307: Workflows and Productivity with Doug Keeling
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Summary:
What does it mean to be productive? How do we get work done, other than the pet care? Doug Keeling, owner of Bad to the Bone Pet Care, joins the show to share his workflows in his business. Whether you decide to use technology or pen and paper, the first step is writing your ideas and projects down so you have a place to reference it later. From communications to implementing new ideas, Doug shares how important it is to have a review system. When you know how you work, you’re better able to get feedback and stay on track to make sure you’re accomplishing your goals and objectives.
Topics on this episode:
Role of technology
What makes a good workflow?
Capturing new ideas
Setting up time for review
Main take away? Good workflows are essential to peace of mind, so you never worry about forgetting what you have to do.
About our guest:
Doug Keeling in the Owner and founder of Bad to the Bone Pet Care, Vice President of the Florida Pet Services Association, and Founder of the Northeast Florida Pet Professionals Network. Over the past six years, Doug has built an award winning team of in-home pet care professionals across Northeast and Central Florida. Bad to the Bone Pet Care is currently a team of 30 pet sitters and dog walkers offering fully customizable personable care and is constantly growing. It is Doug's goal to show the pet care community, and the world, that through compassion and love we can truly make a difference. Be sure to follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and his blog to follow his teams progress as we continue to expand. Feel free to email him any questions you may have about starting and growing a pet care business.
Links:
Learn about the Florida Seminar: https://www.petbusinessmarketing.com/florida
Previously on:
Episode 18:https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/018-bad-to-the-bone
Episode 53: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/053-business-structure-with-doug
Episode 185: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/185
Episode 244: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/244
https://badtothebonepetcare.com/
https://badtothebonepetcare.com/forpetsitters
https://www.facebook.com/BadtotheBonePetCare/
doug@badtothebonepetcare.com
Instagram: @badtothebonepetcare & @thewanderingpetsitter
Links for Dom Hodgson
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-poodle-to-pitbull-pet-business-podcast/id1395354685
On Episode 112:https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/112
Episode 151: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/151
Episode 259:https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/259
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, workflow, clients, people, doug, important, notebook, step, day, idea, business owners, documents, communication, build, app, talk, phone, florida, writing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Doug
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 brought to you by Time to Pey and Pet Sitters International.
Collin Funkhouser 00:22
Hello, everybody and welcome back. Today we are super excited to have Doug Keeling owner of Bad to the Bone pet care back on. He was previously on episode 1853. And he helped us out on some roundtables on episode 185 and 244. Doug is with us today to talk about workflows in business and making sure that we stay organized using whatever methods that we need to get our business running and stay creative as business owners. Doug, thank you so much for taking time out of your really busy schedule today and talking with us, could you please introduce yourself to our new listeners and people who haven't had the chance to listen back to those episodes?
Doug 00:58
Oh, thank you so much for having me on, Colin. It's always such an honor to be on the podcast and just to get to talk with you. You know, I so appreciate you and I appreciate everyone listening. If you haven't heard my previous episodes, I am the owner and founder of Bad to the Bone pet care. We are an award winning team of pet sitters and dog walkers servicing the majority of Northeast and Central Florida. I also offer traveling specialty pet care all over the world while managing my team remotely. I'm also the Vice President of the Florida Pet Services Association. I'm the founder of the Northeast Florida pet Professionals Network. And I also have a YouTube channel. It's the Bad to the Bone picture YouTube channel where I try to share my knowledge and my experience as a pet business owner to help others succeed. And I also regularly write for pet sitter World Magazine. So I've added a couple of things to my intro since the last time I was on, it's it's been a crazy couple of years.
Collin Funkhouser 02:05
It's a reminder, I need a new bio from you to captures all that. But with with all that going on, you know, there's a lot of things that you have moving. And so I can imagine that staying organized. And keeping everything on track is important for you. I know you're kind of a self described nerd and you have a past in in technology and working with that computers and stuff. So what role does technology and I'll let you define what that means for you? What role does that play in managing all that you do?
Doug 02:37
Oh, well, like I said, I mean, I have a team of 27 people currently and we are hiring. If you want to be a pet sitter or dog walker in the Jacksonville or Lakeland areas, please apply on our website. But like I said, I manage my team remotely. I live I just moved actually. And I live six hours away from our main service area now nine hours away from our for this service area. So technology is totally vital to every aspect of my business. I mean, I run my entire team, from my phone and from my laptop. So staying organized and having everything documented properly. Knowing that everything is going to be done in a recurring and repeatable fashion. It all comes back to technology. And this is something that I totally overlooked the first couple of years in business. Even the last time I was here on the podcast, I still didn't have a lot of this stuff figured out. I'm learning every day I tell everyone that I learned everything the hard way, you know, that's just kind of how I am as a as a person. But it's it's something that, you know, I know that Tasha is on the podcast a good bit, and I've learned a lot of this from her and it's technology is everything to my business,
Collin Funkhouser 04:07
you know, in your in your typical day, Doug, what kinds of things are you are you using to manage and communicate with people and keep it organized? Because I think that's really important, especially with a team of 27 working remotely. What is a way that you let's just start with communication. I know what kind of categories you may have, but what are you using to communicate with, with both your staff internal and external?
