337: Staying Unexpectedly Different with Brandi Hendrix
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What does it mean to be premium? How do you let that influence everything you do and provide to your clients? Brandi Hendrix, owner of Bayou City Pet Sitting, shares how she works hard to delight her clients in unexpected ways. From seeking out the latest information, to thinking through the problems her client’s face, Brandi wants the best for her clients. She shares how she implements GPS collars in her services and the impact that has on her business.
Main topics:
Converting services
Falling into place
Unexpectedly Different
Using GPS collars
Main takeaway: Don’t just strive to be a more marketable sitter, strive to be a better sitter.
About our guest
Brandi is the owner/operator of Bayou City Pet Sitting in Houston TX. A lifelong animal-lover, she has found a way to turn her passion for animals into a thriving career after leaving the healthcare field. Brandi has 4 dogs and 3 cats of her own, and often has a foster dog or two for her local rescue in addition to all her pet-sitting animals. In her free time, she enjoys travel, photography, roller-skating, and watching bad reality tv.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dog, trackers, clients, pet, people, overnight, owner, sitter, gps trackers, business, pet sitter, service, pay, worked, premium, cat, splash pad, day, tennis balls, daycare
SPEAKERS
Collin, Brandi H.
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
Collin 00:17
brought to you by time to pet and pet sitters International. What does the word premium mean to you? And how do you use that to influence all of the decisions in your business to impact the services that you provide to your clients? Since 2018, Brandy Hendricks, owner of Bayou City petsitting has been doing everything that she can to set herself apart by surprising and delighting her clients. Today. She joins us to share how she does that which includes using GPS collars. Let's get started.
Brandi H. 00:49
Hi, Colin, thank you so much for having me. My name is Brandy Hendricks. I am the owner operator of Bayou City petsitting. We are a full service petsitting service in Houston, Texas. We do daycare, dog walks, premium boarding home drop in visits pretty much everything except overnight visits in client's homes.
Collin 01:15
I know overnights are a big sticking point for a lot of people did you ever offer overnight?
Brandi H. 01:21
Yes, I did. So when I started out and was doing this really part time and I also only had my two little senior dogs who were pretty much fine by themselves overnight. I had a very small radius. And I did do overnights occasionally, it wasn't a huge part of my business, but I had a few and as I grew I kind of had to phase that out just because once I started ticking boarding dogs pretty consistently, I wasn't about to suddenly, you know, do overnights in the mix
Collin 01:56
in that phase out process, I know can be can be hard, do you still get requests for overnights from potential clients?
Brandi H. 02:03
Yeah, and I still I still get there's a couple of clients that I still service in different ways that I was doing overnights for who still want overnights so they have overnight centers now for their dogs, which is great, it like works out for them, they have a great they have great centers that they're into. And yeah, so I had to phase out and I do get requests for it although not as often now because it's it's never something it hasn't been something that I've offered in a while.
Collin 02:37
I know for us we get requests for overnight care quite a bit and I think that's because many people aren't used to a neighbor a friend or family member doing the overnights or maybe they found a professional pet sitter who's done it for them a couple of times in the past and that's kind of all they know. And we have kind of a hard time getting them to convert over to drop in so how do you explain to people what you actually offer in in the benefits that it brings to
Brandi H. 03:02
them? Um, so I have you know, for my radius I will offer sort of a more inclusive package so for people who want like an overnight I try and talk to them and see like what exactly is is that is it that you're looking for? Like are you looking for your dog to have begins because some people want somebody there to sleep in the bed with their dog, you know? And for that I just can't help them you know, but is it Are they looking for somebody to come in and do a lot of walks and give a lot of attention and for that I can be like well I can do that during the day when your dog might be awake you know so I have packages that include like a morning drop off so I'll do like a 30 minute morning or not drop off morning visit an afternoon visit a dinnertime visit and then I do a quick 15 minute bedtime visit like a potty right before bed and it is a lot of driving so I keep my service area for that pretty small. But usually that you know is what they want because they want somebody that can let their animal out a lot um do a last minute you know potty visits stuff like that so I think often that has worked but if not I have a someone I can farm out to for that somebody who only does overnight sittings oh
Collin 04:32
so so it is so your you are solo sitter do refer out for the services that you don't offer right
Brandi H. 04:39
I stay away a lot I use the I say the royal we I think it's just because I'm so used to talking about my own animals in the in the mix show Yes, I will say we which confuses people. They're like wait, I thought you were solo but no, I am solo
Collin 04:59
well and getting back to the kind of what services you can offer to clients. I think that that step of seeing really what they're asking for, I think that's the real key of is this are you asking? Because I found that many times they're asking because that's all they know. Or they only know of overnight care if somebody's sleeping at the home. That's all they that's all they've ever had experience with. And so they only ask, they don't know what other terms to use. So I love that question of, can you tell me why you're looking for that? Or what? What would you like this to look like? And then have them actually describe what happens? And you're right, when they say, Well, I really just need somebody to come over and let my dog out three or four times and kind of enjoy spending time with them and go, Uh huh. Let me tell you about this service called drop in services, right? And many times people go, I've never heard of that, or I that's a thing. Oh, okay, that actually sounds and you can have that conversation from there. But at any point in time, when we're interacting with a client, we as the business owners, especially when we have specialized services really need to do our due diligence and ask those questions of, what are you looking for? And especially when in terms of like, okay, you're saying this word? What does that word mean to you? Like, sometimes I'll just say, I need a pet sitter, I need writing. And I'll go, what does that mean? And usually, it's, oh, I need that I need overnight care. And go communicate well, here, let me explain to you what your options are.
