324: When You Struggle to Keep Going
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Summary
Have you ever wanted to give up on your business? Challenges happen, no matter how long you’ve been in business. Facing challenges means assessing how we are doing, so we can handle it appropriately. When we start feeling like quitting and giving up on our business, there are things we can walk through to gain clarity. We break down six things to ask yourself and work through and why you should not isolate yourself in times of struggle.
Main topics:
Facing challenges
Connect with your why
Finding joy
Celebrate small wins
Do what’s best for you
Main takeaway: Your business is yours to do what you want or need to with. If it’s not working, it’s ok to change things or step away.
Links
The Gap and the Gain https://amzn.to/3CJLSo5
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet sitters, pet, week, magpies, emotions, world, important, step, life, associates, goal, challenges, recognize, single, training, decision, client, connected, walk
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. Hello, welcome to episode 324. Oh, thank you to pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon members. Our newest one is Jan, she just joined over the weekend. So Whoo,
Collin 00:31
thank you so much. Yeah. And if you get value from the show and feel like it is valuable to you, please consider supporting and joining the Patreon members, we just did our first our monthly member meetup of the first Friday of the month last week. And it was a lot of fun to get connected with senators from across the country and globe and talk with them about their businesses, and just see where everybody is.
Meghan 00:53
So if you'd like to contribute, you can do so at petsitter confessional.com/support. This past month has actually been pretty difficult for us in our business, we are growing at a very rapid pace. But we are having a hard time bringing on new staff, we're having some staffing issues right now. And so it's making growth really difficult. And so last week was a solo episode from Colin, we had actually recorded it, we were two hours away. And we tried to zoom the call and that did not work out for some reason failed miserably, just the technology. So he had to record it on his own. But we are back together this week. And he has been spending several weeks, the past few weeks and our service area and our other service area, filling in on visits and doing interviews. And it's kind of been a really trying time,
Collin 01:44
it's it's been really hard to keep going some days basically wondering if this is all worth it, because it just doesn't feel like we're gaining any traction in the business and making any progress at all. Even though the numbers say that we are growing, it just feels like we're still having to do so much effort and exert a lot of energy to keep this thing moving forward.
Meghan 02:07
Well, and it's a reminder that you know, the holidays are coming up. And so it's the train is moving on the tracks, and we kind of have to keep up, you know, we need to obviously be in control of our business. But I felt like the past few weeks, it's just not quite out of our control, but almost there, we really need to rein it back in. But today we wanted to talk about things that we can be doing on days where we don't feel super, not necessarily motivated. But
Collin 02:37
into our business. Sometimes, there's been several days I think over the past month, where we've really just asked if this is something worth it, if it's worthwhile to continue with this expansion anymore. Or if we just want to cut our losses and pull back and try and do something different.
Meghan 02:54
So we wanted to talk about how we have handled the moments of feeling like that and give just some general overview of what you can do in that situation. If you are feeling like you kind of just want to give up working on your business. The first one that I was really thinking about this, this week of I was sitting in this moment of, okay, if we are not going to continue, that's fine. But if we want to continue, there are some action steps that we need to take. And the first one was remembering our why. So thinking back to what goal we have for our business. And that is really crucial. You know, you're We talk all the time about your mission statement, your vision, your your values, the reason why you do what you do, the reason why you get up in the morning, and so it may be a good time to see if that goal is still realistic, or what you want from it. Or if it needs to be changed. You know, our, our big goal is to spend more time with us, our family, our kids, and to just be home more. And so the way that we do that is through staff. And that
Collin 04:01
was definitely a big motivating factor when I'm doing that 10 o'clock visit training a brand new staff member and knowing when to turn around and do a 530 or 6am Visit the next morning to train the next staff member and keep moving forward. And just kind of slogging through that time period going. This is time away. This is time invested, but it's going to pay off in the end because eventually I'll be able to step back and let these amazing staff members and mission team members that we're building do these visits. So this is not forever. And I also know that another part of our why of why we are in business where we wanted to expand was not just so that we could spend more time with our family, but also so we could impact more families lives and that for each staff member we do for each new training process we're going through that's an exponential increase in the number of families with pets that we are going to be able to touch and interact and make their lives better. At the end of it. Yeah,
Meghan 04:54
we looked at our business and our goals and we realized we still wanted to go after them. We still thought our Why was the same and we connected with it. However it is okay to change your goals from time to time, you know, we have to have to, we have to have time to sit and assess and make sure that we are still on track, it's okay to change, it's okay to stay the same. You just have to think about and sit down and reflect on why you started to begin with, you know, if you decide that your why is still relevant and what you actually want. This is where we pull from our motivation to continue to move forward to continue to do the visits and do the walks and do the meet and greet. This is what helps to ground us as we have to face the challenges and the hard times in business. If you look at your goals, and you realize that your Y has actually changed, it's a perfect opportunity to write down the new ones and make sure that you and your business are still in alignment. And then after you have looked at your why you need to assess if you still find joy in your business. And this can be a little hard because there are obviously things in our business that we may not necessarily enjoy, like taxes, or you know some of the administrative work. But overall, it is, you know, our emotions, and our feelings tell us a lot about how we are currently doing so we can't ignore them or push them off for too long. But we also need to remember that feelings can be fleeting, so we need to balance them out with looking at our personal goals in life. So our goal, one of our goals for our business is more freedom, and more time to ourselves. And so knowing that, while I may not enjoy doing taxes, or updating the website, or any of the other little things that we need to do, to keep our business running, at the end of the day, it serves a purpose to further the end goal that we want for our business.
