433: Pizza, Pets, and Planes with Lauri Partanio
Brought to you by:
❤️ Our AMAZING Patreon Supporters
Time to Pet
Visit: https://timetopet.com/confessional for 50% off first 3 months
Pet Perennials
Visit: https://petperennials.com/pages/register-for-a-business-account
Code: 'PSC' when registering for a $2 off coupon on any purchases in the 1st 90 days
How can a pet care company make a profound impact on a community? In today's episode, Lauri Partanio, owner of Professional Pets Florida, highlights two innovative initiatives. First, "Pizza for Pets", collaborates with local eateries to feature at-risk shelter animals on pizza boxes and takeout bags. This effort alone has saved 39 animals from euthanasia. Additionally, Lauri introduces her "Flight Nanny" services, ensuring pets are transported safely to their new homes. By tuning into the needs of clients and partnering with local businesses, Lauri redefines community engagement through pet care.
Main topics:
Pizza for Pets
Logistics of making it work
Flight Nanny services
USDA Regulations
Main takeaway: No matter how you want to serve your community, do your research and create solid partnerships. You don’t have to go it alone!
About our guest:
In 2014, Lauri started her animal career as a veterinary receptionist. From there, she climbed the professional ladder & went onto become an exotics specialty veterinary assistant, companion animal veterinary assistant, companion animal veterinary technician, Animal Control & Welfare Officer, and finally, Manager of Professional Pets Florida.Her background of veterinary medicine and animal welfare have helped her mold Professional Pets Florida to reflect the core values that she believes every animal should be treated with: safety, dedication, patience, and compassion. They offer overnights, pop in visits, dog walking, commercial & private flight nanny services, and adventure hikes.She is the Founder of Pizza for Pets, a local Hillsborough County non-profit initiative helping shelter pets from the Pet Resource Center find their forever homes.Additionally, she is the Tampa Bay Regional Director for the Florida Pet Services Association, a 501c3 dedicated to elevating professional pet care through community & collaboration.Quarterly, she sits on the Veterinary Medical Advisory Board at Southern Technical College in Brandon, FL.
Links
https://www.professionalpets.net
https://www.facebook.com/ProfessionalPetsNet/
https://www.instagram.com/professionalpetsnet/
Previously on: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/329
USDA Certification Process: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare/apply/licensing-and-registration-application-packets
Flight Nanny Service: https://professionalpets.net/pet-flight-nanny/
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
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
pet, animals, services, clients, flyer, people, flight, dog, fly, shelter, offer, pizza, community, nanny, transport, moving, business, adopted, gift, usda
SPEAKERS
Collin, Lauri P.
Collin 00:02
Welcome to pet sitter confessional Today brought to you by time to pet and pet brailles. What would it mean for you to make an impact in your community? Far more than just offering our services to people, there are ways that we can make our communities more pet friendly. And we can do that in a multitude of ways. And sometimes that means thinking outside the box. Today, we are really excited to have Laurie potenial. Back on the show. She was previously on episode 329. And she joins us today to talk about two unique ways that she is serving her community and initiative she calls pizza for pets, and then we discuss her flight nanny services. Let's get started.
Lauri P. 00:46
My name is Laurie Parr Tatio I am the owner of professional pets, Florida. We're a full service pet care company. So we offer services in the client's home such as overnights poppin, visits, dog walking, but we also offer services outside of the client's home being adventure hikes as well as flight nanny transport services.
Collin 01:09
And I want a spoiler alert later in the show, we're gonna get to the flight nanny services. But I do want to just touch on that you mentioned that you're a full service, pet care company with all that you offer? That, to me that's a little bit intimidating to think of offering all of those breadth of services. So how do you how do you as kind of owner, founder and chief organizer of everything, kind of wrap your hands around that and keep everything organized and kind of on brand with professional pets.
Lauri P. 01:38
So I think that having our brand image and our logo and our president presence in the community, it's kind of been this higher tier level of service. So people expect a higher a higher production from us just because of the branding and the marketing and things that we've been doing. So you know, we're not going to offer every single service under the sun. But we do like to say that we are a full service, because we do offer all of the options that a client would need for services that are in their home. We don't do any forwarding or stuff at our home. But we do do everything that they would need to leave their pets to go on vacation to have extended time at work, stuff like that.
Collin 02:28
Yeah, that through line of in home care, right? What are some ancillary what some auxiliary things that kind of wrap around that one? One purpose and, and that way they can all do fit together?
Lauri P. 02:41
Right, exactly. And I think that our clients kind of like that we have a different diversified portfolio of offering those different in home services, as well as some of the out house stuff, kind of like our adventure hikes and stuff like that,
Collin 02:57
with a diversified portfolio like that, how do you communicate that to clients to make sure that they understand what the right fit is for their particular needs.
Lauri P. 03:08
So we have our main three services, which are our overnights, our poppin visits and our dog walking but I also don't want it to be lost in translation to clients and lost in branding marketing that we do offer these other higher priced services as well like the flight stuff and the hikes. But you know, if we are doing we're onboarding a new client, and you know, myself or my assistant manager is, we're talking to them, and they're like, you know, our, our dog is just so high energy, I don't know that, you know, a half an hour walk would be would be best for him. But we live in Florida, so it's super hot all the time. And there are days where we can't walk a dog for 30 minutes, or the dog doesn't want to walk for 30 minutes, but it needs that mental stimulation and enrichment, we can go to the client and say, hey, you know, in your particular case, a hike might be better for your dog because of XY and Z and we're kind of able to shape our services for that specific client around their needs.