Brandi H. 06:26
Well, and sometimes I found that they want somebody to come over because they don't want their dog to be alone, which I get, but I'm like, did you know I offer boarding, and my boarding services are actually it's cheaper to board your dog than to have me come over there four different times in the day. And a lot of times, they don't even know that, or they don't think that that's an option. You know, and for dogs that do well, and my setup, you know, which has been about I would say half of the people that wanted overnights had been able to convert to boarding, because they just wanted somebody that you know, they just didn't want their dog to be bored. And they didn't realize that like, oh, wait, I can bring them here. And they can be around a bunch of other dogs and play and get full time care, basically. Yeah, having
Collin 07:15
that option. And again, listening to the words that that client say they do start talking about boredom, lonely, alone, you start to pick up on it. Okay, I have a I see a theme here of what you're actually needing, and, and then we have to make that judgment call of going, can I meet that need given my services and offer them in an appropriate manner? Mm hmm. Definitely. Now, before you started by you, city, petsitting. What was your What was your background? And how did you find yourself running a pepsin company?
Brandi H. 07:48
You know, when I was thinking about this, I was like, I probably should have known that I was gonna do something with animals. When I was when I was a kid, I was not allowed to have a dog. My parents were not dog people, which turns out that that was a lie. When I got a dog, they became very involved dog grandparents. So I was like, I could have had a dog all those years. When I was in late middle school, I would say I started cat sitting firm neighbors. Um, it was mostly cat sitting like at that point, wasn't really any dog sitting out other than the occasional letting a dog out here and there. Like if they were going to be a little late, it was cat sitting, which I loved. Um, and then, after high school, I started volunteering at the Houston SPCA, which was my first sort of introduction into professional, a professional animal setting. And then I got a job working in a paid position there. So I was an adoption counselor, but emotionally took a toll on me. So I took a job at a commercial dog daycare. And it was here in Houston, and we did daycare, and boarding and it was a grooming and a training aspect to it too. And I worked there in the front front desk, front office area for about a year. So I learned a lot from that job because that was a lot of, you know, how do I prepare for for multiple dogs? You know, how do I do temperament assessments, you know, yeah, how to feed dogs on a larger scale. You know, how to make sure everybody's food is separated, you know, stuff like that I was able to learn in a professional setting kind of on a larger scale, which was really helpful. After that, I sort of, you know, wanted to make more money is So I moved on to other kinds of office jobs. I worked in property management. I worked in office management, and then I moved into the healthcare field. While I was there, I was planning a trip to go out of town and one of my friends on Facebook, so I asked on Facebook for like a pet sitter recommendation. And one of my friends was like, Hey, I just joined rover. Um, and I had never heard of rover at that point. So I hired her. And she did an excellent job. Like, she was amazing. And when I got back, I was I was thinking, you know, hey, I'd like to do rover. So I signed up. And so I started doing that. For several year or a couple years, I did that it was very much on the side, and then 2018 happened. 2018 is the year sort of when everything, everything sort of broke apart, but also kind of fell into the perfect place. So I in January, I was laid off from the job for my job they did. They did, like 900 layoffs. So it was expected. Like I when they announced the layoffs, like two days before I got laid off. I was like, I know, I'm going to be one of these layoffs. And then two weeks later, the four Plex that I was living in, had just been sold. And I got a notice from the owners, st new owners saying like you have 60 days to move out because we're gonna get the building. Yeah. And then two weeks after that, my dad called me and told me that he was just diagnosed with terminal cancer. And my mom had died the year before. So and I'm an only child. So I was like, oh, okay, well, um, I've gotta be caregiver. And at the, in the moment, I was like, Oh, this everything is is going really poorly. But realistically, you know, with a little bit of, of time to sit back like things happened. It all that had to happen, it happened in the best possible for like, sequence because if I were still working, when my dad got sick, I would have had to quit my job, but because I didn't have to quit and I had gotten severance. Like, that was a good thing. I would have had to move in with my dad anyway, because he needed to care. But I didn't have to break a lease. You know? So it was like, well, if everything happened, at least it happened in in this way. Yeah. So I moved in with my dad, I still did a little bit of rover at that point, I was mostly alcohol. Um, and then I was with my dad until they passed. And then after he passed, I decided to go back to school. Because I was like, Well, I guess I'll go get another health care degree, you know, and move on from there because I was feeling a little loss. And while I was doing the degree, I my rover service was growing at this point. So at this point, it was it was pretty steadily part time and growing. And I was finishing up my degree right around the time the pandemic hit. And I was just not looking forward to going back into a hospital setting at that point. I was like, Yeah, the last thing I want to do during you know, the biggest rage of the pandemic is go back into hospital. And my, my petsitting had grown and grown. So there was a point where it was just like, I've got to figure out what I'm gonna do. And I was talking to a friend. And I was like, none of these jobs look interesting. And he knew I loved past seven years. Like, if you could do anything right now, what would you do? Instantly? I was like, I would be a pet sitter. And he's like, Well, why don't you? And so that was the moment I was like, Okay, I'm doing this full time. And, I mean, I went all in, I bought a website domain, I set up everything and two weeks later was just, you know, the proverbial sign over the door and ready to go.
