398: Risky Business?
Brought to you by
Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Main topics
What risks have you taken on in your business? While running a dog walking and pet sitting business is inherently risky, as the business owner you have control over the amount of risk and exposure you take on. We walk through the steps in a risk assessment and the questions to consider as you review the threats to your business. We also share how to know if the mitigation processes you’ve put in place are actually working.
Main takeaway:
What is a risk assessment?
4 main steps
Example assessment
Are you managing risk well?
Main takeaway: Running a business involves inherent risk, we just have to understand it and manage it well.
Links:
Tiger-rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
201: Risk Management and Insurance with Colleen Giles-Harris
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
risk, business, client, dog, pet sitter, dog bites, risky, talking, training, people, risk assessment, control, area, potential, cat, impact, policies, pet, associates, managing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open discussion about life as a pet sitter, we want to thank our sponsors, pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show. It's Patreon members. If you don't know what they are, they give us a few dollars every month to keep the show going,
Collin 00:18
they have found val ue in the show over the almost now 400 episodes, they've learned something they felt or been brought into a community and been connected with others something and they've wanted to contribute back to the show what they've gotten out of it. If you want to learn more about not just financially supporting the show, but all of the other possibilities, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:39
Colin and I both come from a science background. So a lot of times when we come up with an episode or a topic, it's because something in our science background has triggered it, or something in our business as well has triggered it. And one of the things was in our master's programs, we took a course called Risk Management. And this was all about when we design and implement experiments, how to know that it's going well how to know when to pump the brakes and when to keep going and really assessing that risk of an experiment before you really get into it.
Collin 01:11
Well, it also included some just public policy as well about risk assessment for major issues or concerns and how to communicate well with that. And that was a major aspect of my job as a biologist was talking about risk assessment to landowners and understanding pros and cons and what's coming and how to evaluate for them personally and understand if they were willing to allow that to happen and take that on.
Meghan 01:32
And so that really translate into business. Because as you know, running a business is risky, it just is there are small risks, you take some you don't even notice and other big ones that you may just align with your goals. And that's what you want to do. Especially with working with live animals, there is inherent risk in that driving from place to place. Lots of risk going into people's homes, you never know what's on the other side of the door. Is it an injured animal? Is it somebody standing there naked, you don't know. But there are things that you can do about some of these scenarios to help mitigate some of that risk. And so we want to talk about managing that risk for both your business and yourself. Because risk management is it's about the process of identifying and assessing and then ultimately trying to control the threats that come against you or the potential effects and events that could negatively impact you and your business.
Collin 02:26
Yeah, these could stem from various sources. Obviously, there's things like financial uncertainty, legal liabilities, there's management errors or strategy errors that you've made and understanding your market or the client's needs. Also just accidents, accidents can occur for whatever reasons, and then natural disasters and then in now in the more modern era, cyber threats of hacking and loss of client data. Like all of these are things that whether you realize it or not are possible threats to your business. And so we wanted to walk through basically the four steps of risk assessment and what it means for your business. And in some of the ins and outs of that.
Meghan 03:05
The first one is risk identification. And this is seems pretty obvious. It's the pinpointing what types of risks could affect your business and the goals that you have for your business. It can be done through a lot of different methods like historical data analysis. So that's something that we did a lot on when we were scientists, but it's also prevalent in our business as well. If you go back and look at your reports, if you have a software that is able to do that. Or if you do it in Google Sheets, or if you know if you have data that you can track over a history of time, whether it's financial, whether it's, you know, whatever benchmarks you have for your company, this can also be done through brainstorming sessions of going through the pros and cons of different risks and different objectives that you have for your business. Risk identification also comes about in going to other people going to experts and saying, you know, this is what I do as a business. How much risk Am I taking on I'm calling you interviewed calling Giles Harris with pet sitters associates talking all about this because of the nature of what we do. And because of all of the unknowns and potentials out there. This is actually a pretty risky business,
Collin 04:12
or even just doing some simple financial forecasting of going okay, if one of the risks is financially motivated, let me look ahead a couple of months to see is my business going to be where it is? Let me look at some more macro economic data who isn't that just that's just gets everyone excited? I know whenever we say that to see what potential storms are brewing in my business as all this process is of just going what problems not just Am I currently facing, but what problems or or concerns should I have? Or should I be on the lookout for when I'm looking at all this?
