396: Considerations for Starting a Remote Service Area
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Main topics
What should you consider before expanding to a remote service area? After a few years of trial and error, we've broken down 10 things you should ask yourself before starting in a remote area. We cover everything from planning your logistics to following local licensing and legal requirements. We also share about the biggest struggles we've faced and where you can expect to grow the most as a business owner.
Main takeaway:
Travel time and expenses
Local regulations
Quality Control
Branding
Your mindset
Main takeaway: This is not for the faint of heart. You have to have a lot of trust in your processes, the people you hire, and ultimately in yourself. If this is something you really want to do, then go for it.
Links:
Episode 394: How We Expanded to a Remote Location
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
service, pet, pet sitters, market, area, hire, expand, staff, big, clients, business, people, city, aspect, company, expenses, trust, walking, marketing, staff member
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:03
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you very much to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode. And our wonderful Patreon members for finding value in the almost 400 episodes we have had if you want to know what it means to be a Patreon member. Or if you have found value as well and want to help support financially with a few dollars every month, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support. In Episode 394, we talked about how we expanded into a remote service area, how we have done that for the past couple of years and things that we've learned and just how we did that. Hopefully, it showed you a little bit of insight into how we did it and to show you that it's not impossible to do. It is absolutely possible.
Collin 00:49
If we can do it, you can Yeah, it's hard,
Meghan 00:52
but it's not impossible. So today, we are going to break down some things to focus on 10 areas to focus on, if you want to try this in your own business, and things that you need to consider before expanding.
Collin 01:05
And the first one is market research. This is absolutely critical. You need to research things like the dog owning population, the existing competition in the market that you're moving to, and you need to consider what avenues and what openings what niche you can have to fit into that market who is being underserved. Where is being underserved? Because that's another question of where are you going to put your service radius about that? And what kind of people are you going to capture when you place your service area there. So really do a good deep dive. And this is something that we kind of did not really from a hard hitting numbers perspective when we did our market research, but we just had an intimate familiarity with the area. But asking those questions of what kind of dog friendly places aren't there, are there an overabundance of them, because that should tell you that there's a healthy ownership of pets in the area that you can slot into and continue to service and service? Well, if you don't find many of those in the area, or if you find that there's really a lot of competition, it's going to tell you that's going to direct some of the ways that you're going to position yourself when you go into that market,
Meghan 02:12
our chamber of commerce puts out a yearly magazine, that is basically a state of the city. So it's a lot of demographics of how many are homeowners versus renters, the age of the city, the median income and a lot of other different facts about some of the history and where the city is now versus where it was, you know, 1020 years ago. So maybe your Chamber of Commerce has that as well. Or you can probably find some records down at the courthouse.
Collin 02:39
Even the libraries have access to a lot of demographics data and usually have some really good software applications that you can use to to hunt that information down as well.
Meghan 02:48
Also knowing if you are talking to the same ideal client that you currently service. So if you are in a small town now like we are and you're wanting to move to a bigger city, they might not have the same dialect or preferences or where they go to eat and shop as you currently service. Yeah,
Collin 03:06
what kind of places are they going to go? Well, they're not going to have the same kind of coffee shops, the same places to go downtown, the same places around town or entertainment options either. So again, doing an understanding of not just the overall market, but then looking at that avatar and going, How would I describe my ideal client in this market? Where does this person shop in this particular area? Where do they like to go on the weekends? And that will be and it should be different between them because there are different options and availabilities to them that they're going to take advantage of
Meghan 03:33
one of the biggest aspects that we had to think about before we decided to do this was the logistics of everything, because we were two hours away. And depending on where you do this in relation to where you currently are, it could be 30 minutes, it could be five hours, it could be across the country like Michelle sabia did, with paws and claws. We went from Arizona to Connecticut, which is a huge move. So think about how you're going to manage the logistics of operating so far away? Will you need to hire locally? How will you interview how will you hire? How will you train them?
