386: Embracing The Hard Work
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Every day we do work that both directly and indirectly makes us money. The dog walks, grooming, pet sitting visits, and training are all pretty straightforward in that when we perform those tasks, we get paid for them. But what about the other work? How do we find the motivation to keep doing it, and doing it well, even when we don’t get paid directly for doing them?
Main topics
Work you don’t enjoy doing
It’s part of running a business
The pay off will come
Main takeaway: Focus on the fact that you’re bringing value to your business through your effort, which will pay off financially!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitter, enjoy, tasks, talk, business, company, pet, writing, clients, blogs, website, t shirts, run, taxes, money, recognize, people, sitting, ordered, care
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:02
Hi, I'm Meghan.
00:03
I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:03
And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter, I
00:09
want to thank today's sponsor, pet sitters associates and our amazing patreon supporters who every month contribute some money to help the podcast run have found value in the podcast. And if you two have found value, or if you would like to figure out or learn ways to support the show, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:28
Last week, Colin had talked did a solo episode. I talked too long, we had some technical difficulties. And he talked all about physical marketing. And so we actually got some feedback on a segment that we didn't touch on. And that was exactly where we ordered these things from. So you had talked about we have tennis balls with our brand on it poop bag holders, we also have t shirts and a bunch of other stuff. And so we got questions of Well, where did we get all of that?
00:55
Yeah. And we had tried really, really hard to go with a local company tech to get these products made. But unfortunately, at the time, where we were looking to have these printed and produced for us, the supply chains were completely snarled and everything was all messed up. And actually the three or four companies that were local to us that I called, had bakes, they said, No, there's no way we can get those to you within a year like you need to go. And they actually gave us referrals to other larger companies that they knew could produce that for those things. And so, we've ordered promotional promotional. And so we've ordered promotional materials from both identity links, and English apparel and promo, again, that's identity links, and English apparel and promo and both of those links will actually be in the show notes. We
Meghan 01:43
order our magnetic business cards from Vistaprint. And then our T shirts, we order from Printful. Our postcards, we print through Canva. So there's a lot of different companies that you can use, and based on you know, their pricing or how it looks to you. You can buy from really any company that you feel good about, we do all of our graphic design, just the two of us in house. And we've actually but we have used fiber in the past for specific things as well.
02:12
Yeah, that we just couldn't create, we just reached out for real quick one or two things that we needed at that time. And then Megan, you mentioned about our T shirts, I can't believe went that entire episode and didn't even mention our T shirts, because it's one of our biggest, I think branding aspects that we do. And Savannah actually wrote in about that. And she said, hi guys just listened to your promotional and physical advertising podcast. I don't think you mentioned anything about a uniform or shirt. I'm jokingly known as my neighborhood lady in purple, who walks dogs because of my purple t shirt. And hat with my phone number on the back. I've also created a couple of collapsible water bowls that have a mountain near clip so you can attach it to a leash or whatever. And we absolutely love this. You're out in the you're out in the community. Our T shirts, just a pet sitter on the front, and our logo is huge on the back. And it's very straightforward. It's to the point it labels what we do helps clients know when they look at us through our their ring doorbells, who is coming up. And it started a lot of conversations when people are out talking to us or see what we're doing. And then we can tell them a little bit more about our company. And so don't don't don't take for granted that the clothing that you're wearing, you can use that to your advantage.
Meghan 03:28
There are parts of our businesses that we don't necessarily enjoy doing ones that don't bring in monetary value. And so how do we embrace that kind of work? As small business owners? There are many different hats that we wear, there are many different things that we enjoy doing and some that we don't enjoy doing. But how do we still find value and embrace that kind of work? How do you do work when you don't necessarily enjoy it, work that doesn't bring in money, whether it's blogs, or social media or website, of course, then there's the admin stuff of scheduling and taxes and business licenses. Again, so many hats we wear so many different things we do. Some of it we enjoy some of we like some of it, we don't. The first step is recognizing that it is a part of owning a business. And I don't say this to sound mean, but taxes. Nobody really likes them, but they are part of owning a business. We have to sit with our feelings, though. Recognize on one hand that it is something we have to do but also owning the feelings of not necessarily enjoying it because the two are not mutually exclusive. You can still need to do something but not enjoy it. So reflect on why you feel this way. Obviously, if you're not a numbers person, you're not going to enjoy filing taxes or running your financials in your p&l and entering them into QuickBooks or wave apps or whatever you use. If you don't enjoy route planning, you are not going to like scheduling and making sure that it's Staff have the exact minutes to get to where they need to go for the next appointment. If you don't enjoy writing, you're probably not going to like blogs. If you aren't very creatively minded or don't necessarily take the best pictures of animals, you may not be the best at content creation. But think about why you don't enjoy these things. Ask yourself the hard questions of what exactly is it about this thing that I don't enjoy?
