425: A Touch of ‘Know, Like, and Trust’ with Kelly Hester
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How do you make an excellent client onboarding? A well executed client onboarding not only sets the tone and expectations for the client, but also set the relationship up to last for years. Kelly Hester, owner of Kelly’s Kritters Dog Walking and Pet Sitting, joins the show to walk through how she translated her decades of corporate work into running her business. From exceptional customer service to formally documenting everything, she provides several great best practices. Kelly also explains her process for onboarding clients so that both she and the client understand exactly what is going on.
Main topics:
Learning to document everything
Keeping your business and staff on mission
Training staff for meet and greets
Exceptional Onboarding
Main takeaway: A well thought out and executed onboarding will build both trust and confidence in your client.
About our Guest:
Meet Kelly Hester, the passionate owner behind Kelly's Kritters, a pet care service that was founded with one goal in mind: providing top-notch care for all pets. Drawing from her own love and expectations for her pets, Kelly's Kritters goes the extra mile every day to surpass customer expectations and cater to the unique needs of every furry friend.
The mission of Kelly's Kritters is simple yet impactful: to offer pet owners peace of mind when they can't be home with their beloved pets. By delivering loving attention and care in the comfort of their familiar environment, Kelly ensures that pets feel safe and content during their owner's absence. Moreover, the core values of the business include maintaining a high level of professionalism, honesty, integrity, and respect for personal property at all times.
Kelly's journey into this fulfilling endeavor came after spending many years in the Corporate Sector. Feeling a deep connection to animals since her childhood, she knew that the next chapter of her life had to involve them. Her love and compassion for all creatures began with her first dog, Frosty, leaving a lasting impression on her heart.
With certifications in Pet CPR and Pet First Aid, Kelly is well-prepared to handle any situation that may arise while caring for her clients' pets. Her experience extends to administering medication and volunteering at animal shelters and pet rescues, further showcasing her dedication to animal welfare.
Kelly's personal furry family has consisted mostly of cats and dogs, but she has also welcomed fish, hamsters, gerbils, and tadpoles into her clan from time to time. Currently, she shares her home with two lovely cats named Ruby and Journey, who bring her endless joy and companionship.
Through Kelly's Kritters, Kelly Hester is on a mission to provide love, care, and a sense of security to pets and their owners, creating a wonderful experience for all involved.
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/kellyskrittersdogwalking/
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, client, visits, pet, business, pet sitters, customer, greet, work, kelly, put, intake form, feel, gift, scheduling, hiring, admin, train, information, give
SPEAKERS
Collin, Kelly H.
Collin 00:02
Welcome to pet sitter confessional. Today, we're brought to you by time to pet and pet perennials. What's the most critical aspects of your business? The pet care, dog walks? Is your updates photos? Or is it your meet and greet your onboarding process for new clients. These really do set the stage for what clients can and should expect from our business. And so we need to have a well thought out thorough process that is predictable and provides all the necessary information to both us and the client coming on board. To walk through what these processes can look like. Today, we are super excited to talk with Kelly Hester owner of Kelly's critters about her journey into pet care how she switched positions from a licensed Customs broker turned pet sitter, and how and why she takes her meet and greets and onboarding process. So seriously, let's get started
Kelly H. 00:55
by Colin Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm the owner of Kelly's critters, dog walking and pet sitting Kelly's critters for sure. I am an LLC. We're in Wake Forest, North Carolina, which is a suburb just adjacent to Raleigh. And we serve as most of Wake Forest, a little bit of Raleigh, and a couple of other small towns near nearby as well. We currently have 11 staff members, and we're doing pretty well businesses going well. Wake Forest is a great place to have a business like this, the weather is awesome. So we don't need to deal with the snow and ice. Also, there's a lot of traveling here because we're two hours from the mountains and two hours from the beach, the ocean. So people like to get out of town a lot. And most everybody in this area are transplants. So their families are not here. And so they're often visiting their families as well. And they don't have people to care for their pets because their families aren't here.
Collin 02:03
That's a lot that you just dove into about your service area. Kelly, how did you start learning about your service area? I mean, are you from that particular area? Or is this stuff that you've just kind of picked up as you've been running your business?
Kelly H. 02:17
Well, I'm actually from Chicago, and I've been here now for 12 years, and my business is this is my sixth year in business. I kind of just picked it up as I went along. I actually, when I first started this, I had been laid off from my corporate job. And I spent months trying to find a job and I really wanted to get out of my very stressful field. So my daughter suggested, Why don't you get a side gig? I'm like, what is that? So she explained it to me. And I ended up dog walking for another company, and I really loved it. But there just wasn't enough. Enough of it for me to really be lucrative. So I was like, what if I try to do this on my own. And it was kind of just an experiment. And it took off pretty rapidly. I actually got a book and read read, read and found out about Facebook groups and read read read on Facebook and learned learn so much. And I continue to learn
Collin 03:28
as far as learning about our particular markets. I think that's something that many of us might not do or give a whole lot of second thought too, because we we've been there for so long, or it's where we're born and raised or where we feel like we are personally familiar with the area, but really trying to understand what makes that market tick. Right? What is driving this? Where is the economy functioning? Where are people working? Why are people traveling? Like, those are all things that impact our businesses directly. And as a business owner, if you can't really get your hands on that, it's kind of hard to get a you know, to run the kind of businesses that we do.
Kelly H. 04:08
Why? Yeah, I agree. This is just like I mentioned this a really great place to be for pet sitters. Yeah.
Collin 04:16
Well, Kelly, you mentioned that you have a career from from a corporate job a job. What What was that and how do you feel like that impacts how you run your business?