Collin 04:05
Right? How are you you physically going to make this work? Are you going to need to set up zoom calls? Or how are you going to manage the phone calls and actually placing those job ads and making those connections with people? How are we going to manage oversight, see, retain and interact with and build a company culture from two hours away or more however you're going to do this, you really have to think about where you are going to be you can't be in two places at once. That's what a lot of logistics for us gets down to, which is why when we started hiring in our remote service area, we immediately knew we had to hire in our current service area because we would have to go back and forth between them. And we couldn't have any one place be solely reliant on us because we would have to step away from time to time to focus on one area over the other
Meghan 04:51
because a big consideration is your time and your money. How much time is it going to take you to get there? Is it a plane ride? Is it a car Why'd is it just down the street? Then there are expenses, do you have family in the area, we fortunately had family in the area. So we that's why we just one of the reasons why we decided to expand into that area is we knew, Okay, we're not going to have to pay for hotels, we're not going to have to pay for a ton of food all the time eating out all the time, we have a place where we can cook meals and, and have family around us to support us when we need it.
Collin 05:25
And then we also have to consider that two hour drive time of okay, we may be required to make that two hour drives, in the case of an emergency Come rain, shine, snow, sleet, hail, all sorts of weather conditions are now going to play a huge factor in us. So this actually led to us the kind of vehicle we were going to buy. So that would be reliable and make be able to make that trip, whether the road conditions were good, or whether they were very poor. And so thinking through all of those aspects, that chain of of decisions that you're going to have to make that have to be integrally linked to one another. Once you start doing this of going, Okay, well, one of my policies may be, instead of a 30 minute, notice that you're going to be late, you need to do give me a two hour notice, because I'm two hours away. And that's the amount of time I need to get there to help solve these problems.
Meghan 06:11
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is you have to think about lodging. So when you are setting up your existing area, you still have to train and shadow and onboard your staff. So you're going to have to pay for a hotel if you don't have family in the area. And Airbnb is cheaper, but it's still a lot of money that's accruing day after day. And you need to get these people off the ground or this person off the ground and on a good footing, that they are able to sustain your company when you are not there. Well having
Collin 06:40
those systems in place so that it goes quickly and smoothly and efficiently. So that you when you are there, you are optimizing your time, because you still have your other service area right that you have to deal with. It has staff things that have it clients who have tend to and you know if for every moment that I'm away from one means that I need to be optimizing my time focusing on the other and I can't be worrying about a bunch of little details. But yes, going I add there's the cost aspect of going I just physically cannot pay $100 a night for three weeks worth of training or for three weeks worth of something. So you knowing Okay, what am I actually signing up for with this and then budgeting that into all of your all of your expenses for the business? Yeah, what
Meghan 07:21
are you really trading off? One of the mindsets that we had to get into was just what you talked about? of okay, you were going down there for one visit or one Meet and Greet to Chateau our staff? Because that's all we had at the time. And we had to say, Okay, what else could you possibly be doing down there? To get our name out there? Are you going to networking meetings? Are you going to coffee shops and making friends? Are you going to other local businesses and just saying hi and boots on the ground marketing and getting to know the trainers and the groomers and the other pet services out there? What else could you be doing with your time that you cannot be doing at home? So yes, we can be writing blogs from our office here at home in our current service area. But the most use of the time is wearing your pet sitter shirt, wearing your pet sitter hat and going and walking on the farmers market and saying hi to people and just being friendly or meeting other people and going to networking things. To get our name out there
Collin 08:18
optimizing your time is what that is all about arriving with a plan, okay, I'm going to share with this my new hire on these three visits. But I'm going to show up for two hours early so I can hit these stores. And then whenever I'm done shadowing, I'm going to have a little debrief time with them and continue training. And then I'm going to go hit these other stores. And then I'm going to drive back home and in wrap up or continue to do things back in my house.