Doug 04:32
Yeah, so we have a kind of a myriad of different things overlaying for our phone system. I'll start with that for our phone system. We use grasshopper. It's been a total game changer for us because we have, we're able to have a separate business line that we can set set office hours so that we're not getting phone calls and text messages all throughout the night and on the weekends on Atlanta. everything. And the way that the app works is my manager that handles the scheduling and invoicing and such for my team. When a client contacts us via that phone number, it goes directly to her phone. So we don't have to have a separate phone, it's a separate phone line. And then if she's on vacation or off the clock, you know, she can just turn off notifications on the app. And then the phone calls and text messages can come to my phone, or to another member of our team, we can just have them download that grasshopper app and sign in. And they can handle the text messages and the phone calls and everything. And then while my manager is having those conversations via the app, I can pull it up, you know, here on my laptop from wherever I am, and monitor these conversations and make sure that things are being said in the appropriate way that nothing is being missed. There's just always oversight in that in that frame. So we use that for part of our communication. Once a client has signed up and is using our services, we require all communication to go through the time to pet app, time to pet has that instant messaging feature. So our team members do not have our clients phone numbers, our clients do not have our team members, phone numbers, all communication goes through the time to pet app. And again, that allows me the opportunity to monitor these conversations and make sure that nothing's ever falling through the cracks. We also use Slack, we have all of our team on Slack, we have different channels for different projects that we're working on for different things. Slack has been really great for just keeping us organized. And then that's for more work related things. We also have a private Facebook group that we use, we have all of our team in there, and we use it for more nonchalant, not as important things. So we do some community outings, we do get togethers we do things like that, where it's not going to totally make or break anything, if they miss it on the Slack channel. We have the Facebook group for that. You know, that's kind of how we handle communication from a from a broad standpoint. Yeah, how do you guys handle communication with your team?
Collin Funkhouser 07:39
Yeah, so we do slack as well. And we actually have that converted to be the primary point of contact with people in our company, where there's instead of different channels for different projects, there's channel channels with different topics. So we'd have like a break room of resources, if a photo, another general topics that we can cover in that way. And that way we're communicating in there. We also have text messaging, a group text messaging through our software as well. That gives us that collaboration impact, because I think, as you start to grow and add and get a little bit more complex that communication is of primary importance, right? When we stress about communicating with our clients, and making sure that they are well informed. As soon as you add another team member or another person in your business, whether that's a VA, whether that's a tax accountant or anything like that, or an actual employee, you have to be able to get real time feedback and communication with that person. And so the the text channels and staff communication with one another, has really been invaluable, allowing them to use each other as a resource and rely on one another, as opposed to always going up the chain and asking questions, and seeking out that information that they need in that moment.
Doug 08:54
Yeah, that's huge. That's huge, especially as your team grows, and your service area grows, having your team members be able to communicate with each other and rely on each other instead of, you know, hounding you or hounding your manager constantly that it's, it makes a huge difference.
Collin Funkhouser 09:13
Because it's less burden on you mentally, if they get more immediate interaction and feedback and information which they're seeking. Because nobody wants to have a question. You're sitting in a visit, and you have a question to then send up to get in contact with somebody or who knows, and then have to sit there and wait, and then you know, maybe get a response, maybe not having those reliable. I think that all comes down to designing good workflows. And you know, Doug, you've got a lot of complexity there. So, I know when we look at our business, we don't really think about us doing tasks in an order. We kind of just do them to get them done. So for you. How do you sit down and look at all of the operations that your business does and decide what makes A good clean workflow for people in the business. Oh, wow.
Doug 10:05
workflow, having a good, organized workflow and having really everything in your business, as systematized and automated as possible is absolutely essential to scaling and growing. For me, you know, I started this years ago, when I first started bringing people on, I guess, seven or eight years ago now, I, first thing I did was I created a workflow for the actual visits that they would be doing. And the way that I did that is that the biggest advice I can give to people here is to not overthink it. This does not have to be super complicated. And what I did is I said, you know, I don't have time to sit down and write out every little step. You know, I don't, I wouldn't even know where to start. So I just started the voice recorder on my phone. And as I showed up to a client's house, I put my phone in my shirt pocket, and I talked out loud through each and every step that I did. Okay, I'm parking here. I know, I know, to park here, because XYZ, I'm inserting the key into the door, I'm keeping my hand on the doorknob. As I enter, I am listening to hear the door latch behind me, all of these little things that we do that are sometimes subconscious that you don't even think about, but that are so so important to what we do. I just talked through it, as I did a dog walk as I did a drop in visit. And I created these voice recordings, you know, I did about three for each service that we were offering. And I sent the recordings off to a va, a virtual assistant and I said, Please transcribe these, she she transcribed the voice recordings into a step one, step two, step three, step four. And then I went through and I edited it, I added things I took things out. And as our our services have changed over the years, you know, they're kind of these documents are always malleable, you know, and that I think that is very important to know that once you create this document, it's not concrete forever. It's it's a good guy. And so, don't overcomplicate it, don't overthink it, just start the voice recorder on your phone, walk through the process. And then you can either sit down and transcribe all this, you can have someone else transcribe it. And then once you have a good step by step document outlining these things, then you can take that document and you can create visual aids. I think visual aids really go a long way in making sure that everyone fully understands the entire workflow from Step A to step Z. Just to give you an example, here, my new client onboarding process, it's I think it's like a 12 page document. Now and I say that, and it's like, How could your new client onboarding process be a 12 page document? Well, it's because I want to make sure that everything is covered. When I handed this document to someone else, I need to know that they can follow each and every step in this guide, without having to contact me whether they've ever done it before or not. Yeah, and then you create these visual aids is part of my new client onboarding process, you know, I have it. One part of the guide is for my manager to follow on the admin side, one part of the guide is for the steps that my then you client will be following that I think is important for our team to know. And then there's also after the administrative stuff is done, there's things that the senator needs to do. The meet and greet is part of that. There's things before and after the meet and greet, you have the step by step process written out. But then I have like a video of me just talking through the entire process. So the the team member can read through it, they can watch the video. And then there's like a little guide, a little map that I had drawn, you know, as part of the guide where it shows like the client signing up on the website, and then it shows my manager contacting them via the phone and getting set up on time to pay. It's, it all comes together. So like I said, I started by doing that for drop in visits and dog walks several years ago. And then as people started helping with administrative things, I started doing it with each administrative task. And now at this point in my business, you know, I can pull up a Google Drive folder, and I can print out a document bid on anything that my business does, whether it's hiring, marketing, anything and everything, and I can just send this guide to someone without me saying anything. And they should be able to follow this guide and do exactly what I would do and come to the exact same