Kelly H. 04:26
Well, I was a licensed Customs broker and what that is it Steel's with imports. It's a liaison between US Customs and the importer. So basically business to business was very high stress field and impacts my business because I know the workings of an office and customer service and record keeping stress levels and problem solving. You know, I dealt with that my whole career my whole life. So I think it's um It was very helpful, you know, to know how to basically run an office.
Collin 05:05
Yeah, well, and you said that that word, those couple words record keeping just I can't even imagine how critical that was as a customs broker of being able to keep and maintain that uninterrupted paper trail from one thing to another. And as as business owners, record keeping comes in the form of client requests, right booking requests, staff issues, if you're managing them, they're all these different aspects where we have to, we have to keep track of those somehow, so that we have recourse or, you know, it is very honestly, it's very satisfying as a business owner to have a client say, I never said that. And you said that the screenshot you say, actually, here it is.
Kelly H. 05:44
Yeah, you know, back in the, in the customs broker days, we had a saying, cya, always CYA, cover your ass. I can say that. But so you know, that was just something we knew to do, because you just always had to have a trail. And that's something that was important in my business as well, just as you said, if somebody comes back and says, Well, I never said that, or, you know, I didn't book those dates or whatever, you know. It's like, well, yeah, did you know but of course, you've the customer's always right. And you have to handle that with kid gloves. You know, you certainly don't want to make a customer feel bad because they made a mistake, but you do have to cover your butt.
Collin 06:28
Yeah, I think Nate was think of record keeping, when it comes to incidents, right incident reporting of like, okay, I'm gonna take a photo of the broken vase, and I'm gonna take a photo of the cleaned up vase, or I'm gonna take a photo of the diarrhea, and then a photo of the cleanup, diarrhea, but really just thinking of it as more holistic really going, you know, everything, like every interaction, and I, in my early science career as a Master's student, my graduate teacher handed me a field book to writing data and information that in hand it to me, and he said, this can and probably will be used against you in a court of law, right accordingly, because we were dealing with endangered species. And basically, it was, this will both protect you, and it can bury you if you don't, you know, don't do this. Well. And that's something that has stuck with me of the importance of having that information somewhere in your, in your business, and just you as a person. Kelly, when you first started, where did you start looking for clients? And how did you start kind of those early days on,
Kelly H. 07:32
um, mostly next door and talking to anybody I could, when we went out, I would give business cards to everybody I love I met, I would try to talk to other people that people that I didn't even know like, if we were at a restaurant or something and give them business cards, sometimes I would leave a few business cards in a bathroom, keyhole of our restaurants and hopes. In the very early days, I didn't do it often. And I felt guilty for the longest time for not doing it more. But I used to actually take business cards and tape them to people's mailboxes, like, actually walk the neighborhood and tape them to people's mailboxes. And it was time consuming. But I mean, I had a lot of time in those days, because I didn't have a lot of customers, you know. So next door, and then I, you know, learns more about Facebook and that kind of thing.
Collin 08:25
So where do you feel like you're getting most of your clients these days? Google, Google. Okay,
Kelly H. 08:31
definitely Google.
Collin 08:32
When did that come into the mix? And kind of how are you using that? Because Google, is really I know, it's really powerful. And many people think that they can't have one because they're not a physical location, or how to get it set up and everything.
Kelly H. 08:47
I think I was, I can't recall, but I was in business for a while before I got my Google business page. The first thing I did was get my facebook page up and running. And my business, Facebook, and eventually I did get Google up and going. Yeah, I mean, it's just people are, you know, Googling, you know, pet sitters near Bing, or whatever. And I'm ranking in the top five on Google. So that's, you know, very helpful. I really don't spend any time on next door anymore. Because next door, I find that a lot of people are looking for the teenagers or very, you know, inexpensive services. And they're not always looking. I mean, I do get some next door people and I used to get a lot when the business was new, and my rates were low, too, you know, you know, but I don't get much from next door anymore. So I don't really spend any time on next door. I used to peruse it all the time, you know, and just like scroll until I found somebody looking for a pet sitter, you know, and once in a while just you know, post something about my business, but I really don't take the time for that anymore. But there's just
Collin 09:59
so many trade offs there. And that's what I hear when you're talking about Kelly, in the beginning, you had all this time a few clients. So you could do the time intensive boots on the ground techniques that now, it's probably really hard to find a full day or two to go canvass a neighborhood. And then when you look at client acquisition going, Well, this one's really easy, it's really free, it's really cheap, and I'm being I'm connecting with this audience. But now, it's, it's still harder to dive back in that and then the client payoff isn't there for you to get that, you know, that ROI that you need for that person. So looking at different avenues, as a business as you grow to,
Kelly H. 10:35
you know, and I've done what most pet sitters do in the beginning is go and talk to veterinarians and groomers. And I've done a little bit about that, with that, but not that much. And I keep telling myself, I need to go do that. I need to do that, you know, but I'm finding too, that some of the veterinarians, they don't want to recommend a pet sitter because they don't want to be held liable. You know, if something happens, you know, and most of the, the veterinarians now are corporate run, you know, there's very few Mom and Pop that's anymore. And, you know, I have a groomer there's a few groomers, several groomers here, but there is one groomer that is recommending me quite often. So I'll go visit him every once in a while with some fancy doughnuts or something like that. And as a thank you, and keep me top of mind, you know, so,
Collin 11:29
yes, yeah, we do the donut drops every now and then as well. And it you know, it's kind of nice, you go in and you buy so if you have three or four that you're going to go visit, you know, buying three dozen or four dozen donuts. And sometimes if you catch the donut shops at the end, they'll give you a deal because they just want to close up and leave. So I happened before too. So it's kind of, you know, kind of helping everybody through that. But it is about making those right connections. And one thing that I've we've worked on is not just stopping by one time, right? Like you're saying it's going and saying hey, I'm here to serve I do okay by because it's not just that they sometimes just won't refer you but they don't know for what to refer you right? Why? Why you What what do you do? For the longest time we had somebody who kept on referring to us for a service that we just didn't offer and it was really frustrating and so we had to keep coming back and doing some more education and more education about who we were and what exactly we did so that they you know, kind of made that connection and could send the right clients to us. Have you heard of time to pet Dan from NYC pooch has this to say
12:34
I'm Tibet has been a total game changer for us. It's helped us streamline many aspects of our operation from scheduling and communication to billing and customer management. We actually tested other pet sitting software's in the past, but these other solutions were clunky and riddled with problems. Everything in terms of pet has been so well thought out. It's intuitive feature rich, and it's always improving.
