on what you're willing to do for that. And what it means to you, when it is something that takes up just a few hours of your week, that could be the most special and spectacular hours of your week completely. But if that client walks away, or doesn't need you anymore, it doesn't impact you as greatly when that's the thing, putting food on the table.
Meghan 06:48
Another thing you have to consider is how much of this new career that you're potentially going to be entering is going to be eating up your time, because we have talked about this before. But you know, it's typically if you're solo, it's 6am to 10pm. Many, many days a week.
Collin 07:05
Yep. Including overnights if you offer those if you want to offer those, there is a lot that goes into this as far as time suck, and now go, Okay, well, I enjoy doing this 10 hours a week. But all of a sudden, I don't enjoy this doing 45 hours a week, that's not fun for me. And so don't think that you have to go into this and do this full time. You don't have to it's not necessary. It's not required. If you as we said our content are happy are loving this at 10 hours. That doesn't mean you're going to love it four times as much when you're working 40 hours a week. That is not that is that is not true in anything. And so again, if you're if you enjoy it that much, look into just keeping it that way.
Meghan 07:47
So a lot of this is internal, asking yourself a lot of questions before you jump into this.
Collin 07:54
It's mindset and understanding do I know do I recognize what I'm getting myself into? Because based on the kind of questions, comments, concerns that we see in our Facebook group, a lot of people did not count the costs did not take into consideration what they would be sacrificing what they would be asked to do. So it
Meghan 08:14
is part of mindset. But it's also very practical. You have a lot of practical things you need to do if you want to go full time. And the first one is do the numbers add up all we're talking about numbers again. Hey, your favorite topic,
Collin 08:27
favorite. Yeah.
Meghan 08:29
But yes, if you need help with budgeting, check out episode 294. So you sit down and go, How much do I need? And how much am I bringing in focus on the needs, because most likely, you're going to need to sacrifice for a time to make this work. By lowering what you need to make, there is less stress on what you have to bring in. So for a time, if you need to cut out extra eating out or trips to the store. If you love to shop on Amazon, maybe you'll have to cut that back a little bit. Because the faster the needs versus income match, the sooner that you can go full time.
Collin 09:06
Yeah, basically you you have to be the one that decides how much of my income do I need to see replaced with petsitting? Before I feel comfortable to step into this, right, you're looking at your finances and you're going when I reach 50% of my current income from my other job, is that comfortable enough for me to step out, or, or whatever. Because before you make that step, you have to make sure that all of your finances are in order, Megan said mentioned about lowering your needs, you're going to make that transition a lot faster when you do that. It's also going to be easier for you to make this transition if you have saved up an emergency fund of at least six months. And emergency funds are not exciting things. They're not very interesting. It's just a humdrum savings account with six months of your needs saved to help smooth over that because this is a really weird industry. One week you're working five hours Next week, you're working 900. So I like the 900 lately. So to smooth over all of that craziness, and really give you time to build up your client list and not stress out about it, save six months of needs, because the last thing you want to do is feel desperate to take on crummy clients who are trying to discount your prices and, and not abide by your policies and procedures. Just because you need the money. If you get into those situations, you you know that you need to take a step back and reassess.
Meghan 10:33
And it's so important to know your numbers, because if you're charging $10, for a dog walk, you're it's to just meet your needs every month, your food, your housing, whatever, you're probably going to have to have a ton and you're going to be working a ton of hours. So knowing what you charge and how much you need to meet, how much money you need to meet those needs. Is is basically what this really comes down to.
Collin Funkhouser 10:56
In my budgeting spreadsheet that I've put together, you enter the amount that you need to make for your personal needs. And you can enter amount your prices that you're charging, and it will calculate and spit out how many of those services at that price do you need to make your living. And you'll be shocked whenever you charge something and you still have to take out taxes and you still have to pay for business expenses, and all those things add up. So if you are not charging enough, you're working yourself to the bone and not actually getting anywhere. And you may feel like you're busy feel like you're productive. And you try and make that leap and go well, but I was busy. I was I was slammed every day. But actually the numbers aren't going in. So doing all that ahead of time because you don't want this to be a jump. You're not trying to make a jump again, you're trying to make this a nice step. And, and whatever that is for you. Is is what you have to decide. Some people may be comfortable with going okay, as soon as i i make that step, as soon as I make 70%. That's enough for me, because I know, when I quit my other job, that time that I used to be spending at that other job I could dedicate to my current to the petsitting and actually can make up for that.