Collin 15:16
result. And I will say, I think it's also important to note that if you are listening, if you don't have a staff, you don't have a team, I think it's still very important to sit and think through and document what you do in your business. Because I think you'll find that there may be missing pieces, there may be pain points, there may be ways to make it better, and refine that process. So for your sake, and your sanity, and for the sanity of your clients and people who are coming in and interacting with your company, that still goes well. And is you may feel like I don't understand why everybody is having problems with the onboarding, or they get to this step. And they always contact me, well, have you prep them? What does that workflow look like? Have you tried testing the button. And I really, really liked the idea of putting together a visual guy with a flowchart of this happens, this happens, because that's, that's my go to, whenever I sit down to think about what's happening is I grab a pencil on paper, and my notebook and I start drawing out circles actions that have to happen, linking them together. And what's really neat is when you sit down, you do the basics. And then you'll refine it and go okay, add steps between those, okay, add steps between those ad sets between those, and you get this really, really fine, tiny step to tiny step movement along whatever you're doing. And so it's really neat to hear that you did it first with it, the actions, the service that you provided, and then move to the administration. I think that's a progression that a lot of people take, okay, I need somebody to handle this. And just getting in that mode of thinking through the processes. And what am I thinking? Because, you know, if you're bringing on staff you're going, how do I teach them? How to open a door? Do I, I guess I need to write a workflow for opening a door. And for some people, yeah, it's, you know, what do you do, because something that I noticed is kind of pet people who are used to their own pets, they opened the door, and it just goes really wide. And I sit back with a massive panic attack as this door sits there, open for 10 seconds, like shut the door?
Collin Funkhouser 17:22
No, like, I'm going to talk you through how to open it, where to put your foot foot, like you said, Doug, what to be listening for shutting? Like all that stuff. You may go, how do I teach people this? Well, first, you have to tell them? And if you don't know what to tell them, but you have to start by thinking about what you do.
Doug 17:38
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, I can tell you, when I first started putting all this stuff in writing, you know, each each thing was one page, you know, my, my new client onboarding process was one page, it was one page for a drop, and there's a one page for a dog walk. Now, these are all, you know, 10 Plus page documents for each and everything. Because over time, you realize that you do have to put how to open a door in writing. Yeah, I didn't think that I had to do that eight years ago. But as you go through business, and your business grows, and you hire people and train people, you really see the importance of all of these things. And, you know, especially for me having such a wide service area and such a large team and managing a room remotely. I mean, if I don't know that each and every single thing is being done exactly the way that I would do it, then there's no way I would be able to sleep at night, you know, I I would be going crazy. I had someone asked me the other day, how do you manage all this? Well, I manage it, because I have it all in writing. And I know my team's got the documents, and I trust them. You know, I know that they've gone through these documents, and I've tested them on them, I've created quizzes about these documents. And before I send them into a client's home, I require an A, a passing grade on these tests, you know, and, again, just part of that workflow. And for anyone that's listening, that does not have a team or does not want to grow a team still put this stuff in writing because a you know, if you want to sell your business one day, you know your client list has some value to it, your brand has some value to it. But where the real juices is your systems and processes and your way of doing things. These workflows is what differentiates you and your business from the other dog walker down the street. That's it, anybody can go walk a dog but it's how how are you doing it? What are the things that you are focusing on? What are you including in your update? These things are really what makes the big difference at the end of the day. So not only will putting this stuff in writing allow you to do hire and delegate and scale, it'll allow you to sell your business one day, or let's just say knock on wood, you have an emergency, you get into a car accident and you're a solo pet sitter, and these babies are expecting you to be there to feed them, these clients are relying on you. And if you don't have an emergency backup in place that can pick up these documents and say, Oh, Doug's in the hospital right now. But I can see from these documents that this is exactly what he would be doing. If you don't have that in writing, then what's going to happen to those clients that you have to think about every single thing in the running of your business? You do? It's
Collin Funkhouser 20:43
it's all those details are important. And just keeping them in your head is really a liability. I feel like and it is kind of hard to figure out. Okay, why is this important for me to write down but like you outlined there, there's a lot of benefits here and as law benefits to refining and making a difference and looking at it. So that it is easy, because we carry a lot of mental burden. And I'm glad you touched on that Doug of like, there's there's the burden of the business just running itself and being an existing and you don't want to be forgetting things or how to operate at any stretch, whether you're busy, whether you're stressed whether you know, late night's sleep or whatever, like you want to be able to do it well and outlining them really helps you put all that into place for yourself in your essay, you don't miss things when they when they happen. Have you heard of time to pet Dan from NYC pooch as this to say time
21:36
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Collin Funkhouser 21:56
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Doug 22:08
I heard a podcast the other day saying that, I think I think he said we make 35,000 decisions in a day, the average person makes 35,000 decisions in a day. Now multiply that times 27 team members like I have, that's a cheat. I don't know the math on that. But hundreds of 1000s of ways that things could be done differently or be done incorrectly every day. By putting this stuff into writing and having a guide that these people can follow it eliminates so many decisions that they would have to make in the process. And if you can eliminate decisions that people have to make, that's that much more time and energy and effort that they can put into doing things the right way and to loving the pets and to making sure that they're really getting the love and care that they deserve. And me you know that and that's what it really all comes down to.