Collin 12:55
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try listeners of our show save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional. What is the mission of Kelly's critters?
Kelly H. 13:11
Well to offer peace of mind and respect for their personal property. And to treat everybody with kindness and respect
Collin 13:20
that peace of mind and respect. I mean, that's that respect word that our word there's a lot of people don't think about that right, especially as respect from one person to another or respecting their property. But that's a huge aspect of what we do. It's not just peace of mind so that they don't have to worry. But part of that is knowing that we're going to respect the things that is when you say respect their property, respect the person. How does that play out in the services that
Kelly H. 13:47
you offer? Well, you know, something as simple as when you walk into a customer's house, wipe your feet, and if your shoes are a mess, take them off, you know, don't just set your keys down on a wooden surface. Respect the pads that don't want you to come up to them right away that needs you know, need their space. You know, be kind to employees, you know, even the couple of times I've had to let somebody go, I want to do that with respect and kindness, you know, so that they still feel like a valuable person and I felt like the experience was decent. It wasn't
Collin 14:28
horrible. Well, in that you mentioned you have have employees how are you getting them on board with that mission? How are you connecting them to that I hear that a lot have a connect them to the mission, vision and values connect them make sure that they know that how are you finding that you're able to take a new employee and help them see what the mission is and find some connection to it?
Kelly H. 14:52
Well, during orientation, we talk about that, you know, all sorts of our different policies and and stuff you know we talk about shoes, you know, taking them off, we talk about, you know, leaving the bathroom, the way you found it was the seat up was the seat down was the door open was the door closed, you know, of course we talk about kindness to pets, and you know that you're never going to be screaming or yelling, or God forbid, hitting any pets, you know, we, we talk about all of that during our orientation. And also we treat them with respect and kindness. So, you know, it all comes back, because they're being respected whenever they're dealing with me or one of my two admins.
Collin 15:37
And that may feel a little overwhelming to somebody with staff going, I have to, I have to tell them all of the million different ways it means to respect right, I have to tell them to take off their shoes, I have to tell them to leave the bathroom, I have to tell them. And I'm sure you don't do that you don't spend seven days just going through all the different things that would be nice to do for a client. But you give some really good examples, right. And I think that's what that that's this teaching moment of, you're starting to connect them of a here's this word respect, here are a couple big examples that mean a lot. And staff over time, start to now interpret that and kind of fill in the gaps. And now they're wiping down surfaces, or they're setting things aside or doing these little nicety things that are respectful to the client in their property.
Kelly H. 16:21
Correct. So we you know, we go over that to about, you know, leave, you know, we're not housekeepers, but we're going to leave that we're going to clean up after ourselves and the pets. Yeah, now, if we use any dishes, we're gonna wash them, and we're gonna put them away. Now, that kind of thing.
Collin 16:38
I we had some some hires, who initially were very hesitant about the dishwashing thing, that was something that they were a little confused as to why we the pet sitters would be washing dishes. And it was just very simple going, Well, did you use it? Right? Did would you want to? Would you want to come home to a pile of dirty forks that somebody had used for a week and clean them yourselves? If not, then that's what you know, that's why we cleaned this to make that a nice experience. Because that is a respectful thing to do that person, if you use it, you replace it or clean it. And then the second part of that to Kelly, that you mentioned was the importance of setting the example of we can tell people, what we what the expectations are at all times. But now we have to also model that for people. And that's, that's really hard for for for people who aren't used to having others look at them look to them. For that example. Oh, how do I communicate? Well, I have to have to look to the boss? Oh, that's me, oh, gosh, okay.
Kelly H. 17:44
Well, the customer service aspect of it, it comes pretty naturally to me, because I've been in corporate America, you know, for decades, you know, and so, you know, I know how to be nice to people and how to say things and, you know, read and reread something I'm sending, you know, to make sure that it's not, you know, offensive in any way, but still can get your point across, you know, be nice, you know, just be nice, you know, read
Collin 18:13
and reread. That's a big aspect of not hitting send immediately. Not even saying the first thing that comes to your mind. Right, it's very hard. It's very, it's very frustrating. But knowing it's not just like, I'm interacting with a staff member, and I'm setting the example for them of how we're going to handle these interactions. Because maybe a later date, this may come up again, and the tables are switched. And I want them to know what the expectations are. Or maybe it's a client with some issues that they're having, or some troubles that they have, or some concerns that they have and going, you know, I need to be I'm not trying to censor myself in my speech, I'm trying to be careful and make sure that my the words that I say are actually convey the meaning that I need them to, because that's where a lot of those problems come in, where you shoot off a quick email and somebody responds, and you go, that's not what I meant at all.
Kelly H. 19:06
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Collin 19:09
Correct me if I'm wrong, Kelly, but use staff to do things like meet and greets with your company. Is that Is that correct? Yes, I
Kelly H. 19:16
have two main meet and greet people who I've trained to do that in my supervisor, the the girl who does the supervising for me, and she also does a lot of admin work. She'll occasionally step in and to meet and greets.