05:23
When you mentioned the I might not be good with numbers, so I'm going to procrastinate on doing this this financial work, it could also be that you feel guilty about money that you've spent on something in your business that didn't pay off, you spent too much money on advertising one year. And now looking at the budget reminds you of that one time that you did that. And so it hurts you to do that. Or maybe as far as writing goes, maybe in high school, you had an English teacher that was just really mean to you and gave you horrible grades. And now you've labeled yourself as an I'm not a writing person, this isn't who I am. Even though you might be really good at it, there's this mental blockage, there's this hesitancy to go further into that because of a past experience that you've had. So it could be skill based, sure. But there's also a lot of mental blockages that we keep, and we carry around with ourselves from past experiences, interactions with people self talk that we do to ourselves, because we doubt our own ability. And that can that is a major factor in why we resist and taking on tasks. Because yes, what we're talking about here is the difference. And why is it easier for me to go out and tackle this dog walk or this? Or this groom or this training session? That's really easy for me, I just tackle that. But all this other stuff that my business does, why is there so much resistance that I feel when I lean towards that? And one aspect is definitely well, that doesn't make me money. So why would I focus on that I want to I don't want to do that, because it doesn't make me money. This other stuff makes me money. But there's also going Am I avoiding something, am I actively avoiding feelings, emotions, past experiences that I've had that are revolving around these other things in my business. And I think it's really important to just take a small step back here, and recognize the joy that we can find in our business, your business, our business does so much. For us, it does pay our bills, it helps our community, it helps us feel connected to gifts and talents that we have as individuals. So even finding just one small thing, one small speck of joy that you can find or bring forward in these tasks that you're doing can really go a long way to helping you overcome some boundaries, or some barriers that you have either mentally or emotionally to doing these tasks that you have before us, it can help you focus on that, okay, I don't like doing the taxes or I don't like doing the writing for the SOPs or things like that. But when I do that, my company is able to be better my pet care services are able to be top notch. When I do and focus on these things, I'm better, my company is better, my staff are better. Everything is better. When I do these, because of what it gives me I'm able to be detail oriented, or I'm able to find my passion in these things. That joy can really help drive you forward in overcoming some of the things that keep you from from from tackling them.
Meghan 08:24
It could just be personal preferences, too. So I don't enjoy necessarily tech stuff. But I know you do. Colin so you take over most of the website stuff that we do. And I have input as well as far as copywriting and editing it. But I don't enjoy sitting there and hunt and pecking on the keyboard exactly the a one a two, whatever it needs to be on our website,
08:45
so much fun, you're missing out. So it's just personal
Meghan 08:49
preference to that. That's all it may be. It may not necessarily have a deeper meaning and connected to your childhood, although it may. But it could just be you don't enjoy this thing. Something that does not bring monetary value but is essential to your business 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 have 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 at Pet said llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at petsfit llc.com. Which leads us to the next point of if you truly don't enjoy it. You may want to take a break from it. You may need to step back and say okay, this is something that I'm starting to resent and I need to pull back I need to maybe even delegate this task
09:57
and that can be extremely hard Have you mean I'm going to delegate a task? I'm going to pay somebody to do a task? That is, that doesn't make me any money. Why on earth? Would I do that? What why that doesn't make any sense. It's not a one for one in our businesses. But what's important here is that yes, that task doesn't make you money. But if you are now spending your time on tasks that do make you money, when you would have spent that same time on a task that doesn't make you money, as long as the money you pay somebody is less than the money that you can make with that time that you've gotten back. That is an amazing choice.