Collin 04:08
Yeah, that starts with just listening right listening to those key words to go okay, I might not we do this. It sounds like we do this to people they make contact us thinking we do daycare or thinking we do boarding listening to what they're saying, Okay, well, I don't offer those exact words, but I offer something that may get it the feeling or or get back to the problem that your what you're talking to me about.
Lauri P. 04:32
Absolutely. So that's that's what we do as well. You know, I've had a ton of clients that have came to us and they're like, you know, I want Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you didn't do boarding and I'm like, alright, well, we don't do boarding but let me let me tell you about our overnights and why it might be beneficial to you and I've turned boarding clients into you know, visit clients or overnights clients. Just the same and you know, they're like, Oh, I didn't even know this existed or I didn't really I would be so comfortable with this service. So definitely asking all of the right questions and really getting to know the client and their their dog and their needs. Even initially, before that first meeting is super important.
Collin 05:13
I'm part of your presence in your community is not just offering these this full service, pet care to people in their homes, but you also have been making a big impact on your community kind of at large. And you came up with this idea for something called pizza for pets. And I would love for you to dive into this and kind of explain where this idea came from, and kind of what its mission is.
Lauri P. 05:38
Yeah, so I have a background in veterinary medicine as well as animal welfare. So I am a certified animal control officer, and veterinary technician. Once I left animal control, I kind of left the world of animal welfare behind. So in my business, we do take care of a lot of medically needy, special needs animals. So I still kind of get the veterinary medicine aspects in my business, but I don't really get the animal welfare end of it. So I was searching for something that I could do to give back to the community that's still animal welfare related. And myself, all of my girls, everybody is, you know, we're a big rescue group, big rescue state. So we wanted to do something to help the animals at our counties local killed shelter. So we started pizza for pets, which is a local nonprofit initiative that uses marketing to help long stay kennels stressed or high risk for euthanasia animals at home, just by exposing them to the public. So you can think of a kid on a milk carton, that's kind of the idea. It's just pet on a pizza box. So we take a flier of the dog or cat that needs to be adopted, how long that they've been there before. And the restaurant patrons can take that flyer and they can go down to the shelter and get a free adoption on their new best friend. So we've been super successful. We launched in February of 2023, officially, and we've already gotten 39 Animals adopted so far that were like Death Row dogs and cats. So yeah, and awesome.
Collin 07:25
Sounded like that really filled a void that you had just in your life coming from your previous background.
Lauri P. 07:34
Yeah, it definitely that was the space that I needed to fill. And still being involved with my community as well as helping animals. We partner with local restaurants to put the flyers on the pizza boxes. And quickly, we ran out of pizza places to put flyers on. So we started moving over to different campaigns under pizza for pets. So now we have plans for pets, which is with two vegan restaurants. We have heights for pets, which is a bar, we have protein for pets, which is a smoothie shop. And we have pasta for pets, which is an Italian restaurant. So we have tons of little different variations, but same concepts, flyer on a takeout bag, a pizza box or in a checkbook to get the animals exposure that
Collin 08:26
they need. Wow. So you know, that's, that's a lot of different branches. Then from that, from that original original concept. How did you first approach that first pizza shop to ask if you could do this?
Lauri P. 08:42
So I had initially sent out like, I mean, had to be 75 emails to local pizza places. And I was just like, hey, I have this crazy idea. Do you think that you would be interested in putting a piece of a flyer on your pizza box? To help it you know, do you like animals if you like animals, I like animals that want to do this thing. And out of like 75 emails, one pizza place got back to me. And they said yes. So that was pizza villa in Riverview, Florida. And once pizza villa was on board. I was contacted by ABC Action News, and they wanted to do a story on it. So we did an interview, we did a story and after that the kind of snowball just happened because people started learning about it. They started hearing about it and they're like, Oh, this is not just some girl that wants to stick some stuff on our pizza boxes like this is an actual project. So we were able to get more restaurants by building credibility and I've met so many amazing business owners, small business owners because all of our partnerships are not with they're not with like franchises. They're not with corporate there's no like Pizza Hut or anything like that. It's just all local small businesses, so we're able to support them, get them more business, we've been featured on the news a bunch of times, you know, get them more exposure and help some animals all at the same time.
Collin 10:12
Why was that important for you to stay with local businesses in that in that respect?
Lauri P. 10:17
Because I'm a local, small business. You know, obviously, franchise owners and corporate they need support to just I figured that I like cultivating relationships with people that have a similar path. And similar drive that I do. So I thought that going for the small business owners first would be would be the right move.
Collin 10:45
And so when you are when you're when you're approaching businesses with this, what in what way? Or did you also talk with the shelter? As well, you know, kind of what was your pitch to them when you brought up this idea?