Collin 19:32
How do you how do you train staff members to do this? Because that's a that's a really weighty task. That's a you're there representing the company. They have to be equipped to answer all sorts of questions and guide people through a process. How did you go about selecting those people and training them to get them to that point,
Kelly H. 19:52
while selecting them, because they're darn good pet sitters, and they understand the business they like the biz Unless they've been here for a while, they have good communication skills. They're, they're polite, and they're intelligent. We have a pretty thorough intake form. And what I did, so that guides them through all the questions, all the information we need to get from the customer. I took each of them separately because one person was trained to do meet and greets. And it was some time later that I trained the second person. And what I did was I took her with me four times with a meet and greets the first two I led and she just was there present. And then the second two, she led with me present. And so it's pretty easy process, especially with the intake form. So I of course, asked them, Do you feel comfortable with this now? Do you feel that you can go do this without me? And they said, they were ready, and I never looked back. They're doing. They're doing great. And it's I love meeting people. But it's so nice not to have that responsibility anymore. Yeah,
Collin 21:06
well, it makes it a lot more flexible to win for the client makes it more accessible for the client, right? Because if you're only one person doing Meet Greets, and the client can only meet in the morning, but that's when you have visits or that's when you've got something else scheduled, you can go, Hey, we still have you covered. Right? It's, it's kind of nice to just be able to be available a lot more for your clients when they need
Kelly H. 21:24
you. Definitely. And we just work it into our sitters schedule, we actually put that put it on as I visit on the sitter's schedule. So there's no chance of her forgetting that she had a meet and greet because it's just there with all her pets. It's, you know, it's on the schedule.
Collin 21:40
And that form sounds really important too. I know when I first started doing meet and greets, very early on, it was kind of just shucking and jiving, come up with questions on the spot and kind of asking for generic information, and then maybe writing it down later and hope I remembered,
Kelly H. 21:54
which, which was trusting myself with that? No, it
Collin 21:58
did not last very long, I will tell you. And now we too have this massive intake form that clients say, to have to fill all this out? And we say, Yes, please do. And then we comb through it. And we ask additional questions and stuff like that based off of it. But, you know, coming up with that form, I'm sure that was just a huge help. But to being able to offload this kind of this kind of
Kelly H. 22:20
task? Well, it's actually the same form that I use for myself that I started with, you know, in the beginning of my pet sitting business. And, you know, through the years, there's been additional questions that have been added, you know, to the form. And we actually what we do is, well, once the initial contact with the customer, we do a phone call after they've reached out either by phone or email or our intake form. On our website, we then do a phone call. And we get all the initial information what how many pets, you know, what's the name of each dog? How old are they? What color are they are they friendly, of course, the address, the phone number, the email, you know, so we'll get some initial stuff on the phone. And that gives us to a little bit of the customer gets a touch of the like no interest, because we've actually had a phone conversation with them. And then we set up the meet and greet for them. And then we send them an invite to our software where they can go in and complete all their information, which they are supposed to do before the meet and greet. And they we also get send them a welcome email, which will also you know, go over the things about our company that we talked about on the phone, give them the the price of the visits, they're asking about instructions for keys, all of that. And my whoever's doing the meet and greet, and my on my team will look at all the information that they entered in the system, and put that on the intake form. So when they go to the customer's house, it's basically an interview, we're finding out more information on how to care for the pets finding out where everything is in the home. And it's also giving the customer a chance to interview us as well. You know, and then there's some documents that they need to sign. We're not doing everything online, like some businesses are where they can sign everything online. And well they do do that. But we also have an actual form that they sign and we want more of a little bit of a personal touch so that they can feel safe with us.
Collin 24:34
You know, that's that process Kelly sounds Has that always worked like that as far as the multiple steps that you've had or how did you develop and get to that point for having the phone call? Then the meet and greet like that's because many people struggle with how to orchestrate this of when do I ask for what information and can I just have them all do it online or how do I do this all in person or what so how did you come to this? This mix of a few of those.
Kelly H. 24:59
Well, I was always a phone call, you know, from day one, it was always a phone call, that's how the customers would reach me. You know, if they emailed me because they saw my email address on a business card, let's say, you know, I would still need a phone call because I needed to get the address, I need to find out more information about the pets, and, you know, is it even a job that we can do for you, you know, are you in our service area, all of that kind of stuff, you know, so it's always been a phone call, always. And I don't, there's two schools of thought, I personally don't want people going into my system, which I use PPC, unless I've invited them, I because I don't want junk in there. If you're not a you know, if you're not a customer, because you're in or not in our service area, or you have an aggressive animal, you know, we're not going to take that on, I only want people in there that are in my system that aren't your customers. So they have to be invited to come into the system and create their profiles.
Collin 26:05
And then the other aspect of that, too, is it sounds like you're you're you're gathering information for these phone calls, and then you're going and putting that information into the client's profile for them, right. And obviously, they have to fill out some additional information before the meet and greet, but you're, you're kind of, you're also adding to it for them
Kelly H. 26:22
a little bit, basically opening their account, okay, and then sending them an invitation. So there's only the bare minimum in there, you know, the address, the phone number, the contact information, each cut has their own little profile, we've entered the pet's name, you know, we don't get a lot of information on the pets, we'll get the breed the color, the weight, you know, their disposition. And that's all we're putting in there. And then the customer is responsible for filling out everything else where everything's located, how much you feed them, when you feed them, you know, any special instructions, all of that.
Collin 26:56
Okay. Do you ever get any pushback from clients who don't want to enter all that information themselves?
