442: The Costs of Being a Business Owner
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What does it cost to be a business owner? While there are certainty financial obligations involved, there are many more demands on us than if we didn’t run our own company. When we can identify the costs, we can better prepare for them, set boundaries and policies to control them, or remove them from our plates entirely through delegation and hiring. We break down five major costs to understand in being a business owner, and how to overcome them.
Main topics:
Living our passion
Mental Burdens & Stress
Personal time
Obligations
What’s the point?
Main takeaway: At the end of the day, the benefits have to outweigh the costs, otherwise we’ll continuously battle burnout and compassion fatigue.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, clients, costs, set, pet sitters, business owner, dog, burden, employee, serve, people, confessional, sitter, associates, boundaries, running, taxes, remember, walking
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:00
Oh, hello and welcome to pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to our sponsor. Today, pet sitters Associates, and our Patreon members, it's kind of a funny word. But if you don't know what a Patreon member is, they support the podcast with a few dollars of their hard earned money every month. And they love the value and the content that US and other sitters worldwide produce. So thank you very much to our Patreon members. And if you would like to support the show, no matter what that looks like, financially, or just sharing with a friend or reviewing on Apple or Spotify, we thank you very much, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support, to learn about all of the ways you can help the podcast. Running a business is an amazing thing. We get to live our passion, and we get to serve others with excellence. It's kind of the best of both worlds in the pet sitting and dog walking industry. We love animals, and we love people as well. Because when we serve them, we serve the pets. We have the opportunity for more freedoms in our day and setting our own path in life. That's the beauty of being the business owner. But we need to be honest with ourselves running a business has its cost. It's not all roses and butterflies. It's not it's sometimes it's dog poop and cat throw up. If we don't account fully for all of these costs. We're going to constantly fight, overwhelm and compassion, fatigue and ultimately, burnout. And we're not going to want to do this anymore. That was the thing that we thought was our passion is no longer our passion. And we get out
Collin Funkhouser 01:26
because we do get into business because this is our passion. This is a deep burning thing where we find a thing that we that we get that that actually fits us and our lifestyle, the things that we want to do, and we're able to make a living doing it. But as you said, Megan, when we don't actually fully account for the cost, or understand what we're getting ourselves into these things bubble up, and we can never fully address them. And we may start to wonder, Oh, am I in the wrong place? Is this the wrong thing for me? Or what am I doing wrong? Or we run into issues where if you can have a little bit of planning, setting some good boundaries, you can actually help yourself overcome these before even actually, well, a lot of times you can avoid them entirely.
Meghan 02:05
We've definitely had those days have we walk into a situation in a client's home. And it is not what we expected whether it's dirtier than we saw at the meet and greet, or the dog is not as friendly as we thought it could be going through our taxes. That's not a fun time of year, or an employee that messes up. And we have to correct that, whether it's with the client or just with the employee, all of these things have costs in our business. Well,
Collin Funkhouser 02:28
those are the costs. Those are more some of the costs that we have in running our business where we go, this isn't what I signed up for, or we ask ourselves Is this what I signed up for? Is this what it means to be running my business. And we can find ourselves sometimes in conflict with ourselves of not enjoying things, and maybe that maybe because we don't fully understand them. So if we don't have a name for these things, if we haven't thought about them, we won't be able to put in those strong boundaries, we won't be able to put in those relevant policies to combat them at all.
Meghan 02:58
When we consider being a business owner. There are costs that we have to account for. One of those is financial. Obviously, when you think of costs, do you think of money, stepping into your own business comes with financial cost to you. This isn't a high overhead type of business unless you have employees, but it could be buying leashes, first aid kits, advertising, printing off flyers. And then yeah, if you have employees, you have payroll and taxes and all that fun stuff. Then there's the side of the business where it can really be unpredictable month to month. During the holidays. There are booms during the off seasons of for us January and February, they're kind of busts until Spring Break picks up in March. So there are these times where unless you have a strictly dog walking business where you can predict that money every month, or some sort of subscription service where you have packages that clients can purchase each month. So you have predictable income. There are things that we don't know, month to month, how many visits we're going to have. financial costs also include health insurance, and driving. This is a driving heavy business, going from client home to client home. And becoming
Collin Funkhouser 04:03
a business owner means that all those financial aspects lie on us. Now, if we're coming from a nine to five job, if we're coming from a typical part time job or a career that we used to have, there were a lot of benefits that were provided to us. And one of those big ones is health insurance, all of a sudden, we are the ones having to pay for that or, or a lot of us may try and go without that. And that causes mental burden that causes stress and worry on us where we are paying for something and it's way more costly and way more expensive than we initially thought. And this is driving costs. There's the wear and tear on our cars that this job is going to take on that financially. We're going to be paying for more tire rotations, more oil changes, all of those things that our cars need to do in order to do this job are now our responsibility. Now, yes in in a very real sense. If we set up our finances appropriately, we will have our personal side we will have our business side and many of the things We've discussed up until this point can be sucked up into the business side or at least allocate a percentage of that to the business so that the business is paying for those. But it's still something that we have to consider. We have to understand how we're going to be impacted by this and how we manage this that variation from month to month, that can actually be of major mental burden on a lot of people, if we're used to getting consistent 20 hours a week, 25 hours a week, or our full time nine to five job or whatever you were working before you came into this position. All of a sudden, now we're worried about how we're going to prepare for next month, it looks a little bit slower. How are we going to do that? What does that mean for what I do today, all of those things are now considerations that we have to account for.
