402: Planning the Perfect Visit
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How do you plan your visits? While not every visit is the most complicated, every detail still matters. To ensure you don’t miss a thing, and that the client’s expectations are met, preparation is key! We break down the 5 big buckets of information you need from each client. We then walk through the process of turning that information into a well organized (and time budgeted) visit!
Main topics:
Why you should prepare
5 buckets of information
Time budgeting
Prioritizing well
Main takeaway: Preparing doesn’t just help the first time you care for a client, it helps ensure a high level of consistency and quality each time you care for them!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, visit, client, tasks, information, budget, pet sitters, important, urgent, day, walk, vacuum, door, house, schedule, care, review, medication, crucial, minutes
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:03
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our lovely Patreon members like Laurie, whether it's sharing an episode giving a few dollars every month or leaving a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you very much for your support. We have been pet sitting for 11 years. And no matter if you've been doing this for a week or 30 years, there are times when there are visits that just feel a little bit overwhelming, you know, do you? Do you feel that? Do you feel that there are so many tasks that you have to get done in such a short amount of time, or maybe even a long amount of time, there's just a lot to get done, you feel like you're running around randomly doing things, maybe you even have a hard time hitting your time for each visit, you know, you've said to the client, okay, I can do all this in 30 minutes. But it's that 29 minute mark, and you're like, Ah, I still have a lot to do, you know, or maybe it's the opposite of like, you are going to short on visits, if there's not, you can't think of enough things to do. Maybe you're finding yourself forgetting tasks, whether it's specifically asked by the client or something you like to do, we always talk about having software and how that is an amazing tool that you need to have in order to organize and successfully run your business efficiently. But it's not a magic bullet, you still have to do something with the information the client has given you or that you've written down, we have to review their information and make a plan. So that's something that we're going to talk about today. You know, you start with a new client. And when you go to that meeting, great, you meet the pet, and you go over the care information. And that is a crucial time to set the stage for a successful relationship we've talked about before how even before the client contacts you is really the start of your relationship is your branding, your website, your social media presence, all of that really clues the client into who you are, what you do, and your mission for your business. And so when you go to the meet and greet and you collect all of this new information, you then have to go back and either approve or deny that client and say, Okay, this is the plan that I'm going to have for every single visit. And if it's multiple times a day, you have to go okay, when am I feeding? What am I giving meds, there's a whole plan here that you have to have and really prepare beforehand to set you up for success. So we want to break down our process, how we do this, how we approach understanding and gathering this information. And we're going to start off by filling five buckets of information. These are things that you need to know or do and have checked off before you start a client. And these are important, not just for brand new clients, we're not just trying to impress a new client and make sure a new client goes off without a hit. This process is great for every client that you have. Because we all know that clients change their information frequently. Or maybe we don't see a client as frequently as we would like. So it's kind of like a brand new client each time. And for each of these buckets. We're just gathering this information, whether it's from the client information from that they send you a phone call that you've had, or client notes that they've left you, or maybe it's the in person meeting, but we've got all of this information scattered around. We need to summarize it and collect it so that we can start doing something with it. And the first one that we always look at is when are your visits, right? When has the client requested these and when are they going to be on your schedule? Are they in the morning, afternoon, and evening? You need to also identify when is your first visit for that series? When is the last visit for that series? We also look at what day of the week are they requesting these? What season are these happening? Because what this gives us, this gives us our very first context that we're going to start hanging more information on because the day of the week that's important to know if you're charged with setting out trash. First and Last visits are great. If you have certain checklists or you know how to or when to start wrapping up certain care for the pets and seasonality. You may have time budgeted for how you're going to get into that apartment complex. But if it's in the winter, and the crews haven't plowed the sidewalks and they haven't gotten to the parking lot yet, it may take you a lot longer to get to that apartment door. So having that context and understanding that there are going to be things this is where we start planning we start having an idea of how much time these things are going to start taking us also understanding the pets behavior. Are there any unique quirks about this certain pet? Are they a darker out the door? Will you need to be mindful of their temperament? Do they not like loud noises and vacuums? We had a bulldog one time that would literally attack the vacuum anytime you went to do it because that was just that was not an appropriate thing to do. Then thinking about are they social or are they shy? Are they energetic or laid back? Each pet has its likes and dislikes just like people do. Knowing how to correctly handle the pet is going to ensure their comfort and safety and ultimately yours as well if you know that their dog reactive and you are tasked with taking them on a walk well you want to avoid eat any other dogs. And if a dog is starting to approach, you walk the other way or whatever route that you choose. Understanding this is going to be crucial because you will know the ins and outs of this pet, you will form a bond and a relationship with them. And then you're going to know and understand how to use their leash or harness or crate and it will help you to manage them effectively.