Collin Funkhouser 23:11
Yeah, I forget to set it but our brain is excellent at creating, not remembering. And so the more we can offboard a lot of these things, the more we will be freed up, like you said to pay attention to other things if my staff, if you are going through the operations and going, I don't know what the next step in this is. If you have that written down where you can reference it and then do that you are going to be more apt to notice the slight limp, or the different things about the house or things that you need to also be paying attention to other than just step step, step, step step, because it's we do so much more than that every time we're interacting with a client or their pet.
Doug 23:51
Yeah, absolutely. One thing that I like to do at the end of my guides is you know, I have the step 1234 however many steps it is, and I have it all outlined. And at the end of each one of these documents, I put all of the outline situations that I've seen over the years, I say, this may like this probably will not happen. But if it does, because I've seen it once before, this is how you would address the situation and those are those crazy things that you hope never happens. But you know, you've been doing this for over 10 years. You've seen things that someone that's been petsitting one year probably has never seen. So getting that stuff in writing it just goes so far.
Collin 24:41
It does it does. You get that experience a lot faster and you get helping give those teaching moments and can pull from that so you know whether you've been in business 10 years or a year you have experiences to pull from and that are gonna help shape how you handle situations and I think that is important to to reflect on and to capture Are those as they come up so that you remember them? So that on that side of things duck, you know, you're you're running a business, but you also, I've learned more and more that being a business owner is more about being like, creative and, and thinking and processing things. So for you how, how do you capture new ideas, and stay organized with your thoughts?
Doug 25:26
This is one of my biggest challenges, because I'm a, I'm totally like ADHD, you know, I have a million ideas in my head all of the time. And I'm always wanting to go and do and, and just, I want to be in 10 places at once talking to 10 people at once all of the time, and I'm constantly having to reel myself back in and say, What will well, you can't do all that at one time. So finding a way to keep all of these ideas and thoughts and things organized just on a day to day basis, is a struggle, it is a struggle. And I know that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this, you know, be we want to make, we want to build a brand, we want to build a business that will support ourselves and our families and our team, you know, and with that comes changing economic conditions, changing factors of our own lives, our mission and our vision for our businesses changes over time. So what I do, and what I recommend to everyone to do is I carry around this notebook. I carry around a notebook every day with me, I don't go anywhere without it. And I constantly as things come through my mind, I'm writing it down, I'm crossing things out, I'm circling things, I'm highlighting things, I'm drawing little diagrams. And I've tried to do this on the Notes app on my phone. But for me, I think there's so much to be said about physically pausing yourself and what you're doing and writing it down where you can see it and be able to highlight underline circle, you can't really do all of that on the Notes app on your phone. And when you physically take the time to pause and write and look at it on the piece of paper in front of you. You can kind of have an instant gut reaction of like, okay, that doesn't need any more of my time, I can move on from that, or you'll write it down and you say, Okay, this needs a whole page to itself, you know, and then you start writing, you start drawing you get you get it all out onto that page. And then you can take a step back and say, Okay, this might need a whole notebook of itself, or rip the page out and move on. And I've gotten a lot better over time of, you know, I'll write it all out. And then I have to give myself a couple of days to kind of sit on the idea and process it. Think about it, before I start taking it to other people. I used to be really bad about get a crazy idea. And I would just start calling up people on my team, hey, what do you think about this, or I'll call a client? Hey, what do you think if we would do this, taking the time to pause and just simmer on it, sleep on it a little bit, really goes a long way for me. And then after that getting feedback, you know, I have a excellent manager on my team, I wouldn't know what I would do without her. So after I've sat on something for a couple of days, then I'll take the idea, whatever it is to her, and I'll get her feedback on it. And and if it's a green light from her, then that's when I start connecting with my peers. And that's something that is all thanks to what you and Meghan have done with this podcast and the community that you've built on Facebook. You know, several years ago, when I was starting my business, we didn't have a place where we could connect with our peers and run out of ideas past other business owners like we do now. You know, now if I have a crazy idea, and I simmer on it for a couple of days, and I get the green light from the manager on my team. Now I can go into the sitter confessional Facebook group and I can say, Hey, has anyone else done this? Has anyone else thought about doing this and start putting together those puzzle pieces. Okay, so and so in Texas has done this and they had this response from their clients so and so in Maryland has done this, let's pull in their advice, their experience, and start really putting this puzzle piece together so that by the time you get to actually launching the ID Yeah, you know, you have a knowledge base to work from, you're not just totally winging it, you know, I. And then, so after that, you know, I start building, that's when I started building my spreadsheets. I know, we both love our spreadsheets and stuff. And that's where I start putting together the workflow, you