Meghan 12:01
Yeah, how much income are you wanting to replace? Before you step out? Is it 70% of your full time job income? Is it 100%? When we focus on the numbers, we're really again, trying to make it a step instead of a jump or a leap? When you're looking at your numbers? What prep work have you done on your business? Have you already started marketing heavily and built out a business structure? Do you currently have a waitlist so if you had a nine to five before, and you only had your lunch break to do dog walks? Well, now your window has now opened up a lot you can do you know 10:10am To 2pm dog walks now. So are you building that waitlist have you let clients know that this is coming that you will be transitioning to full time, there's so much that you can do ahead of time you can build your website, you can set up your social media accounts, you can send out flyers, you can ask for reviews. And if you've already been doing this part time for a long time, you probably already have at least some of this setup. But it is very important to kind of grease the wheels as much as possible before you go full time. Once you do go full time, your time will quickly get consumed with the pet care. And during the visits, especially if you don't want to hire staff, you will be the one doing everything. And so sometimes the business stuff can get really pushed aside or, you know, you wait till the very end of the day, the last 30 minutes or hour that you have to the end of the day. And that's not super good. So as much as you can get done before you quit your job is the best.
Collin 13:28
And when you're thinking about this process, set realistic expectations for how long it's going to take you to make this transition. Many people say I started dogs walking next month, when can I go full time? Well, there's a lot of things that you've got to ask yourself, What things do you have in place? Do you have that emergency fund? Do you have your pricing sheet? Do you have your marketing plan? Do you have all of these things ready. And being honest, most people make the jump and they'd never had that in place and they make it. But that's just because the demand is there for pet care. And so you can not have the stuff have all the passion and still be okay. And that's totally great. But whenever you understand the numbers and what you're trying to do, and you can approach it in a much more risk averse manner. I think that's what really separates a lot of people who go from dreamer to founder is my understanding of what risk I'm willing to take on versus what I kind of need to plan for. And so having that six months of emergency fund, how long is it gonna take me to save that? Well, depends on how much you want. This depends on what you can do, right? But you have to balance that out. How much when do you grow the business? How long does it take me to put up the marketing. So all of that takes time. And we understand that so and you need to understand that as well. Whenever you're looking at this going I've started this I absolutely love dog walking and PET scanning. When can I go full time? Really look at the list of all the things answer all the questions that we've talked about up until this point and go set those into a timeline and go realistically what am I willing to do? And sometimes you may get impatient which is fine. Hey, go, Okay, I made 30% of my income. Let's go, let's do this. I know I can hit the boots running and I know I can do this. And so that that works. And it's just up to you to decide if you want that 30% 80% 100%. Before you're comfortable doing that
Meghan 15:15
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Collin 16:31
exactly. You have to decide what you love about this industry. Do you love doing the dog walks the Pet Sets that plan that plan it looks very different than if you love running an operating a business. You can be in pet care and feel a calling to serve people in their pets well and run the business. But do very few of the dog walks and actual Pet Sets. While you are going through this process. Ask some of the ask that deep question about yourself. What do I actually love? Is it the pet care? Is it running a business now understand that if you love the pet care, you aren't going to have to run a business,
Meghan 17:11
at least for the first little bit until you can train VAs and managers to do it for you.
Collin 17:16
You can grow that. But if you just love the fact of that you will be part of serving people and serving them well. You can have staff do that and run the back end and run them manage the business while having your other job whether that's a full time job or a part time job. You can have that if you'd like so asking yourself, What do I love about this? What actually is it that gets me excited every day. And it may be different from day to day. But that's not for you to decide.