Collin 05:18
One of the pieces of information about this is that you have to know whether you need to bring your own leash into a visit or not, maybe you want to anyway, after you've already looked at what they are going to be providing, if they said, Okay, here's the leash, and it's retractable and you don't agree with that, you're going to need to know to have that leash ready when you go into that visit and maybe not the next one. But then that way, at least you're prepared for that specific experience. This is also a time to understand the the preferences of the dog or of the pet. Do they like certain toys? Do they have really good treats that they like really high value high reward treats to them, this is going to help you win them over. If they're a little skittish of you or bring them back to you. If they do happen to dart out
Meghan 06:01
before you care for the pets. It's also important to know their medical history and dietary restrictions. A question that we have is, are there any underlying medical conditions that we need to be made aware of because you want to familiarize yourself with the pet's health background? You never know what could come up, you know, we had an undiagnosed heart condition in a pet that we were carrying for a while back. And that we didn't know until the owner had gone to the vet and said, Oh, this is a problem. So we need to adjust our care accordingly. Also, knowing things like allergies or medication schedules, dietary restrictions, you know, we have one, we have a pet that only eat salmon, no chicken, no Turkey, no anything, just salmon, so the feeding and medication dosages, and those instructions are very crucial as well,
06:47
because later this will help you budget time if you have a complex feeding regimen. If they have a complex medical requirement of how to dose and certain requirements there, you're going to need to know that information when we're later we're budgeting that time
Meghan 07:00
while reviewing all of the clients information, it makes sure that you understand the physical address and the entry method. Review that address particularly in relation to everything else you have going on, we always ask the question, where are you located? And that's important for knowing if they're inside or outside your radius. But know, route planning is very important as well going to and from client's homes of okay, is this does this client need to be seen first or last or in the middle, and then how does that relate to all of the other surrounding visits, it really is an art form to route plan, it can be very stressful. But at the end of the day, if you are driving 15 to 20 minutes in between each client, you have to make the most of that time and you have to be as efficient as possible. So make sure that the directions that the client gave you are going to the correct place or the ones that are in your software or the ones you have in your calendar. Be clear about how you will access the home as well or the property. Do they have a lockbox a garage code door code where your policies in terms of requiring one key two keys two entry methods. If it's a lockbox where is it going to be mounted on the front door on a spigot hidden behind a bush somewhere? If it's an apartment complex? Do you know where the entrance is? Are there multiple entrances and can you get into them at all times of day if you're there in the early morning or late night, you can anticipate gate code or particular doors to be closed and locked. Make sure you know those codes as well. We have some clients who in order to get into their apartment door, there are three different codes, there's a gate code, there's a building code, and then there's a door code for their actual apartment as well.
Collin 08:32
And that boils that gets right to everything that we're talking about here. If we feel like we can't get everything done, if we feel like we're always delayed or really scattered, delayed entry into a client's home is one of the first things that we need to make sure that we are have accounted for. Because if it's a standalone property, if it's a single dwelling home, usually you pull right up into the driveway, there's one way of entry that could walk through the door and boom, you're in the home, we don't have to budget for time to get into the client's home because it takes 33 seconds. If you're going into an apartment, well, all of a sudden now it may take five minutes. I know we've been left waiting a few times for a few of our clients, six, seven minutes trying to get into that home. And that was time that we had not budgeted for initially. So now we it's not that we have that space, but we know to expect that so it's not quite as jarring. when that does happen.