Meghan 04:45
When you think of risks that happened to a dog walker or pet sitter? The number one thing you probably think of is dog bites or injury to the dog walker or cat bites as well. cat scratches. Those are pretty vicious sometimes. Dogs getting lost is another big or running away, or cats slipping out of a harness when you go try to walk them. There's also damage caused by a dog trying to eat through drywall if there's fireworks or storm nearby. And then there's the damage to the dog itself if you put it in a kennel, and it's doesn't like that, and it tries to chew its way out, it may injure itself trying to do that. There's tons of tons more risks, you know, disease transmission between dog to dog, even within the same family, or if you come into contact with dogs from different families, or just out in the wild. There's all these kinds of different diseases. There's also risk from litigation from clients, if they go to sue you for something that you did wrong, either unintentionally or intentionally. There's weather concerns as well, natural disasters, hurricanes that come in ice storm fires, if
Collin 05:46
you live in that part of the world, it could also mean just again, thinking big picture here of there could be an uptick in new businesses in your area. I know we're kind of it. This happens kind of seasonally or cyclically, every summer kind of every time that there's a break from college or school, we see a little bit of uptick in businesses and going okay, how much of a threat? Is that? Okay? Or is that a threat to me, or maybe there's changing client needs, expectations of what people want from a dog walker, what they want from a pet sitter and the services that they're looking for. And then even bigger picture of recessions, economic downturns, I don't know if you've heard of this inflation, could be a risk to your business, if you're not accounting for it in your prices.
Meghan 06:27
So all of these things are just risk identification. So it's thinking about what are the risks to my business, this is not supposed to be a doom and gloom kind of episode or topic. I mean, it is a little bit. So it's not doom and gloom. But it is important to know what risks are out there for the betterment of your business, the more knowledge that you have, the better choices you'll be able to make, which is the second part because now that we have identified these risks, they need to be evaluated, they need to be tested, really, in terms of their potential severity and the likelihood that they're actually going to occur. Is the cat aggressive? Is it known to be aggressive? Well, then yeah, you probably are going to get scratched or bitten at some point.
Collin 07:09
It allows you to prioritize the risks and focus on the ones that have the most significant impact on your business. Basically, here we're thinking about, Okay, now that we know the risk of a dog getting lost or running away, okay, that could happen to a business, it might be quite high, if your business involves walking multiple dogs, off leash in an open area. On the other hand, the risk of disease transmission from one dog to another may be relatively low, if you're only going from one house, to another house, to another house. But that's something for you to decide, especially given on the kind of diseases or if you require up to date vaccinations. Maybe we'll go back to that idea of the the new businesses that have started in your area? Well, the risks depends on the market demand, it depends on the kind of clientele that they're going to serve. And it also depends on your desire or need for growth and expansion for your business. Once you know the risks, though, ask yourself, what are the impacts to my business just because we know things may happen or that they are likely or unlikely? What could it possibly do to my business, and this is where it can get a little dooms day ish, but that's okay, because we're not going to stay here, we're not going to stay here in the muck in the mire, and go, Oh, gosh, all these terrible things could happen. Just foreshadowing that we're going to try and come up with ways of overcoming these. But think of the the financial cost of a dog injury, it might be high if it results in veterinary bills and potential legal fees from a lawsuit. The reputational damage could also be significant if an unhappy client starts spreading negative word of mouth or posting reviews online. On the other hand, the impact of a dog causing minor damage to a public park like digging a hole or getting in the sand might be relatively low to you, after you've got through this process, you have to now prioritize the risks braith based on their assessed likelihood and impact, so high likelihood, high impact need to be addressed. First, low impact, low likelihood, we're gonna save those for later.
