346: What’s in Store for 2023?
What’s 2023 looking like? The economic outlook is shaping up as a mixed bag. We walk through ways to stay nimble as a business, through planning and staying open to new opportunities. We also share how we’ve been approaching planning for 2023 and why it’s critical to take a wholistic approach that takes both your personal life and business into account.
Main Topics
2023 economic outlook
Staying nimble
Wholistic year planning
What we’re looking forward to
Main takeaway: If we live at 100% non-stop, we can’t see opportunities that arise because we are so hyper-vigilant.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, pet sitter, client, year, continue, achievable, goals, stay, people, event, services, backtracked, spending, moving, projects, outline, nimble, q1, process
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. Welcome to the last Monday episode of 2022.
Collin 00:23
It's insane.
Meghan 00:25
Thank you to our Patreon supporters for making this show possible today, their financial support helps keep the show going week after week. So thank you very much. And if you would like to learn more about being a Patreon member, and supporting the show financially, you can do that at Pet Sitter confessional.com/support. So last week in Episode 344, we looked back over the year of 2022. And now we are going to be shifting and looking forward to the year of 2023.
Collin 00:53
And what better way to start about looking forward and by looking at the economic forecasts. Oh, well, yeah, I mean, 2022 was a boom year for I think the majority of businesses. And the economy has just been weird, ever since coming out of COVID and COVID lock downs, well, moving forward. 2023 is really shaping up to have a slowed economic growth and, and possibly a mild recession, at least here in the US. And if you check out the show notes on the podcast app that you're listening to, or head on over to our website, you'll find links to a couple articles from JP Morgan and the Harvard Business Review. But basically, with interest rates continuing to inch up, that will help slow the economy and also inflation is going to remain high and might not even hit 3% before the end of the year. So there's a really mixed bag here of strong growth data, strong hiring data. And really economists are really is still expecting spending from consumers to be up because they're all still on relatively solid footing, given everything going on. And on top of that layoffs have started to slow down indicating companies for now or at least are trying to retain staff that they have. And obviously all this can change in a blink of an eye. So we have to continue to remain nimble and keep a pulse on the not just the global or national but also the local economy. And that's where I think still remaining in touch. We talked about this previously of staying in touch with the realtors and other business owners to see how they are getting a sense of how spending is going and what the outlook looks like for you locally because ultimately, that is what is important.
Meghan 02:30
So what is the economic outlook look like for pet care providers? Well,
Collin 02:34
although the growth that we experienced through 2022 has been immense, the growth moving forward will probably not be as crazy or blistering which may come as a relief for many of us who struggle to hold on and maintain ship correction ship moving forward. Given the inundation of new requests and client inquiries that we receive throughout this year. It does mean that we need to continue be aware of price sensitivity and customers as they continue to feel the effects of inflation. They may not be feeling secure in their jobs, and they may feel worried about the broader economy at large. But with spending still continued to forecast to be high. We will the pet care services and the pet care industry will benefit from that as people will still continue to spend on their pets.
Meghan 03:19
Well, and it's also a good reminder that we need to continue to be forward facing we need to continue basically to be in client's faces all the time of hey, I'm here not in a desperate over the top kind of way. But like, Hey, here's some pet care tips. Here's how I can solve your problem. You know, soft approaches on social media or your website or email or newsletters that you send out are really going to help them know that hey, you are still here.
Collin 03:44
And that's a good point. You mentioned soft approaches. And I think many of us, including myself are turned off by the hard sell of we It feels icky to us, we don't like selling in a hard manner of being upfront and brash about what our business is and serving other people. The soft touch, the soft approach is more fitting for many of our personalities. And it helps in that way of here's some information here is some got, here's a guide that I've put together, here's some training tips, here's this, you can be in front of people and continue to support them and educate them without coming down in a hard manner. And I do think that that more encompassing approach will really help foster better relationships with clients and potential clients as well. I mean, we just had somebody email us through our our pet care business saying thank you so much for these really informative email newsletters. I haven't needed your services yet, but when I do I know I will use you thank you for all the great tips. And that's just one way she's subscribing to us because she likes other content that we're producing. Nothing to do with our pet care.