Meghan 09:23
The last major thing that you should know before starting with a client or their pet is the house rules. And this really takes up the most mental bandwidth and the most mental space because it task switching is hard and going from house to house every 30 minutes going. Okay, this is a totally new home with new pets and new tasks. For instance, should you take your shoes off? We had a client one time who said absolutely no shoes in my house leave them outside. He was he was OCD but this was his house rule. You know which lights should be left on or off which doors should be shot. Are there any gates that need to be closed? Where is the pet allowed or not? Not allowed to be. Some clients don't like their pets on carpeted areas and only one it on the linoleum. How should you secure the home when you leave, make sure you understand the expected home care including plants and trash day plants is a big one in the summer of I don't want my tomato plants to die, I want to make sure that my chili peppers are are ready for me when I come back, you know proper preparation in all aspects of pet care. But particularly when you're going into pet sitting visits is key because it's going to make that that first impression. If you're doing this client for the first time, it's going to make that successful and ensuring that both the client and the pet have a positive experience with your service. So if at any time you cannot answer these questions, reach out to the client as soon as possible. You should be reviewing your visits the day before you are doing them. And then again immediately before you start them as well if at all possible if you have a super busy day, reviewing the night before the day before to help set you up for success. And make sure that if you do have any questions that the client is able to answer them instead of being at the visit and going Ah, I don't know, I am and the clients on vacation, so they I don't want to bug them either.
Collin 11:06
And Megan, you mentioned that that new client experience that is absolutely crucial that we knock this out of the park the first time we care for them. But then that second part of consistency. So how do we continue to serve our existing clients well, and with excellence, it's by going through this process, your clients will start going and how do they always remember this stuff? How it's been so long? How do they always do this? It's the prep work. It's the preparation, it's the reviewing of informations asking of good questions, that's going to allow you to continue to serve your clients well, year after year,
Meghan 11:38
it's crucial to have pet business insurance. And that's why pet sitters Associates is so great. 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 pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking memberships Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets that llc.com. Once you have gathered the information that answer the five above points, so we have the house rules the physical address the medical history and dietary restrictions, the pets behavior, and then when exactly are the visits. Once you answer all of those now you need to organize that information into the appropriate tasks to match when your visits are during the day and throughout the clients trip. So for example, if you have a morning visit, feeding would most likely be listed as one of your tasks, you would need to check if at any of your visits medications are required to be given. And then list out the common household tasks that you do at every visit. This is can be a lot to get done. But it is really going to help you in terms of efficiency for your business. So maybe you need to check the mail, refresh the waters clean up any small messes. Maybe there are multiple methods of entry like we just discussed, accounted for these and adding these to your task list is going to make you effectively budget your time better and account for them. When you have a super busy schedule like on a weekend or a holiday. The goal here is really to distribute the tasks as evenly as possible throughout both the day and the entire time the client is away. You don't want to wait to vacuum until the last two days before the client comes back on a three week long trip. You want to make sure you do a little bit at a time every day. So you don't feel rushed at any one particular visit.
Collin 13:32
And don't be afraid to get as granular as possible. Yeah, Megan, you mentioned the common household tasks that you do every time we for us, we always check the mail, we always refresh the waters and wipe out or scrub out the bowls. Obviously doing light housekeeping, and those kinds of things, we are still going to put those on our time budget sheet. Because they take time they are tasks that we want to get done. And we're going to put them on there so that a we don't forget them. And that B we budget our time effectively for when we are in the visit. And then it also helps to do this, especially if you have a we recently cared for a client that was traveling overseas for about a month, month and a half. We broke down when we came over four times a day. So we broke down each visit into daily tasks more on you know, first visit second visit third visit fourth visit. But then putting them out like that we were also able to distribute less common tasks or less frequent tasks throughout the duration of their trip so that we knew okay, I didn't vacuum the living room today, but it's on my list to vacuum on Thursday and then the following week. So we knew exactly where things were going to fall so that everybody was aware of the expectations for what this visit was for. And you can also distribute tasks like this visit is for enrichment of the dog or the cat or this visit is for physical exercise or this visit is when I'm doing some of the house chores to allow yourself to distribute those you don't feel like you have to do everything all All at once for every particular visit, because that's where we start getting stressed out missing things and going over time on our on our budgets.