Kelly H. 27:03
Generally, no, no, I mean, I do have some older clients, who just can't seem to get the visit requests, you know, going in and, you know, requesting their visits on the actual software. So there's only a couple that are like that, and we'll gladly put those in for them, you know, put their visits in, they'll contact us usually by email and tell us what they want. And we'll put them in. Yeah, but generally, the customers are requesting their own visits in the portal, which really, is so wonderful compared to how I used to didn't have people requesting their own visits. And, you know, so I would put in all of that, and, you know, as we got bigger and bigger and bigger that, you know, that becomes quite a chore. So it's just wonderful having the customers put it in.
Collin 27:54
Yeah, cuz it gets back to that record keeping of okay, like the client asked for this time, right? Are the client wanted it this way? So in some instances, we're following their directions and their wants. And we can reach out if we have questions like we this just came to us one. Recently, we had a client who normally books always at like 8am. And then one day they booked the earliest visit they had or the day wasn't at 11. And we were like, Oh, that's weird. Like, that's, that's all. So we'll reach out in those instances and just double check, make sure everything's okay. But then by and large, you're going, Okay, this is now there's no, it's not now the error is not on me. Right. And I can I can reach out if I have questions.
Kelly H. 28:33
Yeah, exactly, we get some of that as well. And we'll just send them a message. We very rarely call because, you know, the paper trail is nice when it's, you know, email or a message through the software to the customer. You know, so we do have a paper trail. And, you know, again, if they screw up that email, we have proof, you know, well, we questioned you, and you said this, and that's what we did. So, you know, once in a while, we might have to reach out by phone, but generally, it's message
Collin 29:06
for listeners who are sitting here wanting to have staff start doing meet and greets, what are some recommendations that you would give to them, but how to, you know, look at their existing staff pool or to try and hire somebody specifically for that?
Kelly H. 29:19
Well, first of all, the person has to have some confidence. You know, occasionally we'll have people who come to work for Kelly's critters, and they're shy, you know, they're, they're kind of shining, I don't feel personally that that's the kind of person is going to be successful doing meet and greets, and they probably wouldn't want to. So it's somebody for me, it's somebody who already knows the workings of the company. So they've already been working here. And they understand, you know, how to do pet sitting visits, and they understand the kinds of information that they need to know. They understand how to read the notes in the system, you know, and work with the app, so they know the kinds of information that needs To be gathered, I think, confidence and somebody who's pretty sharp, you know, on the intelligence level, you know, I mean, they don't have to be, you know, brain surgeons, but they've got to be able to think on their feet a little bit.
Collin 30:17
Yeah, cuz you don't know what's going to IRS gonna come at you with a lot of meet and greet sometimes, but also trying to put together pieces of information because that's another key aspect of the meet and greet to have not just reading the information, but also then listening to the person and looking at the, at the area around you and start going to these matchup or like, what is going on with this? Why do they keep referencing this? It does take a little bit of going, Okay, you're gonna have to put together a puzzle kind of in the moment with these things are sometimes
Kelly H. 30:46
usually they're pretty straightforward. But sometimes, you know, and I also want my pads that are my Meet and Greet staff who are pet sitters, you know, I also want them to be looking, you know, is this, is this dog's personality going to be okay, is this dog gonna let us in the house when mom and dad are? You know, so you kind of be looking at that, too. You know, occasionally, we'll run into a hoarder situation or something like that. And it's like, well, can we do these visits? You know, is this something that we can safely do? Can we safely send a team member into this home? You know, and then yes, usually, but sometimes we'll mark the account, we do overnight service, but we'll mark the Account No, overnight. Because we wouldn't want to put our staff in a place that was unpleasant,
Collin 31:39
or it, there's a lot of judgment calls that have to be made there. And you can systematize that as to as much as you can. But ultimately, you are relying on that person to bring back their report and information and their gut feeling about what happened there. So you do have to have a lot of trust in this individual that you're putting out there. Yeah,
Kelly H. 31:59
definitely. And then being pet sitters already. They know the kinds of, you know, things that they can run into petsitting, you know, questions or small issues or something like that. So you know, they already have a working knowledge of what the job is like. So whether or not this client is a good fit for us. But we generally have already determined that when we're having that phone call that initial phone call.
Collin 32:25
Yeah, I was curious, you know, there's multiple steps kind of what's your rate of, from initial contact to meet and greet and book service? Like, you know, do you know, like, for every 10, that call, I, you know, we weed out fives before they actually become clients or anything like that?
Kelly H. 32:43
I would say the phone calls, I'd say it's 80 85% become clients in bulk with us. Wow. Yeah, occasionally, we'll get we'll get people that are out of our service area, you know, occasionally we get that, but of the people that are actually people that we can service. Yeah, I would definitely say probably 8070 or higher.
Collin 33:08
Now, you also have staff members doing administrative work for you. Is that is that also the the two that are doing the sets? Or do you have somebody dedicated for that kind of work in your business,
Kelly H. 33:20
as well, one of the one of the girls who does meet and greets, also does some admin work. And then I have another pet sitter, and she does pet sitting, as well as about 12 hours in the office every week, doing admin work, in addition to petsitting. Now, both of these girls do the scheduling among other tasks as well. So they do all the scheduling, and I'll tell you, and it's so wonderful to not have to do that, because that is a time consuming bear. And, but because of this, there's you know, some little perks, they get to I mean, they can basically pick their visits, you know, because we assign visits, we do not let the sitters pick their visits, but these two, you know, can pick visits, if they see something they really want that they can pick them and they can, you know, decide not to do other visits, you know, unless we're really you know, in a in a jam, and we're just super busy that, you know, everybody's being a little overworked that week, you know
Collin 34:25
what, so is that again, did you you know, for for somebody who's sitting here going to say I am overwhelmed with this work, maybe I don't want to hire you know, an assistant on online assistant or remote assistant or something like that. I'd rather have somebody in house. How do you go about selecting them for those tasks? Because here's the good here's more control over your business. I mean, you're giving them passwords to things I presume in order to get this stuff done. So how did you go about that?