Meghan 09:03
This actually reminds me a lot about when we talk about to do list or, you know, goals that we have for our business of basically, the first one was risk identification. So you are basically brain dumping all of the potential risks. So when you make a to do list your brain dumping everything that you need to get done. And then the next step is putting them into buckets. And we've talked about that before. And this is basically what that is to of going. Okay, which one is more likely to happen? Which one is less likely to happen? And then what do I do about them because we can't focus on everything all the time. At the same time, we really need to focus our efforts just like the to do list you cannot do everything from the highest priority to the lowest priority all in the same day. It's not going to get done unless there's only three things on the list.
Collin 09:46
And I will say that one of the benefits of doing it this way is when you tackle the high impact high likelihood, things or risks to your business. More than likely that is going to just automatically capture The lower risk or the low likely the low impact ones to your business, because the high likely ones means that those a major impact and that it could severely impact your business. So by covering those through some mitigation practices, which we're going to get into, very likely, you're going to cover the low impact or the low low likelihood once is well, so it helps you kind of snowball this process of getting multiple ones taken care of at once.
Meghan 10:24
Something that will definitely help lower your risk is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet set llc.com. You can get a discount by joining when you click membership petsitter confessional and using the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance. Once again at Pet set llc.com. We have identified our risks, we have assessed them, put them into buckets. And now we're going to basically control them the best we can. And this really involves determining the most appropriate method for dealing with each identified risk, this could include avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect, or probability of the risk, or even sharing the risk with another party, you could also accept some or all of the potential consequences of that risk. Getting insurance, like I just talked about is a perfect example of sharing risk, the liability is not all on you, you don't have to shell out $100,000 When the dog has a terrible accident, you know, that is the part of the insurance company where they step in and they go, Okay, this is risk that we are willing to take on for now. As long as you are a client of ours.
Collin 11:56
And that's you after you have gone okay, there is a risk of me needing to pay $100,000 for an injury to a third party. I don't want to have to pay all that because I can't afford that. How do I control? How do I mitigate the risk of me paying $100,000? Well, I need to go get insurance, I need to get that policy coverage on what I'm what I'm for what I'm trying to do. Or maybe it's you're trying to do off leash dogs and you go okay, well, actually, there's a lot of risk right there. Because I'm taking six off leash dogs in this area, each one of them may have a massive veterinary bill, if let's say the worst case scenario happens, what do I need to do to make sure that that doesn't happen, the first one needs to be sharing that risk with a third party, which is getting insurance, which is why that's so critical, so that you are not held liable for all of that those that bills.
Meghan 12:41
Controlling the risk also means continuing education and training. So say you're going to take on some birds, and you've never cared for birds before you don't know anything about them. Well learn more about them, take some courses, take some trainings, know the specific species and the quirks of it, if there are any. And that will help to reduce some of this risk.
Collin 13:02
Let's say someone reaches out and they've got six trained guard dogs.
Meghan 13:05
Well, this actually happened to us there is a trainer in the area, and he has six German shepherds that he has trained to guard his home and him. So we said no, that's not something we are willing to take on, there is too much risk there for our company, we are not comfortable with that.
Collin 13:21
Okay, we're always looking for ways to avoid and reduce the risk. So if a client reaches out to you with something and you're not comfortable for them, ask them to modify this, I think one of the biggest ones for us is we get asked all the time to let cat outside, please let my cat outside, let them out whenever you're there, then let them back into the next visit or whatever. This is something we are not willing to do this is way too risky. There's way too much that could be involved with this that we don't even want to get to. So at that time, we informed the client of our policy, and we asked them, Is it okay if your cat doesn't go out while we're caring for them? Because that goes against our company policy for XYZ reasons. And then they get to decide if that's something that they want to move forward with or not. But we need to control that risk for us.