Meghan 17:44
Going full time. It's also about gauging how much your time is worth when Colin came over full time. Hello, it was actually almost exactly a year ago, we looked at the numbers and saw that he's spent those 40 hours a week. It's actually 45 Because of your lunch break, right? You work a nine hour days.
Collin 18:03
And sometimes I had travel days where I was doing overnights across the state and going to conferences and things like that. So that wasn't it wasn't just 40 hours. But yeah, it was just a lot of time that I wasn't here.
Meghan 18:12
So we looked at all of those hours that he was away from home and away from working in our business. We we looked at those we said we could make so much more if he quit his full time job and we both didn't pet care full time. If you're working another job, that is time that you are blocked off from doing visits. So think about how much money you could be making. If you spent that time doing visits instead of working that job. Unfortunately, it's not always that simple. It's not always a one to one ratio, which is why again, having that emergency fund is really critical. Because when you step away from your other job that time won't instantly be filled with business. Unfortunately, just because you've opened up that 10am to 2pm window for dog walks and you quit your job doesn't mean the next day that's all going to be filled unless you build that waitlist but even then it may not be completely filled.
Collin Funkhouser 19:05
Going full time means you need to have your marketing game on point. When you're marketing really lean into those personal referrals. This is a an industry built on know like and trust as is everything but it's especially important here. When we are caring for people's furry family members and going into their homes. If somebody knows somebody who's used you, they're more likely to use you than if you just are a complete stranger off the street. So for a period of time, you may consider giving discounts when people share you with someone else. And they book that way you can integrate into people's social circles so they are doing marketing for you while you are doing other stuff.
Meghan 19:44
And you may not tell all of your clients about it if you have a clients that are in a more wealthy area like a country club area or some high rise apartment that's really expensive to get into. You may only tell those clients about it or
Collin 19:58
just some clients that you really Love and wish, oh, how do I get 10 More of you, regardless of their income level just because they treat you so well give them your referral code so they can go share it with people in their circles, however you want to work that decide and then see what it gets you.
Meghan 20:15
And I know we preach all the time about not giving discounts so you don't necessarily have to give a discount. No you don't. You can just say Hey, I am about to transition full time into this. I would love it if you would share it with your friends. Your experience working with me.
Collin 20:30
Yeah, this is just think of it this way as as an out the gate, grand opening, quick discount that will expire very soon and have timelines and set those up to protect yourself. But it is a great way to kind of grease those wheels as we've talked about before greasing the wheels for the business, the policies procedures, greasing the wheels of the marketing and the word of mouth for you to kind of get that going for you.
Meghan 20:51
It's also important to spend an hour a day boots on the ground marketing talking with that offices and dog trainers and anyone else in the pet care industry going into pet stores and seeing what kind of connections you can make in one of our service areas. There is a dog friendly coffee shop, and they love when we come in and we host our hiring interviews there
Collin 21:13
I do all of our in person interviews, there they it's really a great place to just sit and share and talk to people coming in.
Meghan 21:21
And if there are places in your community that are pet friendly, dog friendly, and you frequent them often, there's nothing like that personal connection that you have talk with the owners, if you always go to a certain pizza place, and they have a dog in their logo, or whatever it may be. Those relationships in your community are really going to help you along when you go full time in your business. And
Collin 21:45
they don't have to be dog specific or dog theme or even dog friendly. If you just personally enjoy going there or think it's valuable that they're in your community. Share about it, talk about it, post information about them to help boost them so that people see you and go oh, those are the people who are connected and make use the more reliable because you have that grounding. And that foundation in your community
Meghan 22:07
on social media create high quality, informative, shareable educational content that people can really engage with, not just something like, you know, my name is Jim, and I'll walk your dog posted about what you want to be doing, which can be hard, when you want to be doing dog walks and you aren't, you don't really have many of those, right? Maybe you can borrow a neighbor or a friend's dog to do a quick photo shoot, or just have them take a picture of you walking their dog down the street.