Lauri P. 10:59
So it was, it was rather easy with the shelter just because of my because I used to work there. So I already had that relationship. My old Corporal at Animal Control is now the shelter manager. So it was just a quick phone call. And I said, Hey, I have this crazy idea. Is there anything that I can do to help to move these animals because you know, they're happy, healthy animals being euthanized every day, like, what can we do? And I have this idea. And she was on board. And she's like, Absolutely, like, let's, let's do it, let's run it. So every week, she sends me a PDF of the at risk dogs and cats that are on the list. And I go in there, and I make all the flyers and print them and all that good stuff. And that's it. But I would say, if anybody else was considering doing something like this, that especially County County resources, so you know, not your Humane Society or your ASPCA, but your your county facilities, they need the help the most, because they cannot turn away any animals, they have to take everything that whether it's you know, sick, whether it's aggressive, they legally can't turn anybody away. So they need the help the most moving animals. So I would say that more times than not they would be willing to accept except to help in this kind of capacity.
Collin 12:25
Yeah, there, you still have to present probably a coherent idea or concept of what you're wanting, right. But they're looking for that help. I know, we, we've approached ours with, you know, helping on kind of the back end, trying to have more support, once somebody gets that pet offering those discounted services and such. And so they have a bunch of our fliers on their on their adoption packet and kind of so that helps them because they can provide this really big value, because they that goes to a lot of different places to collect these. And so that's one way where you may approach and go, Hey, if I offer discount services to you, because I know pets, you know, adoption is one thing, but living with a pet is a lifetime commitment. So how can we help each other? On the front end going? Yeah, can I help you get more exposure with these pets, especially the at risk pet? So then I think, you know, is that was that an intentional one that you wanted to focus on? Or do you have a soft spot for those kinds of pets or you just saw that that was that's where the most need was?
Lauri P. 13:22
It was I think that it all kind of comes full circle because my my area of passion lies with this seniors Special Needs medically needy animals. And when I worked for the county, that's what I saw a lot of that wasn't getting adopted that was getting euthanized just because of their age. They were you know, otherwise healthy. They were just, they were old and most people don't go to the shelter to adopt a 10 year old dog. So it was breaking my heart that you know, these these dogs were just, you know, getting euthanized just because of their age, or maybe they had some medical stuff. So there was actually a dog that I got way, way way too attached to whose name was turquoise. And it's funny because my one of my brand colors is turquoise. So it was like made a match made in heaven. And she was 10 years old and she had cancer. But she was just she was the absolute best dog. I mean, I would sit there every day on my lunch break in uniform badge belts, everything I would sit on the floor came with her and just like love on her and she had skin stuff and like nobody wanted to pet her because she was like flaky and crusty. And I just absolutely fell in love with this dog. If I didn't have a dog aggressive dog. I would just take care of her home. And she was on deadline. And I just I did everything I possibly could to get this dog adopted. I mean, I asked everybody that I knew I talked to our clients. I just had somebody who just needed to like take a chance on her and And I had posted about her on Facebook. And the post of her that I that I posted went viral, because I had arranged for a photo shoot with her to get like nice, like professional photos of her and I. And those those, those photos went viral and she wound up getting rescued. So I was like, I can do this, I can do it again. For other dogs, I just got, I just gotta get her I gotta get these dogs in front of people. And the way to do that is by by bringing the dogs to them, not waiting for the people to come to the shelter. So when we have our pizza, pets, we put them on the flyers, but we also put them on Facebook. So people share them, even if they don't go to the restaurant, they can still see them and stuff like that. So same concept, all about marketing, just getting the pets in front of the people.
Collin 15:55
Have you heard of time to pet krisanne from raining cats and dogs has this to say
16:00
becoming a time to pet clients has been a game changer for us. We can give our pet services clients real time cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing. Time to pet is responsive to my requests for new features and modifications to existing one. If you're
Collin 16:25
looking for new pet setting software, do you have time to pet a try? Listeners of our show can save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confession. It will with so many moving parts here. You know you're working with the shelter. You're also working with these various restaurants. What does that process look like? And you kind of mentioned that once a week, the shelter sends you that list of high risks, you know, once you have that, that list, how does it then make it on top of pizza boxes or on top of the other smoothie places and such.
Lauri P. 17:00
So it's a it's a, a one woman machine. So we get the flyers, I got the excuse me, I got the the list from the shelter manager my email, I take their animal ID numbers, I go on their website, I take the picture that's on the website, I take their information, I go into Canva I slap it on the flyer I changed the restaurant. And so then I send the fliers for printing, I have to go pick them up for printing and then I bring them to the restaurants for whichever restaurant rotation that animal is a part of. We have 10 different restaurants that we work with. So it's a lot of driving. It's a lot of printing. But we recently have had some small business sponsorships that have sponsored some of the flyers to help offset the cost. So we'll put the small businesses logo as like a thank you on the flyers for helping adoptable pets as well. And yeah, so that helps offset costs. But for right now it's just get the list, make the flyer, print the list, print the flyer and then deliver them to the local restaurants.
Collin 18:16
And so does the flyer circulate for a set period of time? Or is it just on that weekly basis of what it when it runs?
Lauri P. 18:24
We give them 1000 flyers? So yeah, so it runs, they run until they run out of flyers. And then once the restaurant is out of fires, and they contact me and they say, Hey, we need more. We need more pets. We need more fliers. So our fliers even if a pet that's on the flyer gets adopted, they can still bring that flyer to the shelter and get a free adoption on a different pet. Oh, wow.