Collin 06:50
Yeah, realizing that right now my emotions tell me, I don't like this or this is not fun, I don't enjoy this, but going okay, this is for a moment, this is for a time this is for something greater, this is something that I want to work towards, it's going to be hard, I have to recognize that. And that's why we start with our why so that when those emotions come up, we can look at those, we can address them as the fleeting moments that they are, and go, I'm working towards something greater, I'm looking toward something more long term something more than myself.
Meghan 07:22
Well, and I will say that, if you know, there is a discussion here about depression, and that whole side of things. And if you are, if you are waking up every single day, just basically hating life and hating what you do and not finding any joy or happiness in any of it. And this is goes on for a prolonged period of time, then you really need to get help and think about if this is something that you want to continue doing or not.
Collin 07:49
Yeah, again, not ignoring the emotion, that's the important part about this is being able to acknowledge what you're feeling, and assess them and go, Okay, this is real, I do I understand that. But I either need to recognize I need to push through for a moment. Or I actually do need to get help with this. Because this is starting to impact me, my life, my business, my relationships, and my ability to make sound decisions for the betterment of myself and my company like there is that definite real decision and line that we have to walk and is one reason why we need to make sure we have a good support system as we work through this. But in general, realizing that as as you said, Megan, there are going to be joyless tasks that still need to get done in business, they're the things that we have to do that just are not going to bring us joy, no matter how much how much we try
Meghan 08:47
well, and you can try to delegate those as much as possible. You know, if you don't like taxes, hire a CPA, if you don't like social media, hire a social media manager. So for instance, if you are hiring and bringing on staff, and that's something that you can only do initially, you know, maybe offload the training and the onboarding and guiding them in your business by having somebody else do that, right. But
Collin 09:09
delegation is not always the answer here. We can't just delegate 1000, we can't delegate 100% of our business a lot of times, right, especially when you're first hiring, you are the one that has to do the training, the onboarding, the overseeing the management, the scheduling, that's what you have to do. And we recognize in that moment, I don't like scheduling. But I'm, I only have to do this for a short period of time. And then I'm going to be able to move away from this. So there are things that we have to push through, there's pain in the growth, there's pain in the process at times, but that is all part of that process.
Meghan 09:43
Well and it's all about putting it into perspective, too. I mean, asking yourself what you enjoy about the business and also asking yourself, can I put up with doing these things for a short time with with my end goal in mind
Collin 09:54
all about perspective and making sense you understand your role your place in the business and what's your Long term objectives are for it. And when we think about our long term objectives, really that next step, after we've looked at where we have joy, and we don't have joiner business, we've grounded in our why we can start taking those little steps. And we need to ask ourselves, okay, what can I do right? Now, we need to make sure that we are not being led with our emotions when we go to these actions. So sometimes these steps, we need to sleep on them for a day or two or seek counsel with them. But we need to look actually at what we can physically do. Maybe you can send an email, maybe it's just okay, I'm going to show up to the next meet and greet, I can smile to this person that I pass on the side of the road, find some way no matter how small to bring back, a little bit of control in your business, maybe it's I'm having a really crappy day right now. And I feel like giving up in my business, but I'm going to be really nice to this person who's waiting on me at the restaurant that I'm eating out for lunch, I'm going to make a decision to not allow my feelings to impact how I treat other people good not like those emotions, really life, whatever control you can start bringing back in is really, really important.