Collin 14:25
That's, that's amazing. It's amazing. You had a phrase in there of everything broke apart, but it fell into back into the perfect place. And that is such a beautiful description of what happens a lot of times, in our business and in our life, when we feel like everything is kind of going out of control. And we don't know what's going on. And I really think that being able to sometimes it's almost impossible in the moment. It was very impossible. I can't even imagine right to to be going through all of that and being in How do we go, oh, everything will fall back into place easily. It's all in retrospection. And I'm sure it was like, wow, that that was the time that really was the catalyst for all of this. It wasn't this other thing it wasn't. That moment was what really pushed it in this direction. And everybody has those moments in our lives. And that's one of the reasons I really like reflecting back on, on what's happened in the past and look back, because it helps us get a lot of perspective, especially when we're looking at things that we're going through today of going, Man today feels really bad. But hey, remember back in 2018, when all that was happening, and now look where I am, and it does help us give us some get some perspective on how how things change and how there are definitely things where we don't have control over them. And we did nothing wrong. And, and yet, it still happens. And we kind of we get the opportunities to now do something with that.
Brandi H. 15:55
Yeah, it was definitely in the moment. I was not, I was not feeling like this was gonna turn out well, I was not feeling like it was a great learning experience. But ultimately, like I said, when I was able to reflect, it was like, Okay, well, everything happened and the best possible sequence of horrible things to happen, you know, and it really did propel me because of all those things. I was able, I had the time to sit back and say, like, what do I want to do? And ultimately, it was like, I want to work with animals. I just don't think realistically, I thought that this would be something that I could do full time, you know, I don't know. And it's obvious in retrospect, but you know, when you grow up with petsitting, being told as like something that hobbyists do or like college kids are high school kids, like that's the only sort of, you know, knowledge you have a bit it's hard to view it as like, Oh no, this can be a lucrative career.
Collin 17:02
Have you heard of time to pet player from acting critters editors has this to say,
17:07
time to pet has honestly revolutionized how we do business. My sitters can work much more independently, because they have ongoing access to customer and pet information without relying on me, I save hours upon hours of administrative time on billing, processing payments and generating paychecks
Collin 17:23
if you were looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try listeners of our show can save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/pinfish. So how does that shape how you view your business? Right? You kind of had this kind of explained this mind shift change of I used to view it as something only hobbyists did or or neighborhood kids. But now here I am making a career in a profession out of this. How does that drive you to do things differently? Or what does that mean to you? And I'll be doing this full
Brandi H. 17:53
time. It does drive me to do things differently. And I tried to do things sort of unexpectedly differently. If that makes any sense. Like when having this background at the hospital. It gave me this love for like forms and procedures. And oh my goodness and scrubs. Here's a tip guys. scrubs are amazing for cat sitters. I had so many scrubs when I left the hospital. And I wear them a lot I like especially on like dog walks and stuff. It's like wearing pajamas comfortable. They look great. Yeah, you can wash them easily, like perfect. But you know, I fell into this, like I really liked the procedures element. Like I liked having having forms and I like clients being updated and knowledgeable about what's going on. You know, one of the things I remember from when my dad was in the hospital and I was taking him to and it was the same hospital I got laid off from by the way, the hospital that I ended up like having to spend all the time and is the same hospital that I had gotten laid off of. But it was fine because I knew everybody I was friends with everybody. So like it worked out well. But one thing I liked about that hospital too, was that the clients had this like, portal that they could go in and they could see their appointments, they could see all their, like tested their test levels, you know, they knew from they had access to that. And that's something that I wanted to give my clients so like, I listened to you guys and I signed up for time to pet which you know, ultimately had given me a lot of had given me a way to give clients this other level of professionalism is where they're not like emailing me and you know, it's fine for people who enjoy that? Or they're not texting me asking for appointments? They go in, they make their appointment, I approve it. You know, they're they're Self Scheduling, they have lists of what what their upcoming appointments are. They have a client agreements I am, you know, I'm fear free certified. I have, I'm a member of the National Association of pet sitters. I'm about to take the exam for that to be certified for that I just applied for that. You know, I'm insured, fully insured and bonded. Like all that stuff, I think really tells the clients that like I'm treating this seriously, I'm not just doing this as a hobby. Yeah,
Collin 20:48
that's, that's fascinating that you made that connection back to your time at the hospital. Because the more I've thought about the kind of updates in our software, it really is kind of like charting for our, or the dogs that were caring for if this is a one continuous stream of updates and information that now is a reference in a history. Not not a medical condition, but a state of being of the dog, while it's in our care, whether they're going into their home, or they're in ours. We can chart things as they change as they happen using these techniques and these updates. And that makes it insanely valuable. Not just for, for the clients. But for us too. I mean, I can't tell you how many times clients have asked a question about hey, was my dog doing this? Like, hey, let me scroll back through my visits real quick. And I can tell you what day that happened on right. It's, it's so powerful.