Meghan 14:06
I want to circle back to something you just said. You said we always want to avoid the risk. I don't think that's necessarily the case. Because if it's a less risky situation, we may want to take that on and say okay, we can handle this or we can try this out and see how we feel about it. So there are extreme cases of the six guard dogs and the cats outside that we don't allow like, yes, those are policies that we stick to and we say no, these are circumstances that we do not take on risk. But there are circumstances where we say this is not as concerning as it could be. So we're able to take this on.
Collin 14:38
Oh, and I'm glad you brought that up because as we started off with the episode saying running a business is risky. Running a dog walking and pet sitting business is particularly risky. We have all now that you are running a business you have inherently looked at the risks and gone. I accept those. I accept the risk that a dog may get out. If you didn't accept that you would not Don't be running a dog walking and pet sitting business,
Meghan 15:01
I accept that my car's engine may die one day, and I can't get to the 12 visits that I have.
Collin 15:07
Yeah, these are things that are just built into this, but you have looked at them. But what I'm what we're talking about here is making sure that we are going into this with eyes wide open, and an understanding from a business perspective from a How would this impact my business perspective, and then putting in controlling methods, because you may sit down and walk through all of this. And I really encourage you to when you're doing this risk assessment, keep certain clients and top of mind, keep certain scenarios, top of mind for you. While you are doing this. This is why joining a Facebook group is incredibly important. And well, you will see people ask questions and you will go, I never even thought of that. What? Okay, well, how would I solve that? Or what would I do? I didn't even know that was a potential thing of happening. But just sitting down and going, what are the baselines here? And then how do I move forward with them? Because then there are things like this example, I want to keep bringing this up, because this is a topic of discussion of it's not just with the animals, it's not just with the clients, we're running a business. So when we're looking at risk control, and going, okay, new businesses are opening up new people are coming into this industry, that's wonderful, where we need to be having a healthy influx of people. So this industry can last for years and years. But there may be potential impacts to my business. So what do I do about that? How do I control it, I can't stop them from opening their business, I can't, I cannot do that. But I could focus on honing my marketing, my messaging, maybe I need to do a rebrand, maybe I need to look it up the suite of services that I offer, and make sure that they are the best that they can be or that they are serving my clients the best that they can, so that I can continue my business, because that is one way to reduce those risks to you.
Meghan 16:52
Because when we talk about risk control, it's you cannot again, you cannot control outside factors from you, you can only control you and your business and what risks you take on. So in the example of new businesses opening and opening up, you could look at them and say, Okay, what services do they offer? Versus what do I offer? And this is going to help in your risk assessment for this particular example? Because how risky is it that okay, you are a pet sitter dog walker, but a boarding place is opening up five streets over well, you guys don't have you don't offer the same services. And maybe you're not even going after the same clients, maybe you're at a higher price point than they are. So ultimately, it's not going to affect you as much because you're not going after the same type of client. The last step in the risk assessment is the the monitoring and the reporting. So risks are dynamic, and that they can change rapidly, they can become less risky or more. So it's crucial to keep an eye on the risk of themselves and reassess them regularly. This could include tracking new developments, so say that client that used to have an inside outside cat, maybe they just now only allow it inside. So you are able to now take that client on. Or conversely, maybe that boarding and daycare place that opened up well, now they have hired some dog walkers in the area. So it might be a little bit more risky, because they're now offering the same services that you are,
Collin 18:17
then also reviewing the effectiveness of your strategies that you've put into place and making adjustments as necessary. I recommend that you keep a spreadsheet or keep a notebook to write these things down as you're doing the brain dump of putting down all the risks that you have, then in that next column you could write, what is the impact of this as it's a high medium or low impact to my business, then in the next one, you're gonna go what are the three ways that I could reduce this or I could control this or I could manage this in a better way. And then you can see what happens over time. It helps it helps when you track things like accidents or issues or even client reviews. Right? So this is one way okay, clients are talking about this thing that keeps coming up? What on earth is going on? I need to look at that and understand what is what is happening to my business? Or May I keep getting staff who have got dog bites? Okay, well, my first question would be, is my training adequate? My next question is, am I taking on the wrong kind of clients? And really taking a hard look at that and going, am I saying yes to things that I shouldn't be saying yes to, because that's the that's really the number one way to control risk is to not take it on at all. If it has a high impact and it has a high likelihood of happening to your business, dog bites, very likely in the wrong scenarios with the wrong kind of training with the wrong preparation. So all of those have to be controlled for and mitigated to the best that you can.