Meghan 08:38
When you started up your business for the very first time you likely looked into your local regulations, what you needed. Did you need a kennel license? If you were doing boarding? Did you need a city license for going into other people's homes? What did you need. And so the exact same thing applies here, look into your local laws and licenses that are needed to operate our business. So fortunately for us, we have one big major city and then a bunch of neighborhood communities around it. And the neighborhood communities actually partnered with the big city and said, if you if a company is providing services in the big city and the neighboring communities, the neighboring communities will honor that big city license. And that was very helpful because I didn't want to have to go around to the seven or 10 different cities and say, Hey, could you give me a license? Could you give me a license, it was all done in one shot?
Collin 09:26
Yep, it really helps streamline that process. And this is yet again, you can make phone calls, you can email people, but really for us, it came down to me showing up at the business license office, in person with a checkbook in hand to describe to the person on the other side of the counter exactly what we did. They told me what we needed and the information and I signed up for it right there because it was hard to describe what we do it is it is you will you will describe to you're blue in the face about how your company operates. And some people just don't understand it. So actually show up to there and do your best and and walk them through what you do. And that's what it took. And thankfully, the licensing requirements were basically minimal. They just gave us a general business license, which was wonderful, right? But but it took showing up and talking to our person about what we do. And that took time. Okay, so I've got time that I have to go talk to the business license office, well, that's time that I'm not training the new staffer, that's time I'm not going to the coffee shops. And that's time I'm not in our original service area, doing those things as well. So budgeting that in that's where that really hyper focused plan of when I'm on there, when you're in there that location, what all can you do.
Meghan 10:32
Another important aspect to consider when you are thinking about expanding is your costs. So your license will cost your time your expenses, your lodging is probably going to cost. So when you understand these costs, and what is going to be associated with the expansion. Think about marketing, additional insurance that you're going to have. Are you providing the same services? Or are they completely different is one was one area gonna provide pet taxi but not the other area? Okay, that's an additional insurance, hiring staff. That is a very big expense. We also got an office, which, which was a massive expense as well that we were we needed to budget for every month and have our current service area, fund some of the new service areas budget and finances,
Collin 11:18
well, then, okay, you're hiring staff. So if you've never hired staff before, there, there are costs associated with that there's insurance that you need there, there's workers compensation, maybe you're reimbursing mileage, you have to set aside taxes. But then you also have equipment. So now you've got to be buying leashes and poop bags and sprays and bags and all sorts of other things that go along with that shirts, hats that you're providing them. These are additional costs. So in addition to the costs of getting an office and getting the licensing and, and getting paying for marketing, now we're paying for staff equipment on a whole other scale and level than we were before. And all of that is like you said, Megan, it's really important to note if going you're starting up in a brand new market with zero revenue, that's what it is. There's zero revenue, it is not self funding yet. So your current market that you're in has to fund that expansion. So do you have the margins in your current market to be doing that? Do you have the margins in your your current personal budget, maybe you don't eat out as much as you used to maybe you slim back how much you pull out for yourself to pay for your personal expenses, and instead set that side to reinvest into the business to pay for these expenses. Until that that new market can get up off the ground and be self contained and self regulating in that
Meghan 12:31
way. Well, I'm even thinking about somebody who is hiring in their current service area so that they can expand that they want to get out of their existing area. But they do that through staff and they've never hired before. So they hire staff, you have expenses there as well. You need to get them set up with leashes and poop bags and all that stuff. And then you go off and start in the new service area.
Collin 12:50
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Meghan 13:43
During the expansion process, it's a great idea to also look at your marketing and your branding, thinking about how you're going to establish your brand in the new location. Nobody knows about you. Nobody's ever heard about you. So how are you going to get your name out there? Is it going to be digital? Is it going to be physical? How many times you're going to go to the same coffee shop before you ask them to put something in their window. You know, it could involve online advertising, maybe you pay for local ads to get in front of the exact people that you want to in that new area. Maybe you go and partner with local trainers or events or maybe just other business people in general realtors or coffee shop owners.