Kelly H. 34:50
Well, I knew them pretty well, you know, as pet sitters. Before, I you know, I'd have a lot of contact with my staff, mostly via Tech. Just because they're updating, we run things a lot differently than a lot of pet sittings companies still, we were not using journals. And we're actually sending our updates our little videos that we text the customers. And as we've gotten bigger, this is kind of cool is a big hassle. But you know, down the road, there will be some changes, but so I, the customers get a feeling for who these people are, even though they're not on camera. Because they're saying, you know, Sparky paid and he pooped, and I changed the water. And I thought and he ate good, and you know, all that stuff, and trying to you know, make that everything so boring, you know, sometimes maybe getting something cute in there as you're filming the animal. And, but that gives me an idea of who they are as well. You know, and every week they come to the office to get their checks and keys for the week. So, you know, I, I see these people, it's, you know, it's not so I get to know them. And you know, the people who stand out to me, again, is having the confidence. And the intelligence is how I choose someone to be an admin.
Collin 36:17
Mm hmm. Because, and then there's the aspect of, you're picking them up to do the work trying to do the work then holding them accountable? Because that's another thing of Did you did you sit and create deadlines are how you talk about expectations for scheduling of like, when that's required to get done and everything?
Kelly H. 36:37
Yeah, well, I definitely I had to train the first one. And since then, I'm on my third admin, and now I've got a second admin as well. So I created SOPs, you know, because I was doing the work myself. And so I created SOPs, and trained them myself and how to do this. And there are deadlines involved. And as far as the one admin, you know, she's sitting at the table, and I'm usually my office is my dining room, you know, as pet sitters are lucky enough to work at home, usually. And her her 12 hours a week is I'm sitting right here with her. So we're very close, we get along and we enjoy each other's company. And, you know, as far as if she's missing a deadline, which does happen, I'll remind her, you know, hey, I need this time. So, and she's also now in charge of all the hiring. So that's wonderful to have that off my plate as well. So she does a lot of stuff, she she really does a lot of stuff in the scheduling, what I did a few months ago, because that is such a bear of a job is I cut it in half. So one of them does the scheduling for the first half of the month. And then the second half of the month is handled by the other one. So if it's your half of the month and visits are requested, you need to get them assigned, and you know, put on the schedule and tweak the schedule so that the visits make sense, you know, assign them to the sitters, and, and so you're got pretty much the half of the month you're doing it and the other half you're not, although even if it's not your half of the month, you need to keep tweaking your half of the month, you know, and making sure those visits make sense.
Collin 38:29
Yeah, and refining it right because it is kind of a continual process because there's last minute cancellations. There's all sorts of stuff that were last minute bookings that may come up and so it's really something that's never done until it's done.
Kelly H. 38:42
We call it a living breathing puzzle.
Collin 38:47
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Kelly H. 40:05
Unlike any job really would, it says okay, now, you know, I'd like you to take on this, you know, and then I train them, I usually have an SOP that I write, you know, depending on the task, like, I don't really have a hiring SOP, but, you know, I just let her know that you're going to be doing this and I train them and, you know, monitor their progress. And we talk I mean, we're sitting across the table from each other 12 hours a week. So there's plenty of time for communication,
Collin 40:35
that monitoring is key, or many of us may go, Okay, well, I'm gonna tell them to do this. And I'm going to disappear. And I'm going to come back, right. And that's, it's like, no, like, you've got to stay in touch with staff members, if we do that, when we're training with anything in our business. And even more so with some of this more administrative work that's not necessarily visit specific, where it's not timed, where you don't have the notes, or you don't have these updates to to really check in on and go, Hey, I noticed you didn't do this. But going, it's a little bit more, I feel like it's a bit more nuanced and takes a little bit more hands on approach to monitoring that kind of work that they're doing.
Kelly H. 41:10
Yeah, one of my problems is on a bit of a control freak. So sometimes I just have to like, okay, don't ask her about that again. Or, you know, learning to, you know, to turn this stuff over to someone else. I think we all struggle with that, you know, even the people who are just getting other people to do visits, and it's like, no one's gonna do it as good as me, you know, it's terrifying to turn stuff over to someone else. You know, it's our baby, you know, and to let it go into trust. You know, I've struggled with that, to trust that she's doing it and that she's doing it right.
Collin 41:48
Especially right across the table, I'd be tempted to be kind of looking over the shoulder looking at the work making sure you know, that's just how I, I am but it is to go, go. I put everything in place. They watched me do it. We did the training. I do I have to step back at this point, I have to do that.
Kelly H. 42:06
Yeah. And it's difficult, but I forced myself. I forced myself because, you know, I also worked in corporate America. And I was most of my career I did not have, I was not micromanaged. And I just think boy, would I want to work for me. I mean, I'm kinds and I'm nice, and I'm respectful. And I'm very, I feel that I'm a really good trainer. But when I want to work for me being like, did you get that fun? Did you do this? Did you do that? Yeah, you know. So I try not to do that. But I know I'm guilty of it?
Collin 42:45
Well, we have to it starts with knowing ourselves, and not just how we want to communicate, but how we want to be communicated to and kind of what some of our edge cases or some of our triggers are, that are going to elevate and maybe preemptively talking to staff about that, like, hey, when I'm stressed, I get a little, you know, hey, you know, a little a little oversight, right of what you're doing. So don't take offense. It's just I know that sometimes. It Kelly, you mentioned that you have been working for you for 12 hours a week on that, how did you arrive at that number?