Brandi H. 21:42
Yeah, I really enjoy being able to look back and, and you know, sometimes when you have a ton of dogs, and you get a request for a dog that you haven't seen in like a year or so. And so it's really helpful to go back and like scroll back and see pictures and like notes I've taken on that dog. I was like, oh, yeah, okay, we can I remember that very well.
Collin 22:02
It's really nice for that. And, you know, also remembering that clients are used to that kind of convenience, right, they have it at hospitals, like that's something that everybody interacts and experiences. So we can bring that to our businesses in a way and going this is this is how you update this is how you find your information. This is how you pay it's, it's all in this kind of one place. And realizing that that's a, that's a common practice. in people's lives. It's not something new or unique to them, they experienced that everywhere they go. And it's so now we can we can be a part of that as well and go, Hey, you know how convenient it is. It's, it's kind of like, it should be just as convenient to go in look at your blood test, as it is to book a dog walker. And we can make that easy
Brandi H. 22:47
for them. I don't want to have, I don't I don't want to have phone conversations with people if I don't have to, like I don't want to. So I if I can do anything online. Like recently I had a tire go flat. And instead of like calling i Calling places to find where I could get a tire. I literally found out that you can get a tire somebody to come to your house and replace the tire. And I did it all online. I was this I was like, This is amazing. This is what I want. I want to just be able to click I don't want to have to interact with anyone extra.
Collin 23:26
It really worked out. But I had I had need to be towed recently because my I had gotten a small wreck. And I was I never called My insurance agent. I just texted them the whole time. And they were like yep, record, like it was all just handled, I didn't have to make a single phone call. It was really nice. I
Brandi H. 23:42
guess I have the triple I have triple A and I had to use it the other day and the AAA app and then my insurance app. It's it's fantastic. And that's what I want. I want my clients to have that same sort of, you know, they don't have to have endless phone calls and back and forth with me. And plus with them cell scheduling, I never have to worry about that I put the days in wrong. When they're talking about like medications. They input all that information. So I'm not second guessing. Like did I put it in wrong? And I can reference that at all times.
Collin 24:14
Yeah, it's a huge liability cover for us knowing this is what the client asked me to do. It's all here in black and white on my phone on my software. And I'm following those directions. And it really makes it so simple. You You mentioned that you were fear free certified and was curious why that was something you were interested in getting and kind of what that's what that's done for you.
Brandi H. 24:36
I was interested in it. Really I wanted to learn a little more about animal like behavior and body language. I felt pretty confident for my time working at like the dog daycare. But obviously like I don't know everything and I don't pretend to know everything. And so I wanted to We'll learn more about that. But I also again, I wanted to have that certification so that I could tell clients, it makes you look more professional, it makes you seem like you care about, you know, increasing your knowledge, because I think that's a big thing. A lot of people don't understand, you know, for this job is that, like, I want to take all the classes that I can I want to talk to professionals, I want to listen to podcasts, like I want to, I want to know as much as I can, so that I have great ideas. I know how to lead, you know, pro proactively lead a meet and greet, you know, I get a lot of times I have a meet and greet and for a cat, say, and owners are dragging the cat out from under the bed. And I used to sort of go along with it. But after the fear free, I'm just like, No, no, it's okay. You know, let them come to me. I tell clients a lot of times, you know, I just assume everyone has cameras in their house, and I'm fine with it. And I'll tell clients, like, you know, especially with cats. Part of my thing is that if the cats are nervous for me, like I'll do the feed the bowl of vegetables with food and everything, but I'm not going to chase the cats down, like I'll sit on the, on the sofa, quietly and like talk to them in a low voice. And hopefully I was like, I'm not ignoring your cat like I, you know, I explained to them, like, what the fear free method is for that and how I'm trying to get the cats to come to me and let them feel comfortable coming to me. And I explained to them that it's not just to make my job easier. It's to make their job easier, you know, their life with their animal easier and easier on the next pet sitting service, whether that's with me or somebody else, because the cats are going to know that they're not being pushed to do that
Collin 26:57
those certifications in those training programs. I know people go back and forth about them, whether they're quote unquote, necessary or not, or how impressed people get with them. But I think focusing is just like you've done here going, this is for me, like I I'm the one who wants to know as much as I can. I'm the one who wants and you said, you want to have great ideas. And I think that's so important of, we only know what we know. And it's we were not going to be able to sit there in a closed room, and now suddenly magically come up with spontaneously all these brand new unique ideas that needing to go and get new and better ideas really starts with going and getting new information. And then we get to now try and apply to that do new things in our in our company, because we've gotten that information. And that's where a lot of the starts of how do we raise the bar? Well, I've got to go learn some stuff. And then I need to think about it and now apply how now I need to take that information and figure out how that works in my business and come up with those ideas and unique approaches.