Collin 18:51
Okay, well, that's that way. That way, it still gives another another pet a chance because of somebody else too. So that's nice,
Lauri P. 18:58
right? Yeah, exactly. So it's a lot. It's a lot of fliers. It's a lot of chances. But otherwise, you know, when I spoke to the shelter manager, initially, I said, you know, we're trying to, to bring awareness to a black pen bowl and a sea of 200 black pitbulls, like how do you how do you showcase these dogs that you know, they might be very similar? Yeah, so this is this is the best way you know, because they're they're physically seeing a picture of the animal. They're seeing how long they've been in shelter. People don't realize that. Sometimes they're there for two years. There's a dog right now that we're trying to get adopted. She was in the shelter for two years. She's only three years old. So the better part of her life she's been in the shelter and she's an amazing dog. She's very sweet. She's just she has to be the only pet and in the household. So most people have animals. So it's it's been difficult really difficult to get get her on Home, but we've been trying for a while, and she's been on every rotation so far. So, you know, we just do what we can I think,
Collin 20:09
what kind of information do you have included on that on that flyer? Is it? Is it a complete replica of what's on the website for that? Or do you kind of curtail that information for each one.
Lauri P. 20:19
So it is a photo of the pet, it's how long they've been there number of days. The phone number for foster pets, which is the shelters information line, it has the address of the shelter, it has a QR code on it so that they can scan it and it'll bring it them directly to the shelter's website where it has all of like the notes of gets along well with others like children, like you know, women like men did well in playgroup today. So they can see all of those notes, and it has the logo of the pizza place or restaurant on the bottom so that when they go to the shelter, we know where it came from.
Collin 21:02
Yeah. And with that, that that code, right, getting taken right to that that pets particular site is really powerful, because then you don't have to have that flyer crammed with all sorts of information, but
Lauri P. 21:12
the information on it? Yeah, absolutely.
Collin 21:15
Do you do you have your staff involved in any other aspect of this? Or is it is it really all you taking this and organizing everything,
Lauri P. 21:23
the staff are busy doing other stuff. So it's mostly just myself doing the pizza for pets thing. It's not a ton that I need help with. It's just, it's just a little time consuming, just getting everything together, picking up flyers, dropping off flyers, coordinating, and such like that. But it's, it's been a labor of love. But it's been really rewarding to be able to see those animals that are have been there for hundreds of days, I know we just had a couple of months ago, we had Sebastian, who was a big old hound dog. He was 12 years old. And nobody wanted him because he was 12 years old. And he was very sweet got along with everybody. And we had put him on a plants for pets rotation at Vine, vegan and brand in Florida. And after 680 days, he was finally adopted by somebody with the flyer. So it was awesome.
Collin 22:28
Yeah, and it's about that, you know, he said, it's a labor of love, right. And sometimes we find those things that we can't, we just can't let go. Because we need to do this, we find those things we have those passions of this is what we can dedicate our time to this is where we can set that time aside. And like you said, doesn't take an incredible amount of time. But it does take time. And that's just carving that out through our throughout our days is part of that priority list that we have? Absolutely. Well, if someone else was interested in doing this kind of thing, or are helping out their local county shelter in some way, what what advice would you give them from from your past experiences,
Lauri P. 23:08
I would just say that most of the staff and officials at these county facilities, they they are more times than not willing to accept the help because they need as a as a county facility, they need to be able to show the government that they have been they have exhausted every single option to get these animals out of the shelter without putting them down. So if you are able to be another avenue, whether it's pizza for pets, whether it's you know, maybe doing volunteering at like an adoption event, any kind of assistance, they're more receptive to that, because they have to show that they are able to exhaust every avenue possible. So just trying to approach them and ask them, you know, specifically, if you can help in a certain way, rather than just like, hey, I'm here to help if you need me. But you know, coming to them with a plan, saying like, this is how I believe that this program can help you and help the animals, then I think that you have a lot better chances of them saying yes,
Collin 24:19
yeah, I think that having a specific and clear plan really is beneficial because again, they're doing a lot of things. They've got a lot on their plate. They're running all over the Yeah, running all over the place. And so showing up and going, Yeah, whatever you need, right that that's fine record date, but having that plan is really going to help them kind of see exactly how you're going to fit in and kind of what the future of this looks like with their partnership.
Lauri P. 24:46
Right? Absolutely. And I think that they'll there'll be a lot more receptive that way because just like you know, initially when I sent out the email for pizza for pets, I can definitely say that my email was not very clear and can So I just with a with a straight plan of action, I was kind of just like, I have this idea in my brain, like, let me know if you'd be down for it. And so I think that maybe if I went in with like a clear plan and method of attack that I would have initially gotten more places on board. But all in all, I'm happy with where we're at.