Meghan 15:07
Now that you have compiled your list of tasks per visit that you are scheduled with for that client, it is now time to set a time budget and make sure you are effectively blocking your time to get the tasks done. And this is going to vary based off of how long the visit actually is. If it's 15 minutes, obviously, you're not going to be able to get a whole lot done unless it's a cat University. And all you need to do is scoop the litter and throw down some food. If it's a 60 minute visit with four chickens, two horses and a dog that has a different set of tasks that you are going to have to really prioritize in order to get it all done in that time. This process can really take a while as you learn how quickly you are able to do certain tasks, or how long certain tasks may take just because you scoop a litter box at one client's house for two minutes doesn't mean that the next clients house, it's also going to be two minutes.
Collin 15:52
Well, or it could be okay I walk op X amount of distance or it takes it takes me X amount of time to walk OB during our walk well, it also takes me X amount of time to walk op in the summer. And that's different than a fall walk during a winter walk. So this is where we start bringing in the context of the seasonality of it. Summer walks, we generally don't walk as long as we walk a little bit slower. So we can't go as far as we need to change our expectations and make sure that's built into our time budget. So this is where we start all of those first initial five buckets, all that information is gonna be drug forward now, as we're putting it into the actual visit. And that context of where is it happening? When is it happening house rules, all that stuff come into play, when we start trying to understand how long is this going to take? I remember, we we had a client who had a very specific procedure for washing the cat bowls, it was a it was very specific, and it was multiple stages. And so the way we washed their bowls was actually different than we watched everybody else's bowls. But we follow their procedure. And that took up an inordinately large amount of time comparatively to other tasks. But it was a very specific request that they had for us. And we had to understand and put that into the rest of the time that we had and make sure that we left time for our other tasks.
Meghan 17:09
Yeah, start by budgeting time for the things you always do at the visits, and then add in the time for the pets and the home specific activities. Because at this step, you should also be putting them in a first to last chronological order of Okay, first five minutes, I do this, then the next 10 I do this than 10 or however it looks for you and what the needs are. But when you are done with this step, you will have a list of all the tasks you need to do at your visit that are in chronological chronological order and have a time budget associated with them. This will help you to maximize your time at the visit while also getting everything done that you need to
Collin 17:45
and start building and some good habits for you. We always check mail at the very beginning of the visit, it becomes a habit it becomes ingrained, we're outside already we're walking around the porch, or we're looking at that front step or we're going to the mailbox, it's the first thing that we do that sets us up that we always know it's a habit that we start building, then as you start putting these in chronological order, it's really good to start putting at x time Mark is when I always do this one thing and that this other time, I always do this other thing. It helps keep you on track and helps keep you grounded in how the visit is going to go so that you don't forget these particular tasks because they are easy to forget, right they are there's so much going on. But that way you can go okay, X number of minutes into a visit is when I always take my photos, or X number of visits is when I always check the plants that are going to need to be watered or whatever that is for you. This is where you start designing and crafting it to fit the way you work or the way you want to work.
Meghan 18:48
But you also need to know that you need to give yourself a little grace and that you're never going to be able to plan for everything. So while you do need to have things lined out, there are going to be things that you cannot account for you walk in and there's a poop mess. Okay, well, that's going to cost you an extra two minutes. So what can I what what do I need to shuffle around in order to account for that because I'm not going to get that time back. So I, I cannot get to this task. So I'll have to do that at another visit. Which is why after the fact the final step is to then review your time budget. Once you have completed your visits for the day, take a few minutes to look back at your expected time budget versus what you were actually able to accomplish at that visit and how it went. Was it super stressful? Do you need to take away something from this visit and add it to another visit? It's important to make adjustments for future future visits at this step. Because you are you've lived the day and now you need to review and say okay, this didn't quite work today or this was amazing. I needed to keep doing this again. It's a process of continually refining and reviewing the time budget for the tasks at that specific client's home. And thus, you'll be able to better effectively manage how the visit goes
Collin 19:59
in is an incremental improvement process for you personally, you know, one of the steps we mentioned, okay, well, it's going to determine it's going to depend on how long you take to do certain things or how long it takes to do certain tasks. If we never go back and look at our plan, and then make small changes, we're never going to get better at this, we're never going to fully understand how long things take. And this is where the client specific things coming in and going, okay? When I'm at Baxter's house, I know, it always takes me longer to get into that to get to that first step, because of the gate because of traffic because of finding parking because of because of because of, okay, you know that going in. And when things go wrong, when things don't go the way that you expected, you have a contingency plan built into that because you've thought through the entirety of that process.