know, okay, I'll have a column of so and so said this, this and this, we need to pull this into this part of the workflow. And then my manager is going to handle this, I'm going to have the VA handle this, this is going to be our launch date, you know, I have it all color coded. And all this stuff starts coming together on a screen where I can see it step by step, like I was saying earlier, and then it you start building these documents, you start and then I always try stuff on a select group, before I roll it out to our entire client base. I have a few clients that have been with us for years and years now that, you know, they're just total brand ambassadors for us. And I know that if I get a green light from, let's say, you or someone in your Facebook group on an idea that I've added in from my manager, that's I can call up one of these clients. And I can say, Hey, would you mind if we tried this with you and your pups first, and let me get your feedback, and you can give me You know, I like this, I don't like this. And once I've done that with these few select clients, then I'll roll it out to everyone. And same thing with my teams to you know, if it if it's to do with a change, or an idea with my team, you know, I'll try it with my manager. First, I cannot tell you how many times I've called her up and said, Hey, Brenda, would you mind if you be the guinea pig? You know, she's so used to that phone call from me. What's your process for this? Yeah, so
Collin Funkhouser 32:01
I love physical notebooks as well. You know, I carry one with me, I carry a field notebooks notebook. And their thing is what I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now. Because we need to be actionable. And so I'm very intentional about how I capture things and where they go. And if I'm free flowing an idea, that definitely goes in a workbook, because there's gonna be a lot of connections here, if I'm just trying to capture a quote, or a number or a statistic, I open up my phone, and I use an app called drafts, to capture everything, that's where all of my text starts. That's where my text messages, that's where my emails go, that's where everything goes to start. And then I can share it out from there, there's a bunch of different connections on an iPhone that you can go from there. Then I kind of I do also use spreadsheets, I go there for workflows and numbers. And I start working out what things are actually going to look like. When it comes to capturing just information and trying to build connections. I use an app called notion on the Mac, that kind of helps me build an internal database of connections and resources that you can kind of point to and tag and search. There's a there's a whole laundry list of other apps in there that if you're if you're a kind of person who likes connected information, there's obsidian, there's notion there's cast is another one that are a whole suite of kind of ag platform agnostic and operating agnostic applications. So whether you're on Windows or Mac, or you work in a browser, you can start taking links, ideas, you can start taking emails and photos and dumping them into these places and getting them organized. So that you can do something with them later. Maybe it's just a store them while you think about them. But then you can action item and you can build a website from them. Or you can start making workflows, you know, notion has a way to build an internal CRM, just within its own thing. So if you needed to splice something together real quick, it's great for that kind of thing. And then, as you said, there, Doug, it's like that last step of going, I have to do something with this. Now I've built it. I've outlined it in my notebook, I've captured it because that capture part is so important to go. I this idea cannot escape me we're too busy, we have to think too much going on. So ever you want to capture it, whether it is on a phone where there's not a notebook, put it down somewhere, but then you also have to review that and doing that on a daily basis or weekly basis. I do mine on a weekly basis. Every Friday I sit down and I look back to that week and I go What did I miss? What did I not check off and I have a system of of hashes and exclamation points and arrows on my notebook kind of bullet journal style to keep track of things that I've done or that ideas I need to act on. And then I go did I put that anywhere? Did it go into notion? Is that an email? Is it a text message? Is that a video I need to make? Yeah, what what's the next step from this and then putting that into, you know, either a Reminders app or a workflow system like Google Sheets, or Google doc so that you can start outlining what you need to do. And then sharing it with somebody, my review, and Megan and I are constantly reviewing with each other back and forth going out of this out, and they're going, like no next step. But it is critical. But because you have to get other eyes on that before you just go out and implement it, and having that connection to somebody. And I know for us, it's always a struggle then of going, how much time do I give this idea to work? Before I decide to can it? And or do I need to go ooh, do I need to wait another day or another couple hours to see if this works? How do you make that call? Doug, whenever you put an idea out into the world, how much time do you give it before you decide whether it's going to work or not?
Doug 35:50
Yeah, well, it depends. It depends on the idea depends on how busy we are. At the time, if I'm traveling or not it there's a lot of things that go into that. For me, I always try to work on a 90 day timeline, pretty much everything that I do in my personal life. And in my business life, I do a 90 day timeline. So I give myself the first 30 days to do everything that I just talked about, you know, I'm sketching out the idea in my notebook, I'm connecting with others getting their input on it, I'm creating some preliminary spreadsheets and permanent preliminary Google Docs and things like that. And then just really making sure that this is something that's viable, that is going to be the right next step, then that second set of 30 days. That's where I'm on Asana, and I'm building out the workflow there. I think you said notion you use notion in place of Asana.