Collin 14:19
So assess what kind of marketing avenues are going to work in this new service area. And by the time you get to this point, you've done your market research, you know who your avatar is, you're starting to put some information feelers out there, you should be really well connected with where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. And then as far as the branding goes, your branding is your emblem is your is your is the flagbearer for your company in that new location making you said it. Nobody knows who you are, and you're showing up ready to go. Does your brand match that market? Is it a good fit for that market? Because this may trigger an entire rebrand across the board so that you can expand into this area. Maybe it's you know, a little more flashy, or maybe it's a little more minimalistic or maybe is a whatever that is going to entail. But if you enter a market, you have to make sure that your branding is appropriate for it as well to go after that target audience that lives there. And that's not to say that, you know, it's not working where you currently are. But you may have to make tweaks. And I think the biggest thing that comes here as part of the branding is just the ethos, the language that you use, the philosophies that you bring into this may have to change, not really just the coloring or the logo, because remember, you're a lot more than just colors and a logo, the brand means so much more than that, you really have to assess and go okay, maybe, you know, are my core values, do they still match between these two markets and these two service areas, and really do some introspections at that point?
Meghan 15:41
So that's a good point. How do you mesh the two together? If you maybe want to offer different services, or you're talking to a different person and each? How do you branch off your business, when you are trying to expand into a new area that may be doing different things?
Collin 15:57
Absolutely. This is a time to look and ask questions about your business structure. Because you may need to reevaluate how your business is put together. If you're soloing, you're expanding probably a great time to go to LLC, if you're getting even bigger S Corp. C Corp. However, that's looking that's just you know, that's, that's illegal on the tax side of things. But then yeah, if you are not offering your same services, maybe you don't expand into the service area, as your full company as your full brand, maybe you only expand as a dog walking company, I know that something that we've thought a lot about of going Okay, the next time we expand out, we're going to do that with just dog walking, because it's a lot easier to have a super hyper focused on one aspect of our bigger, larger company and all of our services that we offer. And it's easier to staff because it's a tighter, narrow window. And then you can grow and expand and then grow across services, as opposed to trying to show full up with all your services ready to bear? So going, do I offer all of my same services? Well, if you don't, how do you brand that? How do you market that, because if you're going I'm a full service pet sitting company, I'm full service, full service, fully customizable, but I'm only offering dog walking for you in this particular area, you have to have much better marketing and a better strategy around that. And that may include entirely cleaning off the the the dog walking side of things, that's just that example and and branching that off into its own sub company of your larger company, right and going, okay, my full company has a sub brand. So this is it's Alex's Pet Services. Well, here's Alex's dog walking companies in your neighborhood, being that focus can really help you attach to the market and the clients that you're trying to go after.
Meghan 17:39
Yeah, there really are two methods here. One is the the branching off and say, okay, in Phoenix, I only offer dog walking under Alex's dog walking. And in Santa Fe, I offer everything. So that is one aspect. And then the other aspect is just offering everything and saying I there is no differentiation, I want to do it all. Because also, when you look at your target client for this new area, you need to think about pricing. Are your prices going to be the same between the two areas? And if not, well, okay, how are you going to communicate that? How are you going to make sure that a client isn't searching for one area, and they think it's a lower price than your other area and they don't get confused. Having separate web pages is very important for your different service areas. But also making sure that it's not confusing to the client. And not just having two separate web pages, but also possibly two different Google my businesses as well. We had talked about last week on Episode 394, about how the our our Google, my business was really coveted. And we waited a long time in order to move all of those dozens of five star reviews over to our new service area. But that the other option could have been well, we just start a brand new one in our existing area. Or we move the one who had the has the most reviews and we start up a new one in our current area. There are a couple of different options, but you don't want to make Google mad. And you want to make sure that you're playing nice and going very slow when you're doing this process if you are going to have to separate google my businesses.