Collin 25:21
So what do you think of the future of this is, as you look at kind of the partnerships that you've built, the number of pets that you've rescued, where are you seeing in the next three, five years,
Lauri P. 25:31
I would ideally like to kind of get, get a hold on the pets in our county shelter and try to you know, continue to find all of them homes, bring on more restaurants that are interested and you know, that love animals just as much as we do and are interested in helping and kind of once we get a hold on the shelter, population and euthanasia rates here, and then maybe we can move forward to other county facilities that need help and do it like that. It's up for grabs is not copyrighted, and it's not proprietary. I mean, anybody can do it anywhere. So I would be happy to help anybody kind of get started and help in their own county, whether it's in Florida or somewhere else and help get some pets adopted. It's a proven concept, as I've seen, so it's been great.
Collin 26:26
Well, shifting gears here a little bit, I guess a lot are shifting propellers. I don't know how to make that transition. Speaking of unique services and things, you will also offer private airplane trip pet transportation. And this is fascinating to me. How do you do this?
Lauri P. 26:46
So I had initially heard about flight nanny transport through the grapevine a couple of years ago, and I kind of just thought it was a ridiculous service. I'm like, Who would ever need that? Who even ever need a nanny for their pet? Why wouldn't they just fly with their own animal? And the more that I dove into it, I realized what kind of niche that it was, and what kind of space and what kind of clients needed this, this kind of transport for their animals. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts to it. And there's a lot of moving cogs, because not everybody can fly with their animal. And it's taken me a while to kind of figure out which clients can do what and the ones that can't, for whatever reason. So again, offering that higher level of care. There are a lot of companies that offer flight nanny services, but they are commercial flights. So they are spirit, they're Delta, they're JetBlue. And they are, you know, under the seat in front of you kind of thing. There's still a market, that people do that all the time. But I wanted to kind of kick it up a notch and take it to the next level and offer semi private and private flights
Collin 28:12
for our clients. And when you talk about clients, what kind of clientele is this service, a good fit for kind of how do they how do they fit in that?
Lauri P. 28:23
So I think that it's it's less of, you know, we, in the pet world, we all have our, you know, our ideal client that we market to. But I think that in this space, specifically, it's more of the ideal pet, rather than the ideal client, we still have to think about the client, but it's more about the animal and their situation. So what I had initially believed was that all of my clients for the services are going to be breeders. That was initially my thought was that they were going to purchase puppies or kittens from an out of state breeder and they want them delivered to them, but they don't want to have to get on a plane and go themselves and all of that, but it actually has been I would say a good 95% of our flight clients have been people that are either moving across state or are re homing their pets to somebody out of state.
Collin 29:23
Interesting, huh? Yeah. Yeah, so
Lauri P. 29:27
we've but there are so many restrictions with flying animals. And normally most of our most of our clientele is people with larger animals because you can't just fly with your golden doodle on Delta. It doesn't work like that. So normally if an animal is any bigger than 20 pounds and can't fit in the in a carry on underneath the seat in front of you, they can't fly, or they can fly but they have to fly a private charter right? A jet which is anywheres upwards of 25 grand. So, I figured that there had to be some kind of work around, there had to be some kind of middle ground between delta and absolutely not. And then absolutely not private jet can't afford that. So I found the space. That's, that's the in between space. And that in between space is where I stayed and where I enjoy and has been the most profitable for me.
Collin 30:30
So did you already have a connection with a private pilot? Or did you take this to a local flight school or something like that to ask questions? Okay, once you go, Okay, I'm going to fly pilots and airplanes like, Who do you go talk to for that.
Lauri P. 30:48
So I had initially done the research and found, so there are a lot of semi private charters out there. So they are open to the public, but they're smaller plans. So they're about 30 seat jets, and you pay a premium for them, but you're not paying $25,000 for them, and anybody can fly on them. But that is our delta doodle clients, they can fly on this semi private line, and they fly out of, it's the only one that flies out of Florida, and they fly out of Orlando and Miami. So if somebody wants a semi private flight, we'll fly out of there. So I just recently had a photo shoot like a branding photo shoot with a photographer up in Brooksville, which is about two hours north of me, and me, and the pilot just really hit it off about his plane. And, you know, we got we got along really well. And I'm, personally I'm very good at making connections with people and networking in my own area. And the pilot had mentioned that he is the hobbyist pilot, but he has he flies for FWC every winter, he flies sea turtles to Key West. And that's like a thing that he just like enjoys doing. And I was like, Oh, my God, you must love animals meet you. And we just got to talking and I was able to contract private flights with him. So we're able to take large dogs and a completely private plane. So it's not a it's not a private jet, but it is a private plane. And we're able to take larger dogs or larger animals on the completely private plane, as well. So I was able to kind of make that partnership, and you know, get him some extra money and be able to offer this service to our clients.
Collin 32:45
Wow. So does he does he have to if somebody's just think about like replicating this? I know there's a lot of moving pieces. And I don't know how many of us have access to somebody who flies sea turtles in the offseason. So like that may be a little difficult for the rest of us. But like, is that when you're flying? It's a did. Did you have to talk about regulations earlier? So that's another question I had, as far as getting into this is what kind of regulations are around this aspect of flying pets across state lines, especially if for for sale or resale or things?