Collin Funkhouser 36:55
Yeah, that's, that's actually where I dump all my information. So if I'm researching a topic, I'll actually dump it on there. And then it does have a project management tracking system that you can build internally. It's a bit more fiddly. Asana is definitely the way to go. If you're looking for a built like, dedicated, we're going to track this project because there's a sauna and there's also Trello. I know a lot of people use as well, when working big projects.
Doug 37:20
Yeah, Asana Trello. And I've never used it, but I've heard good things about Monday, monday.com. Yeah, so that second set of 30 days, it's like, you know, I'm starting to get things kind of refined and polished and more step by step in that in there. And then that last 30 days is you're, you're launching it, you're trying it, you're figuring out all the kinks, working everything out. And then like at the end of the 90 day, that's that's where I'm kind of making the decision. Okay, is this something that we just need to walk away from and say we tried it? And next, or am I rolling it out to all of our clients and all of our team. But a lot of, I'm a procrastinator, I'll admit it. So I know that I give myself this 90 days, and I know that like my first 30 days is all about sketching it out, and all of that kind of stuff. But I find myself all the time. Kind of like I create these, like arbitrary deadlines in my mind, and I have them on my Google Calendar, and I have them written everywhere. And then I'm waiting until the last minute on everything, and then I'm scrambling. And I know a lot of a lot of us are guilty of that. But, and that's, um, that's something that we all have to focus on and work on as business owners that, you know, it's in one hand, we have to get better about not progressing. But in the other hand, we have to remember that it's okay, to procrastinate just because you have an idea today, that does not mean that you have to do that today and have it launched next week. You know, it that used to be me. I used to try to rush through this stuff. And then I would like be hard on myself when I didn't have it launched by this arbitrary deadline that I had set for myself. Meanwhile, I was hiring and training and onboarding new clients and all of these other pieces. And, you know, I think it's it's okay to take a step back and say, You know what, it's summer right now, you know, we're recording this in August. This is a really busy time for pet sitters. We just came out of, you know, July is crazy for a lot of pet sitters. And, you know, July, it's not really the time to be doing some of this kind of stuff. You can push some of this off. Like I have a whole list of ideas in my notebook that, you know, it's July ideas that I'm going to, I'll start that 90 day process maybe in September, but the ideas were written down in July. You Ella, and sets
Collin 40:01
get being okay with not acting on them. And I think that's a, that's a wonderful thing to do when you do a review go. Okay, is that is this thought, something I need to do right now? Okay, can I do it right now? If not, okay, I need to put that somewhere else? Or is this idea something that I need? What do I need and thinking of context to around your ideas, maybe you want to rip out your entire software that you use to run your company or you want to implement a software. Like you said, like, that's not the time to do it at Christmas, or, or in July. We have to get some other things in place. And so writing out okay, here's the step this idea up. Now, let me brainstorm and put some things down. Like what context do I need to have around to make this work and so it's feasible, so I can set myself up for success. So I'm not going like, today's the day, I'm just going to hit sand or I'm going to start and you don't have anything in place, you haven't done any communication, you haven't done any gathering of the tools and other things that you need for that. So really thinking about each thing that you put on your list, each idea that you have really sketching that out and going, what what do I need? What do I actually need to do make this work and be honest with yourself going? Okay, maybe I'd like to try and do this in 30 days, but I really need that full 90 Because until then, you know, anything in business? Oh, I want to do something new. Okay, well, I probably need to get insurance, I probably need to tell the state about it probably need to get that paperwork, going to talk to me a lawyer, which means I'm, I'm already 60 days out from this happening. So I need to go to a good start and get so that you do set those proper expectations.
Doug 41:33
Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's important to have enough time to do the proper research to and to really make sure that, you know, a lot of the time I'll come up with an idea. And the first week of the idea, I will be all about it. But by day 45. I'm so over the next, you know, it's sometimes just giving yourself that time to really sit with it and to do the research is the most valuable thing.
Collin Funkhouser 42:05
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Collin 42:47
It was one of the best piece of advice I ever got when I was writing my my my thesis was my advisor, I was I would write something and I immediately send it off to him for review and try to put all these ideas and concepts together. And he'd asked me, he said, When did you finish writing this before you sent it to me. And it was usually like, oh, like the second before and I was done. And then I just emailed it to you. And he go, I want you to write it. And then I want you to go put it in your desk for three days, and then read it and then send it to me. And that was the best thing that I could learn at that point too, about my writing about how do I handle my ideas how I handle putting thoughts together, whether we're writing or whether we are putting together our workflows. Again, don't write the workflow and then go send it off to start implementing it, write the workflow and then sit on it for a bit, read it with fresh eyes, send it out for review, and then send it out for review. Make sure you're okay with it first. So you're not missing some details. And that really does help. Now what that also means is you said is now I need to lengthen the amount of time that I thought I could implement this because I need to give my time to wait. I don't think of my time to think and process and knowing that that's okay.
Doug 44:00
Yeah, definitely. That's something that I you know, I kind of overlooked a lot of this when I started my YouTube channel. And within the last few months I've kind of I've started doing that where I'll I'll sketch out the YouTube video and then I give it a couple of days and then I'll reread what I sketched out and I'll realize, Oh, well that doesn't need to be said I need to add this. I should move this over here all before I ever film it. And then I'll give it a couple more days after I film before I post just to make sure you know do I need to rerecord something, do I need to add something, take something out? It's I think it's important to give yourself that leeway. But at the same time, it's important to have a deadline because if you don't set a deadline for yourself, you're gonna you know, it'll take forever. We'll never get around to it.