Meghan 10:36
Yeah, it makes sure that it's worth it to and if so, for us, we have our staff members write blogs for us, we don't necessarily enjoy that, although we can do it and have done it in the past. But we know that some of our staff have really strong strengths in writing, they do a great job at it, they it's very easy for them, it flows very well, they produce great work. And so we've said, Hey, why don't you do some blogs, we will pay you X amount, and you'll you can get it done in X amount of hours. And this is part of your job description every month, that to us is worth it. Because while it's not something super fun for us, and ultimately is a money suck, we know that in the long run, it's going to pay off with SEO and all that and our staff enjoy it and have fun doing it, because they're good at it.
11:23
Well, and now we get that time back instead of me sitting down sort of Megan sitting down, and spending two, three hours to research and write a blog, we can pay a staff member to do that, while we go out and do more marketing, do more advertising, we can focus on things that we know will bring in a lot of income and a lot of money into the business and help grow the business. So now this task, it's still important, we still want it done, we still need it done as far as blog writing, but now we can focus our attention and time on more high value tasks. So that's something that you can do to when you look at the tasks that you do in a day, sit down and look at go what's a high value, what's a high reward task, maybe to me personally, but also to the business, maybe I don't enjoy doing it. But it's really important financially to the business that this gets done. Okay, that needs to be up there on this, this cannot be pushed aside. But if there's other tasks that are, well, this is important, but it's not a high value, and I can I can relegate this or put this down, decide or stop it, or delegate to somebody, then you can start having a hierarchy of value based tasks in your business and decide what you want to focus on to bring in either more finances more business, or it's just better for you personally,
Meghan 12:39
I know we're talking about non monetary things here. But let's also flip this on its head and go. Well, a lot of us got into this because we love the pet care. We love the puppy cuddles and the kitty kisses and we don't like the admin, but maybe one day that's actually going to flip for you and you enjoy the admin and you enjoy sitting behind a desk because you can be at home and you don't have to drive 1000 miles a week, and you would rather pay your staff to go do that. So it doesn't necessarily have to be things that don't bring in money, it they may very well bring in money, but you just simply don't enjoy them anymore.
13:13
What and this kind of mindset does shift as you bring on more and more people into your business, if you've decided to grow, if you decide that you want to build a team, you will then inherently be focused on more and more non monetary valued tasks in the business, you will be focused, you will be almost forced in some instances unless you bring in a manager and other aspects. And you just like to structure your business. But there will definitely be a time where you are focusing predominantly on an administrative work than the tasks that don't inherently bring you money, which can be kind of It's a weird place to be as a business owner, have you started the business because these are things that you love, you love walking dogs, you love taking care of cats, you love doing all of these pet care things. And that's the revenue source of your company. But now you look up and you've got team members doing that and you have people doing these tasks and you are doing administration, it can it can actually be a strike to you personally if going well then what am I doing? Am I actually do I actually earn this is this a living is that do I deserve any income from this at this point, and that's where we have to sit in now we're thinking about what is actually a generating income in my business. And recognizing that without these tasks, without running the business license without typing up the SEO copy for the website without going and doing these marketing events and talking to people and doing these trainings. Without you doing that the business ceases to exist. Then we have this saying of my part time job is the pet care my full time is actually running the actual business that that administrative side takes up a huge inordinate inordinate amount of our time as the business owner, but you have to recognize if none of that was ever done, you wouldn't have a business to be taking part in in the first place.
Meghan 15:08
Yeah, if you don't schedule and route plan, then yeah, no clients would ever be seen. If you don't do your taxes, while the IRS is gonna come after you pretty quick,
15:16
they will let you know that there is value to be had that work.
Meghan 15:21
And that all leads to knowing that there will be a payoff in the end. So when we talk about these non monetary things, these blogs, the website that the taxes the things that we do in our business, that is not the actual pet sitting and dog walking, we have to recognize that in the end, there is going to be a payoff that when you go do boots on the ground marketing and you go knock on doors, or talk to other business owners or go to networking events, that while the networking events themselves don't bring you any money immediately, they are likely going to pay off in the end the connections that you make the hands that you shake the people that you talk to the personal connections that that you have with people, they The more people know about your business, the more people are going to know about your business. Sounds silly, but it's true. It's people will talk about you to others.