Brandi H. 27:59
Yeah, definitely, that's really all I want to do is I want to get all this information I want to be not only marketable as a senator, but also just I want to be a good senator, you know, I want I want the dogs that are staying with me to have a good experience and a good time. Like, I want the owners to know that they can rely on me, like I want owners to know that when they book with me, I'm gonna show up, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do everything that I'm saying that I'm gonna do and more,
Collin 28:31
again, focusing on us I want to be I actually want to be good at this, I want I want to know, my craft, I want to be an excellent at my trade, I want to be a professional in what I'm doing. And that's fine. You know, there's there, you can join organizations and you can agree to their standards in and when a lot of this rests and us going, what does it mean for me? Me personally, to be an excellent petsitter how do I define that? And that's kind of where we all go and find our own course, and ways of learning and incorporating that into our business.
Brandi H. 29:05
And it's different for everyone. You know, like, I know my personal pet sitter that watches my dogs is very different from from my sort of the things that I do but like my dogs love it there and they have a really good time. And you know, so it's, there's I think there's somebody for everyone. But yeah, the the way I want to do it, the kind of clients that I'm cultivating are the ones that enjoy that, you know, they enjoy being able to book online, they enjoy, you know, having things like GPS trackers and all that. Yeah, well, I
Collin 29:42
wanted I definitely I want to talk to you about those GPS trackers. So when did you start incorporating those? And what would it actually do they do, I guess what I want to ever think about this.
Brandi H. 29:55
So the GPS tracker, it started out with my personal dog so I adopted my my spirited dog, I had little senior dogs. I was, I was for the longest time the senior dog sitter, so I had nothing but see, so when I fully like started opening, I was full of seniors, like I was doing daycare, like hospice daycare for senior dogs. Oh, wow, I wasn't worried about like, anything other than dogs getting, you know their meds on time. And then what happens when you have a bunch of senior dogs is they pass away, like slowly, like the senior dog started passing away. And the owners were getting puppies. And so I became the default sitter for those puppies. And I at the time was like, Well, I'm gonna get a younger dog. And you know, and I adopted this dog, that is a Spitfire. And he has a, he is a he's a flight risk, basically, at all times. He loves me, but man, he just I don't I don't trust that he wouldn't run away the second you got an opportunity. I researched some trackers. And I had gotten a GPS collar for him. Just because like if something happened, I wanted to be able to find him. And when I got this GPS collar, so I got him a fire collar. And I didn't realize at the time that it did stuff like activity tracking. So with that five collar I can do, I got to see like how many steps he was doing every day, how well he slept. And he occasionally goes to a commercial dog daycare here in Houston. He did more than so while he was in the daycare, I could see how active he was. And as I started having, like all these younger dogs come in, I realized like, this is something I would love to offer clients, because, you know, I would get clients that asked like, do you have cameras that we could watch the dogs? Because a lot of commercial facilities have that. And I mean, I just thought of my house. So no, no, I mean, I have cameras, yes. But like, Are there cameras that you can watch? No, yeah. But I wanted to give clients this ability that like I had with my dad, you know, back to that thing where we could log into the portal and see his stats, like I wanted to give clients the ability to feel like they were actively a part of their dogs days with me without being able to physically see them. So I dived into the research of dog trackers. And you will not believe how many people have very strong opinions about this, how many different types of trackers there are, you know, there's everything from people who use the air tags, to $400 Dog trackers. Wow. It's an you know, I think about like, that wasn't even a market really, like five years ago. You know, it wasn't even really a market of things that you could do. So, like, I knew I liked it. But the five colors that I had weren't necessarily, you know, the trackers built into the color. So I needed something I had to sit down and basically write a list of what I wanted out of trackers, which was I wanted, I knew I wanted GPS, I knew that I wanted something that could easily go on and off of a client's color. Because if it if it's not easy to move, like it's not you, it's not useful. Um, another thing that I wanted was I wanted to be able to share that dog with the client, but only that one dog, because like with the five collars that I have, I can share their information like with my pet sitter, but she can see all the dogs on my account. So like if I shared that I didn't want clients to see everybody's dog,
Collin 34:19
very privacy focused as well so that they're not knowing who else is over there. And it's also overwhelming to have like, why am I seeing this information for all these other pets? It's not it's not, you know, curtailed to to their needs at that time.