Kelly H. 43:22
Well, there were certain tasks I wanted her to do. And then when my very first supervisor who is the person who also does the admin work, that's their title. The very first time I had a supervisor years ago, I kind of didn't know what I needed them to do, or when I wanted them to work. And I quickly was like, I gotta make a decision, because it's not fair for them, not to have regular hours, who wants to work like that. So, um, she works Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. And that's because there's certain things that needs to be done on those days. And so tasks that I have given her that, you know, need to be done on those days. And basically noon to four is when she's working, and it's based on, you know, the need. And she also, you know, because she's in charge of scheduling, you know, that's not something that you can just do here and there, you know, it needs to be done. We have a 48 hour deadline, once a customer requests a visit, I want those that that customer assigned and the confirmations and everything sent within 48 hours because I don't want my customers sitting around wondering if God did they get that booking? Are they going to be able to handle it? You know, so that being said, she also needs to work at home, sometimes not a lot and she's compensated for you know, every week she gets a certain amount of pay, you know, the covers her working from home, you know, In some weeks, you might have to barely work at home at all. And other weeks, you might have to work at home more, but that pay is there every week,
Collin 45:08
coming up with the time because many of us may go, Well, I really need help. And I want to be consistent, but I don't even know how much I could afford or what that would look like. Because that now we're into this territory of, well, it's required work, but it's non revenue generating work, because it's, it's easier for us to figure out like, Okay, I do one dog walk and make X money because they generated X money, but scheduling cheese, like how do I even start to approach that? For me,
Kelly H. 45:34
it was a leap of faith, honestly, I was just like, you know, and I read all the Facebook Places, especially back then, you know, all the various groups and stuff. And it was like, I can't go on like this, I just can't be putting in this many hours, I need help, you know, indicates if you're overworked and overwhelmed, you begin to hate your business. And it's like, I just, I can't go down that road. So it's not going to cost that much money, you know, to have somebody come in for a few hours a week. And I know that we've got enough business to warrant that. That's maybe some people have a better approach than I did. But it's worked for me. But initially, yeah, it was just the leap of faith and then necessity, you know, as like, you know, kind of build it and they will come and they did. So
Collin 46:29
you said it was a necessity, and it sounds like it was a necessity for you. Right? If going like, I can't keep doing this. And then the decision goes, how much would I pay to make this problem kind of go away? It's really and going, what's it worth to me? And sometimes it's you can't really, I mean, you can drill down and find the dollars to minute ratio and all that stuff. But the other sense, it's like, what's my peace of mind worth? Like? What some space some breathing room back in my day worth?
Kelly H. 46:56
Oh, yeah, definitely. Um, you know, I just, it was definitely, like you said peace of mind. And you know, and that was hard for me to let go have to, I was always looking at the schedule to make sure it was right and correcting stuff. And I've eventually just gotten over that, you know, I don't peruse the schedule much anymore at all, because I paying people to do that. Homes. So and they know what they're doing. They've been well trained. And they've been doing it quite a while now.
Collin 47:25
You've been building up these positions, as they are, you know, around certain people, do you have an eye for full time management or management positions in the future?
Kelly H. 47:38
Maybe far down the road? I don't feel it's something that I can afford at this time. So no, I'm not looking at that. Now. I'm actually, you know, sometimes thinking, well, maybe my supervisor should come, you know, work a few more hours during the week, because now that she's got hiring, you know, she's getting a little bogged down. But full time No, I don't think we're there. I don't think I can afford to do that. You know, and one of the things is when I did take that leap of faith to get some office help. And I knew that, you know, I'm going to make more money, if I do all this myself, if I don't pay people to do this. And you can go, you know, with the very thing of doing visits, you're gonna make more money if you do it all yourself. But how long? Can you keep that up? And how happy are you going to be? So yeah, I'd be making a lot more money if I didn't have other people doing these things. But I can't do it all and nor do I want to know. So that's, that's something that was difficult for me in the beginning, you know, the, oh, I don't know if I can afford it. And nobody's going to do it as good as me and I'm not going to trust them. I think we all struggle with that when you first start doing that. But one of the things that pushed me to actually hiring was that I came to the realization that eventually I was going to have too much business that I would not be able to handle. And so I would be turning people away. So those people I turn away are probably going to find another pet sitter and they probably will never come back. So it would always be a revolving door of customers, as I couldn't, you know, handle whenever they needed me. So that pushed me to hiring you know, pet sitters. That is that realization.
Collin 49:29
Yeah, not wanting I mean that not wanting to say no, but this, that idea of this revolving door of people coming in and leaving, he would come in me leaving and just going I don't want them to leave, right. And some people don't have that desire, and that's totally fine. Some people go, No, I want my core clients. This is how I want to operate. But if you have that idea of well, I would just rather be able to take them on. Now you start saying yes to things like hiring SOPs, structures, administrative work that's required in order for you to make that goal. All in. And, you know, that's for us to decide how we how we make that work.
Kelly H. 50:04
Because I didn't, I felt like I would probably be in a customer battle constantly, you know, you know, always like got any more customers because nobody's booking, you know, if I turn people away, they probably aren't going to come back. You know, let's they have a bad experience with the the next people they hired, you know, but I didn't want to take those chances, you know?
Collin 50:28
No, and you don't wish that on another client? Right? You don't go? Well, hopefully, I'll be back because you have a terrible experience. Right? You want them to be well cared for? Oh, definitely. Yes. Kelly, when you think about you talked about kind of down the road here. What do you see as your next 510 year plans as a business?
Kelly H. 50:45
Well, I hope to actually in five years, or, you know, they're about to have full time admin staff, so I can step away more and more, I'd like to be have someone else running my business and me sitting on the beach. More and more, I'm certain, I'm certain I wouldn't be on the beach every day. But you know, more and more, being able to step away from it. And, you know, having the confidence that my team can handle things while I'm away. And I'm working, you know, I'm working more and more toward that. But in, you know, five years, yeah, I would like to have somebody else actually running it.