Meghan 20:51
Like I mentioned earlier, not every visit goes according to plan. So if this is the case, you will need to prioritize the new tasks placed on your plate versus the predetermined ones that you have listed out. And at this point, prioritize according to four categories important and urgent, important, not urgent, not important or urgent, not important and not urgent. Tasks that fall into the first category of important and urgent should always be completed at the visit. So if it's a once a day cat visit, you will always scoop the litter this is super important and super urgent. So you will always get that done even at the expense of other things. This could also include medications, those are important and urgent, or cleaning up explosive diarrhea, very important and urgent. So then the second category is the important and not urgent, these tasks can include like reading and mail or watering the plants if had just rained earlier today, this is important because the client requested it, but it's not super urgent because the soil is wet, or you may just not have time for it that to that day. These things also do not have to be the very first thing that you always do if something more urgent and important arises. For instance, you we like we just mentioned, we always check the mail the very first thing that we do, but if we notice that the door is open, well, that takes a bigger precedence a more important and urgent need than checking the mail.
Collin 22:16
And what we're breaking down here is actually known as the Eisenhower matrix, it is a task management tool that helps you prioritize and organize your tasks by both urgency and importance. Basically, you take everything that's on your plate and divide it into one of these four boxes to help you understand things that you're going to do first, and things that are going to get scheduled for later or things that we're going to offload entirely. And this is this is very helpful, not just for being in a visit, but also in running our business, this entire process of going okay, I'm going to collect a bunch of information gonna get all the tasks, all the things I need to do in one place, then I'm going to start divvying them up and out spreading them across my schedule. And then I can go in understand when they get need to get done, how urgent are they in my time, and where do they go in there so that when something comes up, you can shut things off. You can prioritize everything to within an inch of its life. But you come in and that doors open, or you come in and the animal is unresponsive on the floor, you know, that goes into that important and urgent bucket and everything gets pushed off the side doesn't matter if we get to vacuuming that day, we have to address this right here. And right now, because there are so many tasks that we have on our plate that we are trying to get done. If we don't have a way of prioritizing them, we will be continually lost and running around without a direction to our visits. Additionally, when things go wrong, when they don't go as we expect, we will become immediately overwhelmed. Because we're unable to push things around or understand the context of what we have to do. Okay, given this new piece of information that is unresponsive on the floor, what does that dictate of me? What must I do in order to respond to that?
Meghan 24:07
The third category of important and not urgent can be a little confusing. For example, this may be an interior door that will shut but it will not latch.
Collin 24:17
In this example this you have to figure out do I have to get this taken care of. So there's some other contexts that we need to know about this kind of situation? Is this door blocking entrance into a place where the pet is just straight up forbidden and not allowed? Okay, it's a little bit more important than if it's just a prefer or rather not the pet get in there or maybe they just were going to shut it for this one time. It's not the highest priority thing on our list if we have things like medication, feeding play time, and we've got to take out potty break to do or maybe there's a potty there's there's a mess inside the kitchen. Well we need to attend to the cleaning up of the house before we go back and address how to keep this door shut. So if we don't get it to it at this visit, it's something that we still need to keep on our plate, but we're just going to shunt it to a later time that we're coming over.
Meghan 25:05
Any tasks that you are unable to complete during a visit can be added to a future visit so that no task goes completely on missed or you're not able to complete it during a vacation visit. The final category, which is not important and not urgent, can be something like dirty dishes in the sink that the client left there, you as a common courtesy you do clean the dishes that are in the sink, not, you know, 30 dishes piled up everywhere, but a cup or a fork here and there. This is a courtesy that you do. So it's a task that is not really related to the care of the pet or the home, but you'd like to do it. It's something that can be completely skipped. Unless you have truly an abundance of time. Running a pet sitting dog walking business means you need to be organized. And so hopefully this gave you a little bit of an outline of how to organize your visits. If you do something completely different, or disagree with what we said we would love to know you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. Thank you also to our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members for supporting today's show. Thank you also for listening and we will talk with you next time. Bye