Collin 19:09
Well, an interesting story of Michelle from paws and claws her expansion across the country. She was currently she was using one software program to service both of those, but it was confusing the clients because they were in different time zones. So they would get these timestamps that matched up with nothing of their expectation of when that message was supposed to be coming through. So she ended up going and getting two different software's one for her one location, and then you have a whole other one dedicated to her other location so that they were separate and dedicated to them and they match the time zones where they were getting the updates from
Meghan 19:39
another aspect of preparing for expansion is a contingency plan. What are you going to do when you are not able to make it down there to cover for a staff member? What are you going to do when there's an ice storm? What are you going to do when somebody only gives you 15 minutes notice but you really needed an hour. Having a plan in case things don't work out is going to be critical for saving your business and your reputation. Vision? What is your backup plan for staff? It could mean scaling back or entirely exiting the new market. If something falls flat. What then thinking about what does success look like for you, everybody has their own different definition of success. And it doesn't necessarily have to be. Well, I got $5 more this week. So I'm more successful this week than I was last week, think about what your key metrics are for when you need to pull the plug or whether you need to keep going, it's important to know so that you can say, Okay, I have the confidence to keep going or I don't know this really isn't working out. But having those clear in writing metrics is going to help you
Collin 20:37
continue to plan as far as when emergencies come up was really going to dictate how you hire and what your expectations are for that. I know for us, we really over provisioned on staff and our new service area, because we knew we couldn't get down there at a moment's notice. We had to have local backups within backups for our staff if they had problems. And we have had to use that multiple, multiple times over the last couple of years. Because that's just the name of the game. So when we hired for one person, okay, I know when I'm hiring one person, I need to hire two people probably need to hire three people just to cover my bases having different time blocks. And that's where you sit down and go, where as well, how much risk Am I willing to take on? How much risk Am I comfortable with? And how do I put that together to make sure that I can have I can have peace of mind, right? It's Yes, it's nominally for the clients, but it's really for ourselves as the business owner knowing okay, if if a staff member a can't make their how, what happens? Am I the only backup? Well, I'm two and a half hours, I'm three hours away, I'm 45 minutes away, that could be killer, for that for a busy schedule. So I really think that one of my biggest suggestions, and I think you'd agree to Meghan is if you're expanding into a new service area, over provision on staff, and that means you have to explain to them why you're doing that. And going, Okay, I know I write, I only have three dog walks, and I have two staff members to cover them each day. So I may play with the schedule and put one person and do every other day for them. So they can have a little something to do or, or cross them were whatever, but let them in on that plan of why that's important, so that they can stick through it.
Meghan 22:11
Well, I think that is critical of letting your staff members know, like we talked about in episode 394 of letting them in on the vision and the goals for the business of saying this is a growth growing company, we are expanding into this new market. And you can help us do that by providing dog walks and pet sitting to to clients, but being as transparent as possible with that first hire, or there's those first few hires of going okay, I I'm not guaranteeing any hours right now, that's something we did, we did not guarantee any hours, we still don't guarantee hours. But this is a position where you absolutely have the potential to grow with us as we grow in this area. The 10th thing that you should think about when expanding is getting help and asking questions. Because seeking advice when you are trying to do something hard or when you want to do something brand new that you've never done before, is crucial. People have done this before, people will do this after you. But if you go to a business mentor or a business advisor, they may provide valuable insight based on their own experiences or based on the knowledge that they have from other people they've consulted with or coached with. In the end, there's the personal aspect of all of this and making sure that it aligns with your mission, your values, your vision, and the goals that you have for your company. It develops that confidence in you that you can do this, because this is not for the faint of heart expanding into a new area, no matter where it is, if it's even the next city over, it's hard. You have to put a lot of trust in your processes and your protocols in your training and your shadowing and your onboarding of of hires, you have to put a lot of trust in them that they're going to represent your company well. And then ultimately, having a lot of trust in yourself that this is something that you want to do if you have searched your heart and ask yourself hard questions and worked through the steps of knowing Okay, I need to budget this much extra every month. And this is my plan for marketing and boots on the ground if what I'm going to do when I get there, and this is how this is who exactly I want to hire and this is who exactly I want to go after. And this is my plan for lodging and food while I'm there and thinking of all of these things in totality is really is going to help you be successful in this and having those key metrics of what exactly is success and having those key metrics to help guide you.