Meghan 11:08
This week, when I felt like throwing in the towel and giving up on what we are working so hard on, you know, I it can sometimes feel for me that there's nothing that I can do to change it. But there is always something more that you can do, we just have to decide if that stuff is worth it to us or not. Which is why we started off by asking ourselves what is our why. And I think a very important thing to do is check the tools that you were using in your business. So look over your software, your website, your social media, your marketing, funnel, whatever it is. And whatever part of the business that you're feeling is the weakest, spend some time diving into that maybe it might, it may energize you into having a new outlook on your business. Or if you think that is too daunting of a task, you don't have to start acting and immediately and doing anything about it, you could just start researching and see if everything is working as it should be and how you want it to be working. Something that is definitely not weak is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today, at pets@llc.com, you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com. When you are struggling to keep going in your business, it is also very important to celebrate the small wins because the small wins kind of compound and make it seem like you are doing something amazing which you are even if you win in a small way. But you know maybe you make a great social media post,
Collin 13:08
maybe you're training somebody and you see them nonstop smiling because they finally found their dream job. But you take a moment to notice that then you appreciate that and you go, Oh, I have given this person an opportunity to do this right now.
Meghan 13:23
Or maybe you saw a great Halloween or holiday decoration and you snapped a cute picture with a pet.
Collin 13:30
Or maybe just the owner came back and said thank you. And that was simple enough. So all of these small wins add up because we go I'm going to say we don't take enough time to appreciate the immense amount of work that we do as small business owners, especially in pet care. Every single day. I tell all of our staff that come on of this every single task, each individual task is not the hardest thing in the world. It's not exactly rocket science. But what is the most difficult part about this job is excellent execution every single day of the task, doing it perfectly every single time. There's no wiggle room. That is grueling, and we don't pat ourselves on the back enough for that of going you know what? I remember to feed every animal today that I was supposed to, I should have every single time that I was supposed to. I sent all the best updates that I possibly could today, every single one of those is an absolute win.
Meghan 14:29
Well, and for me, my wind last week was just making it through the week and that is okay to to me that wasn't even really a small and that was a big weigh in because we had a tough week. But you know, it's it's reminding ourselves that we are here for a purpose and we are part of something greater. And your business is doing that
Collin 14:51
you're doing stuff. I think that's very, we lose sight of that if we don't recognize again, the work that we're doing and the impact that it's making on people lives, maybe it's just the fact that you have a client who's able to take a vacation for the first time in 10 years, or a client that's able to go see a family member that's dying, because you're there to help them. Or you have
Meghan 15:13
a disabled client who really can't take their dog on a walk, but you are helping to provide for that person and that dog by taking that dog on a walk.
Collin 15:22
Yeah. Appreciating those moments. No, that's not to say that we have to put up with hardships or bad clients just because we're making their lives better, not further from that. But it is recognizing that your work makes a difference. And that that's, that's not just a small win. That's a huge win, and a recognition of the amount of work that you pour into this.
Meghan 15:45
And then with the wins, obviously, recognizing that there are challenges, you know, we can start to think that it's just us, or, you know, we wonder if it's all our fault, and we blame ourselves, we kind of throw a pity party. But you know, challenges are a part of life, in our personal lives and in our business. And so it's a part of growing your business. If you've been in this for three weeks or 330 years, you know, you will have challenges. You know, a wise person taught me a long time ago, a person's reaction is based on their expectation.
Collin 16:17
And this includes ourselves of my my reaction to a certain situation is going to be based on my expectation that I'm bringing forth into it. And I know many times the past couple of weeks, I've sat in a car and I've been like, is this all my fault? What did I screw up about this? What did where did I go wrong? Did I not write an SOP correctly? Did I did not make a good enough post? Did we not put enough content out there is this all my fault. But start taking a huge step back and going sometimes things just happen, and you had nothing to do with it. And the overnight success stories that you see on social media, in the news and all over the internet. Those don't help with this because we start to feel insecure about what we're going through about our actions about our quote unquote, success that we are or are not seeing, or the hardships that we are going through. And we can compare ourselves to others and end up going, well, they're doing this so obviously, they're perfect. What did i What did I screw up today, and we really start to have that inflection go, well, it must all be my fault. And it's very important that when we recognize challenges happen, and sometimes you have no control over anything about them. And while yes, that can be scary. And that those are those kinds of things out there. challenges come in all shapes and sizes, and we don't influence most of them.