Collin Funkhouser 44:51
Well, it does. Something else you've been organizing and working on lately isn't just working on the business and setting the workflows and stuff but you've also been working to organize That's a pretty cool thing in in Florida coming up later this year. So tell us about what that is. And all the details. Oh, man.
Doug 45:09
Yeah. So it's super exciting. I'm so excited to just play a part in this. I, those of you that don't know, Dom Hodgson, he's the pet biz whiz from the United Kingdom. And he's been on a couple of episodes, right?
Collin 45:28
Yes, yes. We've had him on, I think, two or three times, I think I can. Yeah, I'll let you tell you what episodes those are in just a moment.
Doug 45:36
Yeah, he's a great guy. He owns a pet care business in the United Kingdom. And he's one of the leading pet business coaches. He has is hosted a lot of different seminars and things over the years, he's written many books, one of his books, walk yourself wealthy I read a couple of years ago, and it totally changed the direction for my business, where we started to focus more on being a premium service and focusing more on high end clientele and that side of things. I recorded a podcast with him a couple weeks ago, he has a podcast called Doodle to pit bull pet business podcast. And we recorded an episode together. And at the end of it, he said, Hey, I'm going to be in Florida in October, I would love to get a group of pet business owners together and, you know, share some of my knowledge, if you could handle booking the place and getting people together outcome and do the talking. That's, that's where it started. And long story short, we are going to be at the Florida days resort in Orlando, Florida on October 15, of 2022. Here in just a few months, it's going to be a full day pet business seminar, Dom is going to be there. And he is going to talk all about how to grow and scale pet businesses. It's not just for pet sitters and dog walkers, this content is really for anyone in the pet service industry. We're going to talk about how to grow grow, how to scale how to systematize. And really how to increase your profit margins with by being a premium service for premium clients. That's really what the basis is going to be around. Not only is it going to be a great learning opportunity for everyone that comes but it's going to be great for networking. That's one of my favorite things about getting people together. You just learn so much when you have different business owners together sharing ideas, connecting with each other, you know, we I was so lucky to meet you and Meghan at the at the Texas conference earlier this year, and we met so many amazing people from all across the country in the pet world at that conference, you know, and I walked away from that with just so much knowledge and so many great connections. And that's why when Don asked me to help him plan this for Orlando this year, I was all for it. You know, it just it provides such a great benefit for pet business owners. And if it for anyone that's interested, we're going to be posting a Facebook event that you can follow along with the Facebook page that should be going live this week. I don't know the exact details on that it should be something like grow your pet business Florida seminar. I will get the details to you shortly on that, and then tickets are already available at Florida. It's a I'm sorry, It's Pet business marketing.com/florida pet business marketing slash Florida. And there's more details about the event on there. And you can purchase tickets on their tickets. If you buy your tickets before August 31. You can save $50 off the price of the ticket. So and we were thinking we're gonna sell out on this thing. So I'm really encouraging everyone to get your ticket, you know, while they're still available, especially while this discount is still going on. Yeah, I'm just so excited about I'm so excited. Yeah.
Collin Funkhouser 49:29
You mentioned a couple things there. Yeah, Dom has been on three episodes with us. If there's one thing that you should think about when you think about Dom It should be premium. It should be talk about prices, talk about structure, talk about marketing funnels. It sounds like a really, really cool event. What's that day going to look like? What should people expect?
Doug 49:49
Yeah, it's so exciting. You know, the the floridays resort is a really nice place and it's really close to SeaWorld right off of I four there in Orlando. So Every one that comes you know, the event is all day on Saturday. Dom and I are gonna get there a day or two early so that we can experience Orlando you know there you got Disney there, you got Orlando, you got Universal Studios. So many things happening all around that area. The event on Saturday, it's going to start at 930 in the morning and end about 5pm We're going to have time for networking and get togethers you know before and after that. We're going to have lunch, midday we will we will be providing lunch there. But it's it's just going to be great. You know, Dom's got a full speech planned out for the full day covering a bunch of different really cool stuff. You'll get to meet him and network with him myself. Other pet business owners, and then if we sell out for the Saturday, we may do something special on Sunday as
Collin Funkhouser 50:56
well. Okay. Oh, okay. So teaser, wait to find out. Yeah.
Doug 51:02
Yeah, we're gonna see how the ticket sales go for Saturday first, and then Sunday, we're thinking about doing something that's a little bit more specialized for think people that are a little farther ahead on this process that we can work a little bit more, one on one with people on Sunday.
Collin Funkhouser 51:18
Okay, super cool. And so again, it's an I'll have a link to that in the show notes. It's Pet business marketing.com/florida. And we'll make sure that the show notes on the episode and on the website are chock full of how to get access to that other information that they need to know. So it's not just for people who are in Florida, but if they want to go to Florida to see this and see the area and make a trip out of it. They can do that too, as well, right?