Brandi H. 34:33
Right? They just need the one. Um, so yeah, I did a lot of research and you know, I was talking to people online and people were like, get an air tag or get a tile and, you know, I think those are teh in certain circumstances. But then when I was reading and stuff like some I ended up in a deep dive and I gotten to that forum you know, where you just start like reading and reading and that's what We're talking about how they're seeing, like dogs that are swallowing air tags. And they're basically a battery, you know, so I was like, okay, that's out. And also the air tags. A lot of people don't realize that they run on Bluetooth. So they, they're not built to go out of the range of Bluetooth. So if your dog's more than, like, 3040 feet away from you, it's not picking up anything. And also stuff like that doesn't pick up steps, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's
Collin 35:31
not a tracker. It's more like location finder kind of thing.
Brandi H. 35:35
Right. And so that was I ended up throwing that out. And then there were some that were prohibitively expensive, you know, like the $400 ones, which seemed to do everything I wanted to do. But then I zeroed in on the attractive trackers, which kind of hit all my sweet spots of what I wanted. So they are about the size of my thumb. So I have one right here, which is not helpful to have visual things on a podcast, but for you like it's about the size of my thumb, it easily snaps on and off the collar, I can send just the one pet information to the client. And the other thing that I like about this is that it holds the prep profiles. So with the other trackers that I looked at, it doesn't hold the pet profile, so you have to delete out everybody and reset in for new ones. But with these when I unpair the tracker with the profile, the profile basically goes into a bank. So when like the dog, the dog that I had for daycare this morning came as soon as he walked in the door, I snapped on his tracker, I went and just paired his profile with the tracker and sent the link to the owner and it was done.
Collin 37:03
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Brandi H. 37:49
It's so you can mix and match and use it across dogs like you know I have the one. So I do have enough trackers for every dog type tracker, and it is an expense. I think the trackers themselves are about $50. But the thing I learned was that they go on sale quite a bit. So like they were recently on sale for like $30 apiece. And then you have to pay per tracker for the service because it is GPS service. Okay, so I think that's about $90 a year. So it is it is an investment. But the one thing that I did was I bought one to start with. And I tested it out on several dogs, I wanted to see how that went. And then I sort of just slowly built up like as they went on sale, I would buy a couple and then I would activate them as necessary because you don't have to pay the yearly fee until you activate like right now I have four that aren't activated and but they were on sale, I think they were on sale for like $25 apiece. Um, so I just went ahead and bought several and activated on. All right, I haven't activated them yet,
Collin 39:04
you can just kind of turn that on or off. Or you can do month to month with that I have an active 12 month and not active another so you can kind of just rotate and active use them as need.
Brandi H. 39:13
So you can do a monthly fee. But the only thing the only reason I went with the yearly fee is the monthly fee doesn't allow you to share the tracker. It allows you to share the tracker where they can see the location, like you just get a link, but it doesn't allow you to like sign somebody up as an owner where they can see the activity. And for some people that might be fine. Like I you know, not every client who i Who i send the link to, you know, activates and like downloads the app. And for those clients, I just screenshot that activity because I can see that and send it with their daily report card. You know, so that might be all you and I think that's like nine or $10 a month I don't remember for certain. So you can do that. Um, but I wanted the clients to be able to just log in on their own, because I found that doing that like giving them the opportunity, it cuts down on a lot of the questions that clients have about their dog, you know, not that I'm always here to answer questions, but a lot of the questions that I was getting, and, and maybe questions that you've gotten to where, like, out of my dog sleep, are they playing a lot? You know? And are they resting? And this is all stuff that I'm happy to answer. But they know that they can go in that in that tracker at any point, and say, like, Oh, my dog's had, he's taken like, 20,000 steps today. And he was playing really hard from like, 2pm to 4pm. And then he took a nap for two hours, you know, they see all of that, they see the sleep quality. So the overnight, they can look and see, like my dog woke up three times overnight. And was that for a couple minutes. You know, it's basically like a Fitbit for dogs,
Collin 41:07
not just giving them peace of mind, but insight into their dogs time with you, again, you needed to give them some information. And you said it allows them to be present without being present and fills in some gaps that maybe you can't always give, we as senators can't always give the most accurate information of how many times my dog wake up or where they restless. Sometimes we only know if they're whining, or if they're making noises or if they're pacing, but you know, if they're, you know, kind of just moving and wrestling a little bit constantly, we might not pick up on that. So this can give some insight to also us to have going Hey, how did that dog sleep last night? Okay, you know, kind of changes needed?
Brandi H. 41:48
Yeah. And you know, it's great, because like, sometimes I will have dogs who you know, one day are super active, and the next day, they sleep a lot. And I can look back and say okay, well, you know Jenks was took 40,000 Steps yesterday and played for like so many hours straight. So of course, she's going to be a little more tired today. And you know, you can also say, Well, she didn't sleep that great last night. So of course, she's gonna need a little more time or dogs that didn't play as much the day before I can say like, these dogs, I need to try and get them out a little bit more to because I want them to have a good time.
Collin 42:28
Oh, yeah, it really does start changing and make it really really truly does make it customized for that individual dog when you have this kind of data to back it up. Hmm. You mentioned some things of you want a GPS you wanted to be able to share, you wanted to be able to have clients see that information and be able to attach on and off. If people are thinking about getting getting a GPS tracker, what kind of recommendations or what things do they need to consider when they go down that rabbit hole.