Meghan 04:49
Yeah, well and frankly in that email I think you have it all pet care tips like the intro was all pet care. The middle portion we do a short pet care Tip. And then the blog that we finish out with was also Petcare. And I had commented to you of like, oh, there's actually nothing of our company in his email. So I had you write in there, like a one sentence of, you know, was something about our availability through the holidays. But it was 99%, pet care specific tips and tricks for pet parents. So that Yeah, that's very helpful to people. It's also important that we are going to remain nimble through this time through the next year, how do we do that we stay aware of how our business is doing by looking at a few areas. The first one is major projects. And this is anything that you really need to do this coming year. So in the last year 20, well, this year 2022, we switched to lock boxes, and that was a huge step for our company, this coming year, it's going to be switching software's. So is that something that you are interested in for your company? Do you need to rearrange your pricing or your services, your service area,
Collin 05:55
branding, may be a big undertaking for you, maybe you've had and you threw something together, maybe you've had the same brand for a couple years, and it may be time that you've outgrown that, well, that is a major project that you can't just get done in a day
Meghan 06:09
or hiring is it is 2023, that time you are finally going to hire
Collin 06:13
Yes. So that none of those projects are something that is going to happen over a short period of time, those are going to take a lot of planning and your investment. And if you don't plan for that time, that time will get eaten up by other things. So take those big projects and break them down into much smaller chunks and outline your goals and objectives across set time periods. And this brings back everybody's favorite topic. And then we've talked about their favorite topic of the global economic outlook. And now we're going to talk about smart goals. Right? Everyone wants to be smart. We talked about this before, but it is it continues to be huge. And planning and staying organized. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time bound goals in our business, basically specific, really dig down and write out a paragraph about what you want to see at the end of this. How busy How do I know if I've accomplished it, I need to define it. And then that means measurable, it needs to not just be I've made people happier, but how are you going to measure happiness? What could that mean? Maybe that means repeat bookings, maybe that means number of referrals they give to
Meghan 07:18
you. And then it also has to be achievable. So if you say in quarter one, I'm going to hire 18 new people, well, obviously, that's probably not going to be achievable if you haven't even started any part of the hiring process yet. So make it achievable. And then also relevant. If you are a dog trainer and you want to go be a world class, trumpet player, well, that's probably not something that's necessarily relevant to your business. So trying to stay in your wheelhouse as much as possible. And then
Collin 07:47
time bound is the last one here. And this just means you're going to put an end date as to when this needs to be accomplished so that we don't keep pushing it down the road. And again, all this stuff needs to be taken holistically in the fact of your running your business, you have a busy schedule. So maybe the time bound, we're going to push that out a little bit further. So you actually can accomplish this in a reasonable manner.
Meghan 08:10
We also stay nimble by looking at other opportunities that may come our way. So if we live at 100%, nonstop, it means that we can't see opportunities that arise because we are so hyper vigilant and kind of stressed out day to day that we are not, we're not we're so navel gazing, that we're not able to look up and look around at what else is happening. So we encourage you to seek after still moments in this new year and find comfort and satisfaction working at 80%. Because you do not need to be working full time 100% All the time. It's very draining. And not necessarily, frankly,
Collin 08:48
well. And if you cap yourself at working at 80%, it does mean that you can be aware you have that bandwidth to see to process new things that come across your desk to come across your social media feed and that you can process that and go, Oh, that's actually a really good opportunity. Let me reach out to that person. And let me offer this service. Let me do this thing. Because if you're always as Megan said, if you're always operating 100% You don't have that capacity to see new things and process. That's where the creativity and business comes from a lot of times is going, what new things are happening around me and how do I see myself taking advantage of those. And that's a very creative process. And if we can't find those still calm, quiet moments to ourselves. There's creativity is hard to happen in that in that manner. A new
Meghan 09:34
opportunity that we have been thinking and talking about is one that we saw Heidi from Heidi and hope Pet Services down in Florida. She just hosted a client Christmas party and we love this idea so much because you know we always stress about what are we going to give clients this year? How many gifts are we gonna give to everybody? Is it big or small? It's just it seems like a lot of headache. And so what a great way to have, you know, a business expense. Yeah, Have it being the entire event, you know, come and go, maybe some hors d'oeuvres, some client gifts, but just having it as an event and it's less stress than go then trying to figure out what gift is perfect for this client.
Collin 10:13
And realizing that in gifts, at least here in the US at the IRS, you can deduct $25 per gift or gift per client. And now we can set we can take that money and we can invest that into a much larger event, have it catered, hosted an evening or a couple hours of a come and go reception of just thanking them and giving them opportunity to come and say hi and meet other clients. And I really liked that, because that just takes the whole company culture. We talked about that a lot. And goes, here's a community here, you as a pet owner are actually connected to a broader community and I can bring people together. And I think that'd be a really good mission to have is more community, how do I foster a better community for pet parents in my area, I host an event just for your clients. And sure not all of them are going to come it may just be a handful. But it's something that you can start on and build from
Meghan 11:05
there. So that will be on the horizon for us next year. Yes, thanks, Heidi. Some other things as well is the National Association of Professional pet sitters conference in March, which we will be speaking at. And then we're going to be keep hiring and expanding. That is something that is getting a continual process. Yeah,
Collin 11:24
it's a major goal for us is to continue that process to keep refining it to keep building on what we have. I mean, just yesterday, I completed a brand new onboarding and training landing page built from our website where new staff can go to watch videos, listen to podcasts and see other resources that we put together, trying to streamline that process and make it easier and more welcoming to them.
Meghan 11:48
And then we also want to do more events. So we want to host a pet loss and grief memorial service and both of our service areas. We want to do another pet sitter confessional retreat. Yeah.
Collin 11:59
Yeah, so stay stay tuned for announcements on on that. And then partner along with the more events thing is partner with more businesses. One thing that we dropped the ball on, I'll say with the pet loss, grief memorial event was we didn't bring on along partners alongside we kind of spearheaded it by ourselves. We invited other businesses to be there. But we didn't give them things to do or allow them to contribute in other ways. And I think that that's something that we will definitely be doing with our events moving forward.