Lauri P. 33:17
Right, so if it was a, like a breeder situation, I would fly commercial flight, you know, the delta, if it was a larger animal, I would definitely fly the private with this pilot. But each state is different. Each airport is different. Wherever you go, all of the rules are different. So I think that's kind of part of being you know, the professional in that space is being able to do the research on USDA requirements. And, you know, vaccination requirements, health certificate requirements, everybody everywhere is different. So the last thing that you want to do is be stuck in a space or it's stuck in another state with an animal that you can't do anything with because you don't have the proper documentation because you didn't do your research. We are USDA certified class T carriers to transport animals via ground and via air. We don't do any ground transport. I just enjoy flying. So we chose to just push into the flight space, but we can do both. So anybody that's thinking about doing any kind of transport, that's definitely the first place to start is with the USDA.
Collin 34:32
So yeah. Is that is that held by the pilot? Or is that held by professional pets? Or where does that certification? Yeah,
Lauri P. 34:39
that's how that's how with professional pets. The sea turtles thing is a little bit different. I don't know all of their requirements, I would assume that he has to be certified by FWC to be able to transport those animals because you can't take reptiles on commercial flights. So again, there's the, you know, somebody would think that okay, I can put my turtle in this little carry on and put it underneath the seat in front of me, it doesn't work like that. So but you could you could fly it, you could fly on a private flight. So it's a lot of research, it's a lot of reading and it's a lot of a lot of networking and asking the right questions and making connections that has has really been beneficial in my business. And we've we've done every single flight that we've done has gone off without a hitch, knock on wood, and, and been a really lucrative and really enjoyable service to offer. I mean, obviously, it's not as busy as our, you know, our Poppins and our job walks, but when we do get them, it's it's a lot of fun. And I am afforded the luxury to travel for free, which is nice. So you know, we just had a transport where we brought two cats to Arizona from Florida and my layover was like three hours. So I jumped, ran to the Grand Canyon, got to do that and flew back the same day. So the nice.
Collin 36:11
What do you do when a client's pet passes away? Our friends of pet perennials make it easy to send a heartfelt condolence gift directly to someone with a broken heart. They have this awesome direct to consumer gift model that takes the effort off of us and ensures a thoughtful personalized employee gift reaches your client or employee on your behalf. Just last night, we had a client contact us that they had to put their pants down. Within a few minutes we had a fully customized order with a handwritten card ordered and sent off to them, and will be there in a few days. All gift packages include a handwritten card, colorful paragraph, and shipping fees across the US and Canada. They also offer an array of milestone gifts, and greeting cards that can be sent to celebrate birthdays, extend, get well wishes and welcome new and rescued pets. Additionally, there are gift choices in case you need to send a sympathy gift in memory of a special human client, or celebrate a pregnancy engagement or wedding of a pet lover. If you're interested register for a free business gift perks accounted to unlock the all inclusive discounted package prices. Since the service is used on an as needed basis, there are no monthly or annual obligations or minimum purchases, Learn more at Pet perennials.com Check out their business programs or register for that free gift perks account by using the link in the show notes. I know the regulations and stuff are all different. I did want to just pick your brain on the USDA a little bit more. What are what exactly are Can you can you Is there a general way to summarize like what they're looking for what they want to see from somebody during that certification process.
Lauri P. 37:44
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of reading material that you have to do on like the Animal Welfare Act. So you have to, yeah, you have to read all of their material, you have to apply for the certification. And because they want to make sure that the person transporting the animals is aware that, especially with ground flights is a little bit different. But you know, if you're transporting an animal via ground, you're not transporting them in the back of your Toyota Corolla, you know, you have a, you know, temporary temperature regulated bans, and you're treating the animals fairly. So you just have to apply on the website, to your education, do your research, and that was very helpful as well, you know, in terms of what they're looking for, not that I would ever treat an animal unethically, but you know, they have certain things that they look for. That's, that was was really, especially as being the first step to having no knowledge in any of this space. That was really helpful. So definitely start with USAA get all your information and make sure that you're protected because your petsitting insurance might not cover you in the sky.
Collin 39:01
Yeah, yeah. So that's a conversation that it gets back to that we sometimes have these grand things in our business where we go, man, wouldn't it be great if I could, one of those first phone calls you need to make as to, to the, to the regulatory and the legal side of things and going, Hey, I want to do this. And if the other person faints on the other end of the phone, you know, probably shouldn't go.
Lauri P. 39:22
Right. So that was our second step was you know, getting with legal and getting with our insurance and making sure that everything you know was was up to date. And if we had to purchase additional things on our policy or take out a separate policy, then that was what was done before we even remotely started marketing our flight services.
Collin 39:44
So let's talk about the marketing aspect of this. You've already mentioned how you have this, this higher production value that people expect from professional pets and there's this level of quality so So when you start talking about plane transportation, like how do you talk to people about that and let them know
Lauri P. 40:08
that it's available. So luckily, most of our marketing for our flight services is people that have absolutely no idea what it is. And whenever we post stuff about it, they're just like, plain fly dog, cat. Why? And that's most of it. So people don't even realize that it's a service that they may need. We've had a huge response from our military community, for families that PCs, and you know, they have to send their animal first, or they have to send their animal later on. So you know, their people had no idea about it, we have a huge military presence in our area. And they're like, oh, like, I know, John, John is stationed at MacDill. And like, he has to leave like, I wonder what he's going to do with Fido. And then you know, it kind of just, it's a conversation starter, because now clients are more educated, because we've educated them with our marketing.