Meghan 17:43
So it's important to start seeing the challenges as opportunities. Somebody who was at our retreat a couple of weeks ago, Morgan Webber, she's also the pet sitters international Pet Sitter of the year, she highly recommends the book, the gap and the gain. And it's all about changing your perspective to start funneling your nervous energy into actions. And it can be really simple stuff, too. Yeah, I
Collin 18:06
have the same Marvel, the magpies, magpies are highly intelligent birds, and they love to sit up on tall objects, like trees, or chimneys, or telephone poles. And but when we walk around the world, and we're feeling down, what do we tend to do, we tend to take our heads and we stare at the ground, we have our shoulders over. And we just kind of go through the world very insular and myopic about what we're going through what's happening to us. This has chemical implications for our brain, our physiology, and how we view and interpret the world around us. So instead of doing a slight change of our body posture, by making the conscious decision to lift your head and stare and look for the magpies that are high up on the objects around us, you are changing your posture, you've lifted your head, your shoulders go back, you stand up straighter, this now is reversing a lot of these chemical changes and physiological natures that's going on in our in our body. It's not a magic trick, it's not a who won't immediately influence it or change any things. But think back to what we talked about earlier of what kinds of things can I start exerting control over in my life, maybe one of those is just my posture as I walk around. And now I can start to have a better outlook. I'm outward facing the world greeting the people around me seeing the sunshine and appreciating the world that we live in the little things every single day, why magpies and why Marvel will it's an alliteration with with the letters there. So if you don't like that, you can just say you know, lift your head up or maybe stare at the chimneys. But that physical action is a way to remember I need to do something to change my world around me and that starts with with me in a lot of cases.
Meghan 19:46
And one of the best ways to start lifting your head up more is by getting connected with others. They can help keep you accountable on your goals and your personal objectives. But also it's great to do Just bounce ideas off of them. And they can check in on you and say, Hey, how you doing today? Are you okay? How how's your week going? Is it better than last week? What What things are you working on. And so you know, you can find a mastermind group or a networking group or friends, a coach, you know, we joined a 1 Million Cups within our area, and both of our service areas, actually, so I'm sure there's one in your town as well, it's free, you can just come and go as you please. And it's an amazing support network of people. Whatever it is that you do, do not isolate yourself, there are people out there, there's an entire worldwide community of pet sitters that you can get connected with.
Collin 20:43
And I think it is important in closing here just to recognize a reality of all this and in running our business is sometimes we go through all of these steps, we do all of these things, we try all of our hardest. And it's still time for us to step back. And it's still time for us to call it quits, we recognize I'm not connected with my wife anymore. And it really doesn't make sense for me. And I really don't find joy in all these places. And I've looked at the tools, and I've done all I've can, and I've connected with all the groups, but this still isn't for me. And that's okay. That is that is probably one of the most freeing decisions anybody can ever make. And it's one of the hardest ones is to have got all this effort poured all this energy, blood, sweat, tears sacrificed all the times with family and events, and all sorts of things missed all that to then wake up one day and go, I just want to work a nine to five. Yeah, exactly. And that's okay. And so that this process is not do these six things, and you'll love your business, again, that nobody could ever do that. That's not what this is about. This is going when I'm feeling like I want to give up, what are some things I can work through with the idea that I may work through all of those and still understand, okay, it is time for me to step away, it is time for me to give up on my business. And that that is a legitimate, okay. 100% allowable decision. And for you and your business, again, you do you and make sure but make sure that whatever decision that you're making, you're making it with the most education information and, and without all the emotions behind it. So that you can walk away or walk towards something knowing I did everything I could. And I'm secure in this decision.
Meghan 22:31
So if you have found a time in your business where you have struggled with whether to keep going or just to step back, maybe not completely get rid of your business, but change it to suit your needs. We would love to hear from you. You can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Or you can give us a call. We'd leave a voicemail 636-364-8260 or send us a pigeon
Collin 22:57
carrier signal we'll respond to most things. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much to our sponsor today. pessaries associates in our wonderful Patreon for all that you do and support. And for y'all for listening and everything that you do. I know the world is a big scary and unknowable entity at time. So just know that the very fact that you are paired doing trying something new that other people aren't doing that that's important that that doesn't go unseen.
Meghan 23:26
You are important, and we thank you very much for listening today. I'll talk to you next time.