16:11
Well, and that's the marketing aspect, I let's let's abstract this even more and say, you know, you have to spend time combing through your contract, you have to spend time looking at your SOPs, you as a business owner have to spend time looking and delegating or, and thinking about the kind of software's that you want to use, or what kind of platform you're going to be on or what kind of social media content you're going to be producing that week. All of those aspects come with running a business, you have to decide those, you have to spend that time effort that energy working through all of those details. Because if you don't, you will have a shoddy contract, your terms of service will not be up to date or up to snuff, your social media content will not be the best that it can be, the software that you use will be out of date, or you won't be optimizing it to the most of its ability to getting, you know, having a really great experience with all of your clients. All of these little things that come up are what it means to have a well run business. And only you can do that only you can devote that kind of time and attention. And it's critical to have to do those things so that your business can be well run. It's not just out there doing puppy cuddles and Kitty kisses, which is obviously the only things we ever do all day. But it's having that really good contract or then writing the really solid SOPs that makes sense for you so that you can train other people to do that work that you so want to be done to a high level.
Meghan 17:36
Because the blogs and the website and the social media, those are going to generate eyeballs on your stuff. When you make a blog and you share it out to social media and into Facebook groups or on Instagram, people are going to notice they're going to see when you use the different hashtags, they're going to know Oh, this is a dog walking company. What are they about? You know, when you do taxes and licenses, it means that you're going to be legal for another year that the IRS is not going to come knock on your door. When you schedule it means that you are still a thriving company with clients that want to keep you and your staff busy. If you have staff, but the clients are going to be come back because they know that you are there for them.
18:17
Or let's say you need to decide what kind of phone service that you're going to use. That is time that you have to take out of your day to spend time doing research, looking at contracts, looking at pricing, looking at usability, looking at coverage areas, talking with sales representatives and going okay, do I stick with my personal phone? Do I go with cricket? Do I go with Google Voice? Do I go with someone else grasshopper is another really common one, you you those decisions must be made. But that's just a matter of fact, those must be made. And they are important, because they impact the customer and client experience and public perceptions of your company as whether either well run or not well run that if you are if you're not taking the time to delve into those intricate, intricate details and to delve into those things, that that impacts your company and your ability to take on new clients and your ability to continue to grow and expand and generate income and revenue for you.
Meghan 19:12
So knowing that in the end it is going to pay off is going to help you through this process of well, why if I don't enjoy this work, why should I even do it? Well, because in the end, it is going to mean something this is not just going to be a fleeting thing I do that is not going to generate income it is it's just we have to think in the term the long term goals that the payoff in the end down the road.
19:35
And that's well that's a really good point Megan is recognizing and I think it's important that we know that not every little thing that we do is super mega ultra critical to our company. A great example of this is going okay maybe on my website, I want to display some photos. Okay, do I display for photos, or do I display five photos? But ultimately we have to ask ourselves is this decision going to impact my ability to gain clients and gain customers and have a well respected company or however you want to phrase that of going, is this decision mission critical to my company? does it align with my mission, vision and values, four photos versus five photos on a homepage, probably not going to impact those things. So we can't get to the point where we are so obsessing over every little tiny detail that we become frozen in our ability to do anything. And we spend too much time doing these little tasks. But going, I once I assess how I have some, I have a task put on my plate and I go, okay, is this mission critical? If it is, it is worth me investing amount of time I will do it to its fullest. If it's not, I will do my best. But then I have to make a decision to move on from that so I can continue to focus on other things as they come up.
Meghan 20:47
What are some areas in your business that you don't necessarily enjoy that you've maybe had to wrestle with, and deal with or maybe even delegate if you truly do not enjoy them? We would love to hear your thoughts and more about your business. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. Thank you very much to our Patreon members for supporting today's show and for pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's show. Also, thank you for listening. If there's ever a topic or somebody you would like us to interview, feel free to let us know and thank you again for listening. We'll talk with you next time. Bye