Collin 41:18
Yeah, and finding those different connection points, right, where those nice where that for that client is where the progress not really where the client is, but where the problem is. And as soon as you said military, like it was like, oh, obviously, obviously, people like they need that that's such a huge need for them. But it's hard to get kind of connected with that or so sitting down and thinking in my area, what do I have access to? Where are the problems going to be, and really kind of start putting some language around it from there.
Lauri P. 41:49
And I think that we talked about it during the last episode, but building those connections within your community. My biggest one of my biggest referral sources for those military clients, has been a realtor in my area that specializes in military moves. So normally, when a client moves here has a change of station, and they're here. She's their realtor. And then when they leave again, she is also their realtor. So it's kind of just like a revolving door of hey, you just got here, when you leave. Let me tell you about professional pets, Florida and what they offer.
Collin 42:26
Hmm, yeah, yeah, really getting them connected to those to those resources. Right. And just being a community asset, do you find you get a lot of local inquiries? Or do you get out of state people contacting you to bring their state their pets from Florida to them?
Lauri P. 42:42
So it's, in the beginning, it was a very heavy, dense population of out of state people, because they just punch in Google like flight nanny near me. And, you know, that's, that's we just happened to come up. So our initial response when we launched was a lot of out of state, but because I did so much local marketing, for the flight services, I have people in my town that need services, and it's just like, I don't live in, you know, I don't live directly in a military town, like I don't, you know, so I never expected people in my area to like, really need it, I was I was going for going for everywhere else. But it's actually more affordable, because there are already in the state of departure. Like, I don't have to go somewhere and get the pet and then go somewhere else. I'm, we're all already here. So it's actually more affordable for them. And it's easier for us. So our local market has actually been quite fruitful as well.
Collin 43:51
Yeah. Cuz if once the number of stops that you have to make before you get to the pet, all of a sudden, that price goes through the roof. So really trying to sounds like sounds like you're going to, even if people contacted me out of state to pick up a pet to then take two thirds, like, that might not even be something you'd be interested in. It sounds like
Lauri P. 44:10
it, I mean, if they're willing to pay you know, when, when people get that very, very high quote, you know, I have to tell them that, you know, normally it would not be this expensive, but now we're adding on a completely separate leg of the trip just to get me from there to there, and then I gotta get back home. So, you know, I'm able to if it's a private, semi private situation, I'm um, we're on that 30 seat jet. I'm allowed to take the animal to where it's going and not a round trip. I can fly back commercial because I don't need a private jet. So um, you know, I'm able to cut costs that way as well. So it really just depends on where it what the start and end point is. And, but yeah, definitely our local market. It's like mind blowing that, like people and like my little talent are just like, I'm relocating to Wisconsin, and a lot of I've had a lot of inquiries. For people that just don't know what to do. They're like, Hey, I have to move. But how do I get my dog to California, and a lot of it has been education on this is this is fight nanny services, this is what's offered, the alternative is ground, the alternative is cargo. So you know, and I'm able to educate people so that they can make an informed decision, whether it's with me or with somebody else, you know, they're able to have all of their ducks in a row to pick one.
Collin 45:44
So what walk us through that onboarding process, right, somebody contacts you, they're little curious, kind of what steps do they go through? At what point? Do you work up that quote for them? And kind of how do you have a conversation?
Lauri P. 45:56
So, again, back to the basics, I mean, it's all about communicating with them, you know, you can pretty much read an email or get a phone call from somebody that's like, Hey, I'm moving, and I have absolutely zero idea what to do. And, you know, I can tell it's gonna be more of like, an educational component to it, and I'm just kind of, you know, preventing them with all the things, I always give them a ballpark, I'm like, you know, hey, you're gonna spend between this and this, if you go semi private, you're gonna spend this in this, if you go full private cargo, this, you know, ground this, so that they can, you know, make that kind of mental connection between the services and the pricing. And then if that sounds okay, to them, I say, okay, like, you know, do you have specific dates, there are people that have a deadline where their animal has to be there, if it's a flexible date, I'm able to get them the lowest quote possible, because our quote is our time per hour costs, plus the flight costs and any other associated fees. So if I'm able to fly on a day where flight tickets are cheaper, then I'm able to get them a cheaper quote, if they say, you know, I have to fly out, I have to have the pet flown on this day and this time, then, you know, I'll work up a quote for them based on that number. And it's not super time consuming. It's just getting everything together presenting, I usually present them with like two or three options. And if they want to move forward, then I actually onboard them into time to pet. And we do the whole service just as we would every other service reports, updates, GPS, track time track,
Collin 47:32
all that good stuff. How is it delivering those multi $1,000 quotes to potential clients, whenever they ask for that?