Brandi H. 42:56
I think the biggest thing is that if you are considering getting one for your personal dog, you have a lot more options. I think like I really like the five holler. There's also the fitbark, which is apparently really good. I tried that one out too. But you know, I like the trackers that pretty much stay attached to your dog's collar, or personal box. Um, but yeah, you want to look at battery life, because that's important, you want to look at who you can share the information with. Because again, that's also important. Like, I want to know that, like, if I'm sharing the app, I can have access to share that information with somebody else. Um, you know, I want to see who and how accurate that is, you know, and to be fair, they all run off GPS. So another big reason that I have these trackers is in the very unlikely event that a dog happens to escape, which I've never had before, knock on wood. But I know that not only when they crossed the barrier of my home facility, I get a text message. You know, the owner gets a text message. And I'm not worried about looking bad. Like my My thing is I want the dog to get found. And again, the only time that's ever happened was it runs off GPS. So occasionally, I think like two or three times and the entire time I've done it. I've gotten a notification, you know, like Brady is out without an owner and the dogs sitting right next to me. So I instantly message the owner and I'm like, hey, it's right. He's right next to me. It's fine. Which so it happens a little bit like but it's not the norm at all. And I would rather get false notifications occasionally and at least know that it's doing something.
Collin 44:58
So that's just an in the app. You can set up that GPS fencing around your home and a set perimeter to say if it goes outside and start getting it sending notifications.
Brandi H. 45:07
Yes. I've never had a dog escape. So, you know, again, knock on wood. So I don't, I don't have any experience of how that would work in real life. But I hope I never have to test it out.
Collin 45:19
Yeah, well, that good yet again, another way of covering liability of not just having the software and getting instructions from the owner, but now I have a way of protecting and getting alerts and notifications in the event that something happened, right, and being able to immediately go find track down and get that taken care of, without all the guesswork that's on our that's all you know, if a dog gets out without one of these, who knows, right? You've, you've got to start doing a lot of sleuthing and searching out this, it's a lot more peace of mind that just you have as the sitter going, okay, I can literally walk right to this dot, and we're gonna get taken care of,
Brandi H. 45:56
right, I think go straight to the dog, I can put it in last dog mode. Um, and we are good.
Collin 46:03
So we've talked about GPS trackers, and how they can integrate them. And I think all of this just really wraps up with with your approach to this, and you really describe what you do as, as premium premium boarding premium services. For you, Brady, what is what is premium? And how do you make sure you get that delivered to your clients.
Brandi H. 46:23
Um, so the, what I consider a premium, and the reason I use the term premium is because, you know, when you're in a commercial facility, for boarding or daycare, you can always pay for upgrades, you know, you can pay to have your dog like when my dog goes to his commercial facility that he loves, like you can pay to have, they do a splash day or something, and you can pay an extra $5 or something, and they'll let him in there. They have ball pits occasionally. And I wanted the ability to give all the dogs in my care, the same experience of having all the extras basically included. And also, I just didn't really want to keep track of who paid for what. And I mean, realistically, it's It's almost easier in a larger facility because you know, the dogs are in kennels or in groups that like everyone paid for this, you know, but when you're have four to 14 dogs here every day, it's a little harder to do that. And I don't want to make, you know, I just didn't want to do that. So we're doing it all premium, everybody gets all the upgrades. So the reason I call it premium is so I do the online booking, we have the smaller groups and the larger facilities within a lot of the larger facilities. Again, the GPS trackers. And I have stuff like bubble machines with dog bubbles, like the bacon flavored scented bubbles that I use. We do those I found these. We do pop cups every once in a while. So there's the pup like you can get this special dog whipped cream. And we'll do pup cups sometimes I just transformed my backyard into what I essentially is a private dog park. I turfed out the entire yard which was you know, I had a normal backyard before with like, you know, balls and everything. And then I was like, you know, it was hard Texas heat, a drought, dogs you know running around on it all day like it was it was really just not great. And I kind of been thinking about doing turf for a while. But turf is expensive. And it felt like a big investment until I sat back and I asked myself like what am I spending every month trying to keep the grass alive and maintaining it versus like amortized out how much would turf cost every month and I found out I'm actually saving money. Wow. Yeah. So when you figure out like based on the life of the turf plus it just looks great. Like I have climbing like dog climbing things out there. I purchased this big dome, which is really for kids but the dogs love it. They run in and out of it they play underneath it Yeah, so we did all we did all that out. I put a tennis ball ball pit for them. Which has been honestly the standout of the yard. Everybody loves it. And I don't know if you know this, but you can go on Amazon and you can purchase tennis balls from Pro like tennis places that they've already used them for like tennis lessons and stuff. And you can get like lots of them sorry about like 300 or like $40 is no I did. Yeah. And I, yeah, and then I got a big plastic kiddie pool. And I just dumped the balls in that kiddie pool. And it has been the thing that all the dogs love the most.