Collin 22:34
Because the more content that you can get out there of what you do, the more people will associate you with that. So if they always see photos of you walking dogs, they know Oh, you are the dog walker, you just have random photos of dogs and fields or stock photos of dogs doing other stuff that won't really associate in their mind about who you are and what you're doing. So the more of kind of kind of content as you can build and get, whether you're borrowing dogs or whatever, the better you offer up.
Meghan 23:01
If you are thinking about going full time, you also need to understand that we talked a little bit about this earlier, this is going to consume your time if you let it but I mean between the actual pet care, you know, fielding inquiries from potential clients boots on the ground, social media, website, everything blogs, you'll need, you'll be busier than ever really. And it's going to happen very quickly, you're going to quit your job. And then one day, you're going to look up and you're gonna go whoa, where where's that time I don't I need some time back. So don't forget to start setting up good systems that is going to help you save time. And obviously money as well automate as much as you can between social media posts, client inquiries, you know, if you want phone calls, great. But if you don't want them calling, you try to not put your phone number out there all the time. And instead send them right to your website or Facebook well, and
Collin 23:50
some advice that one of our Patreon members Beth gave is that she really recommended to invest the time in creating a business plan. And that really, it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but have a plan with goals, that marketing strategy, your pricing strategy. And there are a lot of free resources out there as well. There can be small business associations, there can be a community college, there could be courses, there could be a local business organization that you can go to and say, Hey, this is what I want to be doing. This is how I want to be doing it. And they'll be able to piece together and give you some of those resources. So you don't even have to build them on your own, which is something that I know a lot of people don't know about. And she also gave some great advice of when you're just starting out to have an idea of when to drop ideas when they're no longer working because the last thing you want to be doing is out there pounding away at something that is just not making any progress and being okay to step back from that. Reassess, make a new plan and then try again.
Meghan 24:48
I think one of the biggest things though, is not only to wait if you still have your full time job to not only prepare for when you quit your full time job but also to think really think about five years down the road. So you know it So if you are booking clients right now on pen and paper and doing Meet and Greet forums on pen and paper and just doing a Google calendar right now, is that really scalable? For what you want?
Collin 25:11
Well just ask yourself, What am I doing day to day right now? What do I want to be doing day to day in five years? And understand that that is a transition? That is another transition that you'll be doing? That is a process that you're going to have to work on? And to start implementing that? Yes. From day to day zero effectively of okay, it doesn't make any sense. Why am I investing all this time? And maybe money into these systems? I'm not there yet. Yes, but you will be. And it is much better to build on things that are robust, instead of trying to rip out the heart of your business and replace it with something because you didn't have them in there to begin with. It can be done. People do it all the time. But they will tell you, it's always painful.
Meghan 25:51
So as I mentioned a minute ago, we went full time, both of us about a year ago. And so our story for that really is basically because of the pandemic.
Collin 26:03
Yeah, yeah, we were running the business, it was a part time thing for us. I mean, Megan worked in it, I don't know if full time a lot is a lot of hours. Before that. I had a job outside of that. And I would fill in, in the early mornings, in the evenings, and on weekends to care for clients when I was able to, and the pandemic really made us take a hard look at the life that we were living and go, is this something we want to continue? Again, look at what you're doing today? Do we like our daily routine or daily tasks right now? If yes, okay, continue. But we didn't we want it, we realized that in five years, we wanted our day to day to look very different than what we were currently doing. And so we step back, we asked ourselves, how do we get to that five year plan? How do we get to that five years, day to day operations for us. And we realized that when we looked at our pet sitting business, that could get us there, that's actually what we could do. And then it took looking at the numbers. And that's what convinced me eventually of, I thought, there's no way that this could actually work for us, that we could actually replace my income from just this quarter, you know, to this little pet sitting thing that we were doing. And building that Excel spreadsheet, looking at what we were doing, looking at what we had already done, I think that was also important, I'm going if you're doing this part time, look at what you've already done, and be honest with yourself of the amazing thing that you've built. That is something that didn't exist before you started doing it, you created that. That is very empowering, feeling to look and go, Wow, all of these people are so happy because of things that I'm doing. And I'm making money off of it. Now, let's say I'm not working my 40 plus hour job anymore. How much more can I do? What does that do to our income? What does that do to my time with my family, and really assess pros and cons of that through the entire process. Now at that time, we set up a plan to go okay, it's going to be really tough. We're going to be crazy for a little while. But it won't always be like that, because we're going to start working towards something different in the business.