Meghan 19:43
It's very likely that everyone listening including US has gone through this process before maybe just not a formalized writing it down putting it into different buckets kind of example, but here's the situation that may come up. So say you hypothetically run a dog walking business hypothetical. Yeah. If, and you are very aware that losing a dog is a major risk, and it's one that's probably going to damage your reputation, given how busy you are, and the number of walks that you are doing at any given time, this is a pretty likely and risky scenario. So what do you do about it, you invest in high quality gear, things that are going to hold up and lasts over time that are not going to break or rip, you take training, you take defensive dog handling training, you have good insurance that's going to cover you in case the dog runs off. And then you do a behavior assessment for each new inquiry that comes along and says, Okay, this dog is a good family dog, never had a history of running off has a fenced in yard, this is a pretty safe bet that this dog is not getting away. And while
Collin 20:47
you don't have a spreadsheet to track these kinds of things, you know, in your head, you know, okay, well, I haven't haven't lost a dog, since I've started doing these things. So you feel like the steps you're taking are doing pretty good. But how do you know when to stop? Or how do you know when enough is enough? The important part here is that you need to keep getting education, keep talking to people keep going to conferences, keep reading, keep looking at new ways of running a business, because the more that you learn, and the more that you work with others, the more you'll understand the risks that are out there, and the concerns that you should have. And I want to point something out here, it's is that the absence of an issue does not mean that there's an issue you need to be concerned about? And what I mean, what I mean by this, there's a Simpsons episode, and I'll have a link in the show notes. But it's like the anti Tiger rockets. It's a small segment of this. But Homer asks Lisa, how does this rock work and Lisa response, but you don't see any Tigers around to you? And Homer declares? Lisa, I want to buy your rock. Okay, just because there's an absence of tigers doesn't mean that the rock is the reason for the absence of tigers. Okay, so this is not an effective risk management, that again, I have to keep saying this the absence of danger, the absence of issues does not mean that your current methods are working. It just means they haven't come up yet. And so never been lulled into a false sense of security of going okay, well, I've never had I've never been bitten by a dog. So I must be doing everything perfectly. Or
Meghan 22:17
the harness is a little bit loose today and has been for a while, but the dog hasn't gotten out yet. So I think it's okay. Yes,
Collin 22:24
that this is where continuing to learn. And monitor comes in that last step of the risk assessment and reporting that one is usually overlooked and not done by people of okay, well, I'm just going to implement a bunch of stuff, and I'm going to walk away. But it's the monitoring that's really going to be critical and very powerful to you and your business. To be always asking questions and evaluating what are your processes? Are they still up to date to okay, maybe 10 years ago, I never wanted to lose a dog. So I implemented XYZ kind of harness, well, if I don't stay up to date with the kind of harnesses that are out there, there may be a new one, that's 10 times as better better at eliminating an escape artist than the one that I used to have been using for the last 10 years, we should always be moving in improving in that direction.