Collin 50:16
Oh my gosh, that's um, yeah. Okay. And so
Brandi H. 50:21
yeah, I know, I was like I did not I was just I was ready to buy like a bunch of individual like brand new tennis balls. And then I found that on Amazon. But then I have a closet that's full of like enrichment, toys and puzzles. And sometimes I'll feed dogs out of puzzles or I'll set up like when they're in private area, I don't do like feeding or treats together. But if they're in a private area, I will do a puzzle. Occasionally. snuffle mat, something like that. We have a dedicated dog room, and all the areas that the dogs are in, they have like white noise machines. And then I got the Galaxy lights for nighttime. I have TVs that I play dog movies on are like dog TV. I've had little golden books, and I will read to the dogs. Like I'll read stories. It's more for me than them. Although yesterday, I did have a dog that this dog named maybe. And she like sat at my feet and was listening to the story. She was looking at the pictures. It was adorable. Oh, yeah. Oh, and then I have like a splash pad that I set out if I've got dogs that want to play on the splash pad. And not everything gets done every day. But like enough gets done, the owners know that their dogs are probably going to do something extra fun when they're here.
Collin 51:50
You start off by saying like, I didn't want to hold back anything from anybody. But it's a it's I want everybody have an amazing experience. But practically just me as the owner, I don't keep track of everything that people we think we don't give that enough weight and credit to running our business but keeping it streamlined and simple. Of if you're taking care of 10 dogs in a day or 14 Dogs throughout the day trying to remember Oh, who gets the special bacon thing? Or who gets those who paid for the ball pit? Or who paid for it. Just it's too much to keep track of right? No, we don't have time for that. We just want to love on the dogs to make sure they have a good time. So that premium comes in and going everybody gets everything. Now it means everybody's paying a really high price. But they get it all right, that's in that just there's simplicity in there. It's also just a raises a service across the board. So it's not like oh, well, who's paying for the cardboard box? And who's paying for the deluxe massive suite? Nope, we don't have any of that everyone gets the massive suite. Right?
Brandi H. 52:45
Yeah. And clients love it. You know, I like it. Because I'm out there with everyone. I don't have to worry that if I pull up a splash pad, you know, who paid for the splash pad today? I've got to put the others up like no, we're all going to enjoy
Collin 52:59
dragging them back into the house like you did. Right? Nobody wants that. I think that that is something that we can all think about of going What's something that I can do. That's kind of a more marginal cost that I can give everybody what's what, what start with one thing, what's one thing I can do for everybody that just makes my services a little bit better. And then we can start adding from there. And that starts with the lot of stuff that you talked about brandy of going, Okay, I need to get more education. So I need to get this stuff. So I can figure out what it would mean to add one more thing. And then we need to have these these tools and these resources that have access to so that I can do the things that I want to do. And that's just kind of how we get to make it our own.
Brandi H. 53:41
And I didn't add all these things at once. You know, I mean, like, I got the white noise machines and then the like the star lights I got for me personally, and I loved it and I found out my dogs were like watching it at night. So I got a couple more for the dog rooms. You know, the like I said the trackers like one by one you know, I looked around for tennis balls like I shopped around for the best price on that and found out you could do a lot of them. You know so it was it seems like oh, you know I have all this great stuff. But I want to add to it like the puzzles and the enrichment toys. Those were about one by one. Yeah. That's
Collin 54:21
where it starts right with everything we do in our business when we're building and I think we need to remember that we are building something. And we we build one brick at a time we build one puzzle at a time one new skill at a time when new collar at a time when new client at a time. It's all a building process. Yes, definitely. Brandi, I want to thank you so much for coming on today sharing how you are enriching the lives of not just the pets but the clients and what premium means to you and why it's so important to you. I thank you for that. And thank you for sharing everything but I know that there's a lot more that you do. We didn't touch on all the services or how you manage them. So if people want to Follow along with you and your business. See the cool ball pit on Instagram and all that stuff? How can they do that and start getting in touch.
Brandi H. 55:09
I am on Facebook at bio city petsitting. I'm on Instagram and Tiktok at bio city petsitting. And also my website is by yosity petsitting.com. So I can be found anywhere
Collin 55:23
there. Brandi, this has been a real pleasure. Thank you so much.
Brandi H. 55:26
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Collin 55:29
What are you building in your business? What do you want your business to look like one year from now, five years from now 10 years from now 30 years from now. All of that starts with things that we are doing today, things that we are learning and pursuing, trying and failing or succeeding at. We can't build unless we try and we can't try unless we know new things to do differently. So I want to encourage you to seek out new information, get connected with good community of people and continue to push to be not just a more marketable pet sitter, but just a better pet sitter and whatever that means for you and how you are serving your clients and to make sure that you are serving them. Well. We want to thank our sponsors today time to vet and pet sitters international for making the show possible. And Megan and I want to thank you so so much for listening to the show. We hope you have an absolutely wonderful week and we'll be back again soon.