Collin 24:29
Meghan, you said that word trust a couple of times trusting your processes. One of the hardest aspects of this is entrusting your staff because you are two hours away for us. We're two hours away from our staff. But that means that we have had to place inherent trust in them with very limited oversight over their day to day operations from there and trust and then as a person to represent our company well to follow our procedures and guidelines well and to to do those with Exxon Once, it's hard enough to do that, whenever you hire somebody, and they live five minutes from your home, right, but that's, I think a big mental hurdle that you have to prepare yourself for is to know, because I'm branching out this way. And that's where tying it back to that why is so critical? Do I need to make extra money for my income? Do I just do I really see a need here that I think my company in the way we do things can serve these people well, and so I can't not enter here because they need this quality pet service, whatever it is, and whatever you're tied to help people jump on to that, and then link them to how they can serve you. You know, last episode on 394, we really hammered home a lot about hiring and that process and bringing good people on, because it's about people. At the end of the day, this is passionate pet people serving passionate pet people. And we need to get them on that mission, and trust them at that aspect at that point. And no, we've done what we can, we need to put them out there and we have to trust them. And it's hard, it really is, it doesn't really get a lot easier, just for personal experience. But I know we've got good processes. And I know that we have very thorough things and training and shadowing and onboarding and blah, blah, blah. So I have to step back and go, Okay, we went through all of that. Everything points of them being successful, and setting up for success, we have to step back and let them do that and let them rocket. And that that's really that that's hard. In addition to everything that we've talked about here, the expenses, the logistics, the training, the marketing, the avatar building of your new clientele, it's then the stepping away from those operations, because you have to,
Meghan 26:37
and that's ultimately your goal when you expand it to a new area. Because if you are the one doing the dog walks and the pet setting in your new area, you are then leaving behind your old area. Again, you cannot be in two places at once. So your goal then is to elevate yourself out of your company, maybe not completely, maybe you still want to be in the dog walks every day or two. But at some point, when you expanded to a new area, you are going to be out of your business
Collin 27:05
mindset. How do I view myself now? Am I my chief dog walker, pet sitter Poop Scooper, or am I managing operations, my operations manager, if that's a title that you look at, and go, I don't know about that. Take a breather, it's okay. But you really do become Operations Manager par excellence, whenever you do this. And knowing I'm doing none of those pet sits down there. I'm none of none of them. They immediately know all of the clients better than I ever will. They immediately know all of the best routes planning and all of this better than I ever will. So I have to trust them. And I have to rely on them. And I have to guide them, I have to teach them, I really truly have to manage them because I never do those visits, you may do some of them when you're filling in. And it's always great to come in and touch it and do shadows and follow behind on people to make sure that they're staying on top of that. And you can imagine give them pointers. Absolutely do that. But day to day, you will wake up and not really know what's going on down there. Because you can't because it's it's so far removed from you. And that's okay, and being okay with that kind of thing.
Meghan 28:14
And if you are not okay with it, maybe this is not for you. And that's okay, too, that not everybody can do everything in the business all the time. There are plenty of pet sitters and dog walkers that do lots of things that we don't offer or we just don't do. Every business is different. You are different than everybody else. So go out and conquer the world in your own way. Thank you for listening today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members for sponsoring today's show. And we will talk with you next time. Bye