Collin 51:23
Is that what you started to end with? Right? When you when you started several years ago? Did you have that in mind of have?
Kelly H. 51:31
I had no, no, I just wanted to take care of pets. And I was like, hoping that I could make enough money. So I didn't have to go back to corporate America. That was my my only goal. And it grew, it started as an experiment, and it just grew and grill. I mean, not by accident, believe me, I've put in a lot of work into this. You know, and I mean, I started it from the ground up, I had to figure out policies and contracts. And, you know, all of that stuff I hadn't, you know, had nothing, you know, so like most considers, I believe they're building their baby from the ground up. So no, I had no exit plan. I just was a struggle constantly getting to each new little step and getting the courage to make that next step. You know, hiring a pet sitter, you know, and sharing the visits with somebody else. And then hiring another pet sitter hiring someone to do you know, having one of my pet sitters learn scheduling, you know, it's just, you know, one for me one courageous step after the next.
Collin 52:35
I love how you put that because every at every stage of business, I mean, we have that brief moment where we go, wow, what else could there possibly be are like, Man, this is amazing.
Kelly H. 52:49
It's funny, because just the other day, I was talking to my best friend. And I was telling her that, you know, a lot of times I get down on myself thinking, you know, oh, I got so much more to do I got. So one day I wrote a list of all the things I have done over the years, and all of the big projects still yet to come. And the the one side of the list with everything I had gotten through was so much bigger, longer and made me feel so much better. And she said, she's very wise. She said, Yeah, sometimes when we're closing, you know, climbing a mountain, we forget to look down and see how far we've come. We're just looking at the top and see how far we are away. And I was like, that's an awesome way to put it, you know?
Collin 53:35
Well, and then with each step, as you're, as you're climbing, as you're building your business, each step can become, as you said, it's another courageous step, to go that much higher, that much further from where you started that much more into places where you've never been before. And maybe you don't know and you try and educate yourself and continue to learn and be connected to good groups and people and resources. But at the end of the day, it's up to us to make that step. And that's, that's now where you go with that. It's a courageous step, every every step away, we we forget that of how many previous courageous steps that we that we took to get to where we are.
Kelly H. 54:10
Yeah, I mean, I encourage you if you're struggling like I have, I do sometimes you know, those of you who are listening to to make that list, you know, okay, I know I still got to do this, this is a big task I need to do and this isn't you know, another task I need to do. And these are hard whether it's you know, some additional software or you know, having someone else in charge of your hiring or just hiring in general if you're you know, haven't done that yet. You know, make that list of things you've already done it will make you feel really good. One of the big things I had to do way back when was to convert my employees to my ICS two employees. I was terrified.
Collin 54:52
Oh, wow. Oh my gosh, okay. That's that's huge. What What made you finally make that Which Facebook groups
Kelly H. 55:01
learning about it? I mean, you you don't know what you don't know, right? And I didn't know, you know, when I started my business because I was doing it on my own for like six months before I hired somebody I didn't know. And then I already had these people on as ICs. Because how the heck do I pay taxes, I don't know how to do pay taxes on employees, I don't know any of this stuff. And then I started hearing all the controversy surrounding it. And I just was like, I'm not a risk taker, I'm making this move, you know,
Collin 55:34
which changes your business, which changes how you use people change your policies, your procedures, your pricing, like, that's such a massive part of your business, but to go, you know, it's, we reach those stages where we go, in order to do this, I have to make this big step, it's gonna be painful, I don't really want to do it. But I feel like there's no other option. And I must do this to to make it to what I want it to be and continue to move towards that goal.
Kelly H. 55:59
And definitely don't forget that I'm a control freak. Oh, yeah. You know, having people out there that I'm not supposed to train, and you know, all of that. And it's terrifying. It's hard enough to find people, but I'm supposed to find people who, who have a business and know how to get an EIN number. And, you know, all of that stuff and know how to do this. And I can't, you know, train them. And oh, no, that's not me. So I know that I was not using my ICS properly. And I know that there's pet sitting businesses out there that do and that's fabulous. Use them correctly, you know, but I know I wasn't,
Collin 56:39
Kelly, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing how you've grown your business. You've taken those courageous steps. And you've encouraged us to continue to do that as well. I know that there's a lot that we touched on. And there's a lot more that people who we could dive into. So if people are interested in getting connected and following along with all of your work, how can they do that?
Kelly H. 57:01
I guess the best way would be my Facebook business page. Kelly's critters, and my website is k critters.com.
Collin 57:11
I love that website. It's so nice, short, and it's just it's very nice. I love that web address.
Kelly H. 57:19
Well, Kelly's critters, the reason I don't have Kelly's critters.com is because the domain name was really expensive. Ah,
Collin 57:28
always those trade offs in business, right?
Kelly H. 57:32
Sounds like well, we'll just okay, critters. I think this will work.
Collin 57:36
Perfect. Well, I'll have links to those in the show notes. So people can click right to those. Kelly, this has just been absolutely thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Kelly H. 57:45
Thanks, Colin. Thanks for having me.
Collin 57:48
How are you providing a touch of that know, like and trust factor with your potential clients and your onboarding clients? At what stage of the process? Do they build that with you and for your business and Company? Are you equipping your team to provide that as well? Do they have the tools, resources, knowledge and experience to provide that to those clients who are coming on board? A well thought out new client onboarding process will do so much for your business. It will build that trust, it will build that confidence in your clients will educate them about your business, and you will be fully aware of the client expectations on you and your business. We often think about the Petcare exclusively. We have to get our clients to that point. And so we set the expectations of what those visits will look like and what our business actually does. Through our onboarding process. We want to thank today's sponsor is time to pet and pet perennials for making today's show possible. And thank you so so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be back again soon.