Meghan 28:09
Yeah, my memory of it is so your job during the pandemic, your job brought you home. It did. And that was very nice. To be around, you know, as a family as a cohesive unit all day. And yeah, you were still working. But it brought you home, you know, the kids could have lunch with you. Yeah. And so we saw that. And that was very important. Yeah, in March of 2021, your company said, time to go back to the office in the next month in April. And we said, Whoa, not super excited about this plan. Is there any way that you can still work from home? And they were like, No, this is, you know, they said, No, this is going to happen. And so we really took a few weeks to really settle in, say, hey, is this is this gonna work? Now you're going back? How does this now fit in? Because you had been home for over a year. And that was very nice. And we had gotten used to that. And we knew that we wanted more of that. And so a couple months later, we had made the decision after you looked at the numbers, and we're convinced, and I said, Yeah, of course. Like how this podcast happened of you came to me and I said, Absolutely. Let's do this. And with the full time thing. I was like, Yes, this totally makes sense. You showed me the numbers. And you know, it's been great.
Collin 29:23
Yeah, it has. But that's we had that plan. We had that vision, we had that goal, that idea. And we knew that we could make it work because of what we wanted out of it. And ultimately, when you decide is what I'm doing Am I content with what I'm doing now? You reach a point sometimes where you're no longer content and you look around and you go what do I need to change? What is making me on content what's what's what's make that kind of work? This content? Yes, what is causing my discontentment in my life? And you will find things when you take deep introspection, then Next step is after you've pinpointed that of going, what do I do about that? Am I willing to do something about that and move forward, you do reach that point where you can no longer stay where you are because you realize there's something better or something different, that is going to actually fulfill you in more and better ways. And that is why we put together this episode is to go, okay, you've reached that point where you've kind of scratching around going something doesn't feel right, should I do this, and it's a mental game. It's an emotional game, psychological game, it's a practical game of putting those steps and realizing, I now want to make my life look different. I now have to, I have to do things differently. And I've got to work that to get to that endpoint. So you have to decide, are you gonna start, or you're gonna not, and that's okay.
Meghan 30:53
So if you are waffling on going full time or not, we would love to talk with you and help you through areas that you have concerns, you can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com, or we are on Facebook, or Instagram at petsitter. confessional business coaching is hatia opionion, is going to answer the question, how do I fire a client
31:15
firing is fine. It takes me a lot to fire our client. The great thing is we have that service agreement, usually it helped guide us and we get to treat the client like we would treat an employee, right, if you did something at work, you would get written up. And so I say treat clients in the same manner. You know, if they want to get your service agreement, you mentioned it to them in writing. Hey, Colin, we noticed you did ask for this request, I want to result back to paragraph two in our service agreement, just reminding you of our process. Usually you don't want to fire a client until it's like a repetitive behavior, that they're just completely disrespecting the terms of the agreement, they you know, they're not satisfied, it's just doesn't make sense. And at that point, you just have to let them know that you're not a great fit. And I always start off with letting the client know, it's been a pleasure working with you and Fido. And we've sincerely enjoyed our time together. Unfortunately, I'm noticing that I may be standing in the way of you finding the best fit for your family, we're going to go ahead and remove walk with Renzo and Ruby, effective, whatever. So we can make sure if I were to receive the best care for your family, I always put it back to them, like I'm gonna get out of the way. You know, I'm seeing here that maybe we may not be the best fit. And I'm not, it's not like you're I'm breaking up with you, you know, you're not a good fit for me, I just put it to myself, I'm gonna remove myself, I would never stand in the way of you finding the best fit for your family.