Lauri P. 47:42
It's kind of just like a, like a shark breath. And like hope and holding on, it's just like, okay, like, I hope they go for it. No, but it's just most, most people that are already familiar with these services, they know that they're gonna have to pay for it. Otherwise, they would put their dog in a crate in the bottom of the plane and hope for the best. So normally, I try to, to mitigate the blow a little bit by by providing them that range at the beginning of the conversation saying like, hey, you know, this is what this cost, this is what this costs between, but of course, everything varies with, you know, flight costs, time of year season, airline, all that stuff. So, once I deliver the blow, it's just like, okay, like, they go for it, they go for it, if not, you know, that's it, and it's not so much a do or die because that's not the only service that we provide. That's not the only stream of revenue that we have, I would rather do more higher tier luxury high ticket high dollar items than a bunch of spiritual lights. So that that's that's kind of where like, my
Collin 48:56
brain is out on that. Well, it makes it more worth your time as well. Right? And for something especially when you're talking about that True Private flight like even I know so many private flights were there the smaller smaller ones with limited seating but still kind of public like those are costly. I know private flights when you're in that world. It's like yeah, this is like these are just extremely costly and it's your time as well it's time away from your home your friends running your business doing all this other stuff like that's time that you may go oh, I'm just traveling it's kind of nice and and I know just the kind of person I am I go oh, I'll just I'll just give that time away. That's fine. Like I'll just it's not a big deal.
Lauri P. 49:36
So to put it to put it into perspective, are the private plane that I fly with the pilot, it is $100 per gallon per hour. And the usually takes about nine gallons per hour that they fly so it's about $900 an hour just for the gas alone. So it If you're going from it, that might not be super expensive if you're going from Key West to Orlando, but it might be very expensive if you're going from Florida to California, and it's a seven hour flight. So it gets it gets very expensive very quickly. But that's the price that you have to pay for private luxury for your animals.
Collin 50:23
Right? Well, it's like, that's it. That's it. That's it. I was gonna say that's a fixed cost. But we all know what happens to fuel prices all the time and crazy stuff. But But like, that's when you talk about cost of services, cost of goods sold or whatever, like, that's, that's baked, you've got to bake that into it. Because otherwise, you are be pulling, there's no way you can be profitable on that unless you at least have that covered. And then your time and pilots time. And however you negotiate that with the pilot, like is that? Do you have that conversation with the pilot as far as compensating him for his time? And how he and what he's dedicating to this?
Lauri P. 50:57
Yeah, so we we pay him 100% of the fuel costs, and we pay him an hourly rate for Fly, fly hours. Okay. And then, so my hourly rate that I charge the clients, has his rate factored into that already.
Collin 51:14
Okay, so that's that, that just labor cost at that point of going? This is how much it's gonna cost to have humans do this for you?
Lauri P. 51:23
Right, right. So the the human cost is for my time, and for the pilots time, if we have to have another nanny, so one of my staff, it would be additional for my staff as well for their time.
Collin 51:38
Right? Well, yeah. Cuz then you start getting into overtime pretty quick, I'm sure and all sorts of other other concerns and issues with that. Yeah,
Lauri P. 51:47
so that is definitely it's like I said, it's definitely a high dollar, but it's high reward. And there's nothing like flying a corgi halfway across the country and a two seat plane. So sorry, cool.
Collin 52:03
Definitely, definitely unique experience. That's cool. So, again, if somebody's interested, they're going okay, well, I've heard a flight nanny. Where would you? Where would you suggest people start with with this kind of service.
Lauri P. 52:17
So I definitely think that doing research and not just absolutely jumping into this with no parachute, no pun intended. The right is the right move, because you do not want to mess with the USDA, just like you don't want to mess with the IRS. And you do not want to be stuck somewhere with some animal that you have no idea how to get home, or how to get them home. So I think that having all of your information before you even consider adding this to your list of services, is the 100%. Correct? Right step
Collin 52:59
here here to doing research and fully understanding, right? Because yeah, it's, it can get pretty hairy, pretty quick. I'm so thankful for your time in walking us through these two really unique offerings that you are providing to your community and statewide as well, when you look to raise that bar and set that high expectation that potential clients in your community look to your business and you to provide. But I know that you do an awful lot. And we didn't get to really dive into 100% of everything that we you know, our big topics today. So if people are interested in getting connected with you and kind of looking and following along with all that you do how best can they do that?
Lauri P. 53:42
I'm on Facebook, it's Laurie parcheggio. On Facebook, my business is on Facebook, professional pets. Net, if you guys are interested in seeing any of my branding and marketing that I do for the flight stuff. Facebook is pizza for pets, if you guys are interested in anything for your local shelters that you want to steal some ideas from Feel free. And I'm always open for questions. If anybody wants to chat. You can get me on my website as well.
Collin 54:11
Cool. Well, I'll have those links there to previous episode and to some USDA links to so people don't even have to worry about Googling and just go straight there from the show. Notes to get started. Lori thank you so much. I really appreciate this and it's really cool to see all that you've
Lauri P. 54:26
got going on. Next Colin happy to be here always
Collin 54:31
pizza and planes to pretty unique services that Laurie is able to offer her community to grow and expand the pet friendliness of her community by getting more pets adopted and exposed to the right people looking for the right pet and then offering flight nanny services. Something that while it's certainly costly for potential customers and clients may exactly fit what they are looking for. What kind of unique services do you offer? And how are you communicating those to your clients in your community. We'd love to hear from you and the some of the successes that you have had along the way, you can send that to feedback at petsitter confessional.com. We're everywhere on social media. Thank you so much for listening today. We can't tell you how much we appreciate it. We also want to thank today's sponsor is tied to pet and pet perennials, for making the show possible. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be back again soon.