Doug 51:43
Oh, yeah. I mean, October is the perfect time to be visiting Florida, it's the weather will be perfect. If you go right now in the middle of the summer, you're gonna hate your life. It's so hot. It's so humid. You know, I'm sitting out here, outside as we record this, and I'm dripping sweat right now. So October will be a much better time to come visit us in Florida. Dom's coming all the way from the United Kingdom for this. So it doesn't matter where you are, come see us come hang out.
Collin Funkhouser 52:12
Okay, that sounds really exciting. I can't wait to see more and hear more about that. And then yeah, get all the links and information and send people over there. To get started on that growing and really understanding some fundamentals in business and Dom's background in marketing and pricing for this industry. I think it's important now, going forward, especially given some of the economic turmoil and things going on, it's a great time to in any way, invest in your knowledge and your business. And then as you said, Doug, networking with other business owners, other business owners is one of the most foundational and fundamental things you can do to really set yourself up for success. So I'm really excited to see this coming on and can't wait to hear
Doug 52:58
more about it. Yeah, yeah, I'm so excited. You know, it's the world is crazy. Right now we're coming out of COVID. We have a lot of things going on in the economy, we don't really know what's coming or when it may come. But inflation is through the roof. Gas prices are crazy. There's a lot of moving pieces and parts in the world. We have monkey pox now. I mean, where did that come from. So now is the time to be educating yourself and creating a plan to make sure that your business can withstand whatever may be coming. You need to have a plan in place, you need to have the proper connections with other people in the industry need to have a good knowledge base. I know this is all stuff that we talked about as we came out of COVID. But the world's still crazy and in and I think we're really going to see here in the coming months who paid attention to the lessons from COVID. We're going to see who paid attention and who did.
Collin Funkhouser 54:08
Yeah, it is a serious time to get serious about our businesses in every way, Doug, as always, this has been so enjoyable and I've absolutely loved our conversation about workflow is about staying organized about capturing ideas about not being afraid to use technology and kind of get outside of that comfort zone and then encouraging us to also start getting serious about educating and coming to Florida during the good time of the year and getting to meet you but there's a lot here as always, so how can people get in touch with you follow along with all the 1000 things that you're doing? And again, remind us of where to go for the seminar in Florida.
Doug 54:51
Awesome, awesome. Well, I you can connect with me on a million different platforms. The best way is to send me an email at At its dog at bad to the bone, pet care.com, send me an email on there. And I'll get back to you as soon as I can. My YouTube channel is youtube.com/bad to the bone pet care. And I try to post about my experience. Being a pet business owner and the knowledge that I've gained over the years. I'm on Facebook, just look up Doug Keeling on Facebook. On Instagram, I'm at the wandering petsitter is my personal account business account is bad to the bone pic here. You can also go to I've started doing some occasional coaching and consulting calls, you can go to Bad to the Bone pet care.com/for pet sitters, and there's some information about how to get set up with me, if you'd be interested in talking to me more, I'm doing strategy sessions via zoom, so you can sign up for those on there. You know, we're just barely even scratching the surface when it comes to workflows, and systematizing. And all that with what we talked about here. And this is something that I've become very passionate about. I know it's just, it's the key to me to how I went from being a solo pet sitter, to being able to manage my business remotely while traveling the world. I mean, I know that so many pet sitters and dog walkers out there, just want a day off, try taking a week off, try taking a month off, why not make it a goal for yourself. Make it a goal for yourself, create a workflow to make sure that you get to that goal, you know, and and it can be done. If I can do it, then anyone can do it. So don't overthink this stuff. Just start somewhere and get in contact with me if you'd like more help. I know Natasha is a great resource for this kind of stuff. She's on the podcast a lot, you know, and just lean into your community. You know, like, like I said before the Facebook group that you and Meghan had built, set her confessionals. It's incredible. It's it's absolutely incredible the connections that people make the knowledge that you can get from that group. So yeah, that's, that's my spiel.
Collin Funkhouser 57:21
Perfect. Yeah. And I'll have I'll have all that on the show notes. Doug's people can get connected and start picking your brain and stuff and go to get to the pet business marketing.com/florida as well, if they're interested in what that looks like. So they can start doing that, Doug, as always, it's an immense pleasure. Always enjoy our conversations. So thank you so much. Thank you.
Doug 57:42
Thank you, Colin, I so appreciate you.
Collin 57:44
How do you get work done? What does it look like for you to be productive? Do you have good systems in place to make sure that the thoughts, the ideas, the projects that you want to start or initiatives that you have in mind for your business? Do you have some so that those don't get lost, you can stay organized. I know that with everything going on with crazy, hectic days, keeping track of new ideas or things that we want to initiate or the how we are working through certain processes in our business, whether that's initiating new pricing, or we want to go through rebranding or we want to look up and understand how we can make new flyers or whatever that is that you're working on. Right now, it is super critical that you start putting in a system for what it means for you to work and get work done. That's not just the pet care. Because if we don't take time out of our days and have a good system in place, it means that all that other stuff just will never get done and will take forever to get anywhere and get any movement done on it. If you need help getting those systems set up and need ideas for what kind of workflows or systems you can have in place for your business. Let us know we'd love to be able to help you with that. Maybe you have some amazing things that you have in place. Some ways of staying organized calendars, apps that you use. Let us know in our Facebook group so we can start helping more people who understand what it means to be productive in their business. We want to thank today's sponsors, time to pet and pet sitters international for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you so much for listening. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be back again soon.