Collin 32:51
So how do we overcome the emotional side of that, right? Because many of us are very emotionally attached to our clients, we view them as family, we think they view us as a family. So how do we get to that point where I'm able to hit sand after I've typed all that out and overcome that small barriers? Well, I
33:07
know us better than anybody that we do not get to that emotional side even want to think about hitting set until the client has really beat us up. Like we as pet professionals, we're really patient. And we try and try and try because we don't want to lose the animal, we know that the animals not doing this for like we know, it's your mom, it's your dad. So we know that when we get to the firing phase, the client has really beaten us up a little bit like it's just non stop this and that. And it's just never seems to make them happy. That's just how we are like we're always willing to get back in the ring with our clients when it comes to this business. So usually, if you get to that sin button, I think most of us are just had, we're just so tired at this point. We're just tired of fighting. It seems like in that desert when we hit send, emotionally to detach from the dog. Sometimes, you know, you do have to say this is business sometimes like you know what? Your mom or dad is not happy with me or what we're doing. But unfortunately, if I keep bending my rules to satisfy this one scenario, I'm hurting all the other clients that need me also. And it's always the time when know that they're arguing about we know like the things right it's usually the time window or having the same you know, pet sitter Walker. Well, if I guarantee you the 12 o'clock time window, I'm going to be failing all the other clients that are coming behind you, you know that I'm not giving myself cushion. If I promised you the same Walker now I'm going to be failing my staff member who desperately deserves a vacation with their family. You know, so I look at my whole operation. When it comes to one like I am so strict on not going against my pre qualifying questions, because I know that if a client says that, oh, my dog has had a bite incident, well, now I'm going to cause anxiety and liability to my staff who may come into that business. And then they're going to be stressed out, every time they see the dog, they're going to hate their job, and they're going to take that bad energy to all the other dogs for the rest of the day. If the client says, Oh, well, no, the dog is skittish, and they have to have the same person. Well, I know that I can't take this client, because I know that I love for my team to have a work life balance, like I like. And if they have to be tied to this one dog, it's gonna throw a wrench in the whole schedule. So for me, it's so much more anxiety to help one person where I'm like, Oh, this is gonna be a snowball effect. Because if we only put Natasha on the east, and then she's gonna go over to the west, that's gonna mess up the whole thing, and it's gonna be worse, and then we're gonna get more clients complaining to us. So for me, it's usually a snowball effect, or I do seeing is cancer. And in my business mind, I'm like, I have to cut the cancer, unfortunately, because it's gonna grow within my whole business, and it's gonna affect everybody else. So that's the kind of thing that you do kind of got to get a little tough with yourself, and tell yourself what you got to tell yourself. But I noticed the snowball effect for me, I'm like, I don't want to Oh, you want to present note, we're not going to be a good fit. Oh, you only want to overclock up note, we're not gonna be a good fit, because I know what it's gonna look like later.
Collin 36:24
Yeah, so that's, that's on both sides of the of the knowing what's gonna be a good fit. And then recognizing when it's no longer a good fit on the back end to so you can get this is why those policies those service agreements are so important to have, so that you can recognize when something's no longer working, so that you can kind of push through those emotions. And look, I know here, it's written black and white about what you're supposed to do, and you're not doing it. So now, we have to move away from this because we're no longer I like phrasing it like that. We're no longer a good fit for you and stepping back.
36:55
And really, when you lean on the surface screaming, he has made the service agreement, like the bad guy, you know, yeah, like, Hey, this is the terms that we agreed to in order for us to serve everyone in the community, and we have to stand by them. The only issues is if you as the business owner, don't enforce your service agreement, then that's when you come into an issue because it's already written out for you. Or you just ignore it altogether. Otherwise, if you just mention it and reference it, the client understands.
Meghan 37:29
If you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at automated co.com and use the code P SC 24 15%. Off. Thank you to pet sitters associates, our wonderful Patreon members and you for listening to this and sharing the episodes when they are of interest to you. And
Collin 37:47
we'd love to know what got you started. But also when you decided that this was your thing that you wanted to keep doing it or you want to do it full time. We'd love to know what that trigger was for you and why you're still working on this.
Meghan 38:00
I'll talk to you next time.
38:01
Bye