Meghan 12:28
And then something we did last week was we took a business lunch. And we went and planned our 2023. And so what we did is we sat down with a piece of paper and we said, Okay, what do we want to do for this next year, personally? What do we want to do for our business? What do we want to do for the podcast, and we outlined all of those things that we picked
Collin 12:48
a day where we didn't have a whole lot going on. So again, we weren't feeling stressed, or overburden. And we could just open up and think about the possibilities. We reflected on things that weren't working in our company pain points that we or our staff or clients we're having, that we had been taking notes on. And now we needed to make those and turn those into something that we needed to have change
Meghan 13:07
basically a project for next year. Yeah. And so after we had done that, for our personal and for our business and for the podcast, we then said, Okay, what quarter do we want to have this done in is that q1, q2, q3 q4. And so basically, we wanted to outline that so that we can kind of say, okay, at the completion of q3, this is going to be done. So now we can work backwards and say, what do we need to do in q1 and q2, to have this happen. So it's basically, you're, you're going with a goal for the entire year, or however long that you need this goal to happen. And then you break it up into months and weeks and kind of have a not necessarily a daily list of what you need to complete within that goal. But it may turn into that if it's a super big, big project.
Collin 13:54
And importantly, the business with the dog walking in the business for the podcasting was we're not done separate from each other. And those weren't done separate from our personal goals and objectives. Because we don't want to overload everything into q1, or q2, which you know, might overlay with the time when we want to actually take a family vacation. Well, we can't do all those things in q2, because we're taking the family vacation. So now I've got to be realistic q3. Not that that's bad. That's just being realistic. That's looking at the whole year and going well, actually, October was insane for us as accompany and we know that November and December are insane as well. So we can't pile too much on later in the year that actually incentivizes us to put more towards q1 and q2, because otherwise we're not being honest with what we can actually accomplish. And that's what this process does. When you put these things together. You outline your personal, your business, maybe you have family, whatever however lists you want to make and you have goals and objectives for those when you look at them in a realistic manner. Are you go I, these are not independent from one another. And I have to acknowledge that. Otherwise, I'm going to be very frustrated as the year progresses, that I'm not getting what I need to get done
Meghan 15:12
well, and you also know which things can be moved and which things can't be moved. Because, you know, for instance, for us, we know exactly the months and the weekends that we're going to have our pet loss, grief events. So knowing that we can't really push those back or forward because those are kind of set in stone. Yeah, it's
Collin 15:29
one of those decisions that should make no now, because we've made that decision to have it that weekend that necessitates things happening much earlier than that. And that's all this backtracking and going, Okay, well, maybe I do have a daily task now. Because some of the things that we're working on the people that we want to have there, how we want to have this orchestrated, that doesn't happen overnight. And just like we used to, for studying for exams and height in high school or college, it's a little bit at a time, instead of trying to cram the night before and then being disappointed with the result later. Stop having all that stress on that one time for this one night, and I've got to get it done. It's a do or die situation, break that out, into if you can maybe weekly goals for them. If you want to go daily. That's all that's awesome. But at least weekly goals to some point for how much progress you want to try and make
Meghan 16:19
well, because it's definitely can be overwhelming, you know, looking at your whole year and going I have 35 things, big projects that I need to get done this year. Wow. No, thank you. So that's why it was super helpful to just not have the deadline in mind. When we started this. We just had a conversation between the two of us what do we want to do next year. And we started from there. And then after that, we backtracked and said, Okay, what are the actual deadlines? We went to the nitty gritty after that, first, it was like, pie in the sky. What do we hope to do? And then we worked from there.
Collin 16:51
That's the vision that you said, you're running your business, you are the CEO, you're the president, you're running things, you you set the vision set the course. And then how do you make progress to that? What what did those steps actually look like? And that's what you have to design. That's what you're designing and you're creating in that process? If it feels weird doing this by yourself, reach out to somebody, partner with another business owner, reach out to a friend or family member to just talk through these things are us? Oh, yeah, we'd be happy to sit down and see what you're planning how you've orchestrated that, maybe ask some follow up questions to make sure that you're pointed in the right direction. Because otherwise we can get locked up in our heads and not sure if I'm making the right decision or wrong decision. And then we
Meghan 17:38
end up making no decision and it gets kicked down the
Collin 17:40
road. Yeah. And and then you look up in six months or 12 months, and you go well, what happened. And so getting a little bit of that accountability also really helps putting it down pen and paper planning it out. And I like the when you when you attach things to a quarter, if you don't want two quarters, you want two months, it helps see where you're overburdening yourself and helps you see where how you can spread things out a little bit throughout the year to make these actually achievable for you.
Meghan 18:10
So what are some of your goals for 2023? We would love to hear them you can let us know on social media, or you can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. We thank you very much for listening to any of the episodes that you have listened to all 346 of them. Thank you very much for taking your most valuable asset your time and listening to us. We want to also thank our Patreon supporters for financially supporting today's show, and we will talk to you next year. Bye