Meghan 23:10
So then how do you know if you are managing your risk? Well, there are some things that you do need to consider. The first one is reduced incidents. So one of the most obvious signs is the reduction in the number and severity of the incidents related to the risk that you're taking on. So if your staff were getting a lot of dog bites, and you implemented the training and the education and the oversight and the correct clients, you're not taking on the ones that were biting anymore, then you should see a reduction in the number of dog bites, you know that you're managing your risk? Well, when there is stability, when your operations are running smoothly, with fewer disruptions because of the risk related issues, then there's resilience. When you have effective risk management, it should increase your business's resilience to thrive and keep going. Because you are allowing it to recover quickly when these unexpected events happen. Okay, it's a dog bite, well, we now have this protocol in place to mitigate this in the future, because we've gone through this in the past,
Collin 24:13
or maybe it's new businesses moving into your area. So you have an effective marketing strategy that you know, will can or help increase new inquiries to you. Or maybe it's the training policies or maybe it's offering new services that you know, that you can look to, to help reduce and help even out as things happen.
Meghan 24:32
You'll also know when things are going well when you're managing your risk well, because there will be positive feedback whether this is from employees or clients that say, Hey, this is we've noticed this change recently.
Collin 24:44
This could be related to things like here's a great one. My front door wasn't locked. Why would my client reaches out to you and that you get one client asking you that in a third client asking you a fifth client saying my front door wasn't lost. This is you going oh, this is a big risk. This isn't good. This is security to them. This is potential will escape artists from their house, what are we doing? Okay, I'm gonna dive into my training protocols, I'm going to dive into my checklist, I'm going to reach out to all of my staff members, I'm going to train them, I'm going to give them these new things. And then I'm going to look for this kind of feedback that I get from my clients and then look great over the next six months, I don't see anything else. So what I did worked, and now I'm on a great trajectory with us.
Meghan 25:20
The last thing to consider and look for is when you've achieved your business goals. If you find that you're consistently meeting them or exceeding your business goals, this could be an indication that your risk management strategies are effective, and then you go and celebrate.
Collin 25:35
Because risky businesses don't do well. When you are taking on heaps of risk and not mitigating them, not controlling, not trying to reduce them,
Meghan 25:49
when you're taking on every single person in the city, taking on every dog no matter what it is. Yeah, with
Collin 25:55
no policies, no procedures in place. That's another thing. Policies and Procedures are a mitigation strategy to risk because you are controlling, you are saying, This is how we handle it. This is what we do, if you don't have those, and you're just embracing everything doing no behavior assessments, if businesses that run like that don't last, because businesses because risk will drag you down and destroy your business through Google reviews, Facebook reviews, pretty much and then people stop trusting you and they turn away from you, because that wasn't managed well. When you are achieving, when you are growing. When you are doing that. You can look to what you are doing and going this is helping me get there. Now, no false sense of security never want to be lulled into that. So just because I'm just growing just because you're growing, just because you're meeting your financial goals, doesn't mean you're managing risk. Well, it is one sign of that. And that's why we have to look at all of these things together in a cohesive fashion to fully understand what's going on.
Meghan 26:54
Because only you get to decide how much risk you take on as a business personally, what are you comfortable with? Once you have employees, that is a huge risk, you are trusting them. You are trusting your policies and protocols to have done a great job and you're training and shadowing and oversight to then send the baby birds to go fly on their own. But because you are the business owner, you have the ultimate say, of No, I do not want to take on this client. This is not a good fit. I don't want to take on a species a breed a client
Collin 27:24
a service type offering, maybe you've see people offering adventurer hikes and you just go no, the risk of injury to me is not something I want to take on the risk of loss to the pet is too much that I want to take on. I'm not going to offer that service. And that's okay. Because when we start operating out of our comfort zone and we operating too risky because we think that's what we should do. That's when dangerous happen. That's whenever we're gonna mess up. That's when we're when we aren't going to be confident things do go poorly. So while we should be looking to stretch ourselves and expand our abilities, through training, through learning through whatever, if at the end of the day, you're not comfortable with doing it, don't do it. Don't you don't have to, and that's okay.
Meghan 28:01
Yeah, I mean, running a business involves inherent risk. We just have to understand it and then ultimately manage it. Well. Thank you for listening to this. We'd love to know how you manage risk and assess it in your business. You can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and we will talk to you next time. Bye