Meghan 05:43
You mentioned mental burden and stress, that is another huge cost that we have in this business. Sometimes it's not as simple as walking in the door, lacing up the dog and getting out on the walk. Although that can be stressful to if you encounter a lot of other people or dogs on walks. But it's the pet sitting inside. If I have to take care of the home too, I have to remember the mail, the packages, the plants, the scooping the litter, all the little intricate things about a person's home and the layout, it's hard to remember it, it's mentally taxing to remember all of these things, there's so many things to do so many hats to wear. And it's not again, not just in the field. But when we go to do the taxes, when we go to the scheduled visits and the route plan and all the admin stuff, it is a lot there are deadlines, you have to hit for certain things, then you there's the marketing and the selling, that you actually do to make your money financially can be a massive burden, you want to get your name out there as much as possible. And even though we are a heavily word of mouth industry, there are times when you need to heavily advertise in your local community. And
Collin Funkhouser 06:39
that can be a burden for a lot of us who worry about how we're going to do that. How am I going to pitch my business? What am I going to say to the person who, who's on the phone with me? Or set up my my client funnel? How do I understand what it actually means to market all these things we have to remember, I mean, that's a huge one for me of every little tiny task that we have to do in business, the deadlines that we have to meet when those are a lot of things happen on a regularly reoccurring basis such that it's pretty easy to remember those of how we get into that flow. But some things happen. Just you know, irregular enough where we forget them. And now that's a burden. Did I remember that is that coming up, we stress about that, that takes up our brain space. So we're not available for other things. And that's not to say again, we're there aren't things that we can't do about this. Just real quick tip here. If you're worried about remembering things, every time you do something in your business that has a deadline, go to your calendar on your phone and set a reoccurring event for that day. As best you can, especially if it's if it's more irregular, this is a little bit harder. But you can generally predict when things need to be to buy, back it up by a couple of days, set a reminder. And then set two alerts. One that is one week before that day, and one that is two days before that day. Now you can forget about this thing entirely for the rest of the year. Because you know it's in your phone. And that alert is going to save you from a forgetting it and then be worrying about it. But the middle burden and the stress of being a business owner cannot be stressed enough, because this is very real. This is where a lot of us tend to fixate and worry and not be able to move on because of all the things that suddenly get put on our plate that weren't there before.
Meghan 08:25
Well, and truthfully, this is why a lot of people including US rarely take vacations. Yeah, because it's hard to step away. We even when we try to take a vacation and when we even when we try to unplug and enjoy a boat time or enjoy yoga time or enjoy puzzle time, it's difficult to turn your brain off and take that personal time. Because if you don't that's going to impact your friends and family as well. They're not going to see the bright shiny you that they thought we always joke, we quit our nine to five so we could work 24/7 While it's funny, it's most of the most of the time true and it's sad that it's true. But we do have this, this pressure to always perform to be on all the time to do that hustle because we need more clients, we need more employees. And it's a joke, but we really don't want to be sacrificing time in our businesses we really shouldn't be especially since we are busy when other people travel or need us last minute. It
Collin Funkhouser 09:21
really is a sacrifice of time the one thing that we can never get back in this lifetime is more time so we have to understand how are we spending that and are we spending it how we want to be spending it we go into business so that we can have that proposed freedom and we can set our own schedules but are we actually doing that and that temptation to always be on call always be available? Especially because you set Meghan when people need most of our pet sitting and dog walking services when they're gone was when most people take their time off is when we are suddenly slammed. So are we finding other Ways in other opportunities other time to get back. Because as business owners, there are going to be periods where we have to grind where we have to work hard and keep our heads down and focus on the work before us and do those sprints. But then we also have to be able to pull back and not be doing that not working 24/7. That's the key. And that's what's really hard. Because what happens is, we stack a lot of these things. We stack the the mental burdens and the stress we stack about the worries about the finances, and we focus purely on our business thinking that if I do this, my business is going to be succeed. And oh, I'm really busy. I'm always working on my business. So that must mean that I'm making a lot of money. Instead of going, I need to be able to do this for the next 30 years. I mean, I think that was a question that Megan, your mom asked you the other day of Is this how you want to work for the next 30 or 40 years?
Meghan 10:51
Of course, I
Collin Funkhouser 10:52
said no. Exactly. And it was going yeah, we are working for something better than this. We are working towards something, not this right now. But for the time being, we've got to keep focused. And the issue becomes when we are unable to see a future where we're not doing what we're doing right now. And we feel like this is all that there is. And instead of going, I have to do something, something needs to change about this. Because I can't keep this pace up for the rest of my life or something seriously bad is going to happen to me.
Meghan 11:21
But then hopefully we use that as motivation. We don't stay in the doldrums. We use that as motivation to then get out to hire that social media manager or hire that virtual assistant or hire the first employee, or
Collin Funkhouser 11:32
set those strong cancellation policies set those strong contact boundaries challenge to everybody moving forward. Look at when you want to be contacted by clients, and potential clients set office hours in the next six months and see what a difference it's going to make to your mental health. How much do you twitch or jump every time that phone rings? Do you have a healthy relationship with your phone with your calendar with your email? Are you able to fully set something aside? Turn it on silent and go do something that you want? Or is your brain continuing to focus on something else. Having those contact hours can be life saving to you. And it really changed the quality of life that you lead day to day
Meghan 12:11
because you want to be around for your friends and family. You want to enjoy those holidays together. You want to say yes to the things that you want to say yes to? And no, I'm not going to do that thing that I don't want to do. But there are things that we have to say yes to you no matter what in our businesses, whether it's legalities, so we have to file our taxes on time, other state and city documents that we need to keep track of and file when we need to.
Collin Funkhouser 12:34
It could be a city license. I mean, just the other day I was out doing research and found out that one of the cities that we operated in, does not honor a neighboring cities business license license, like we thought we did. So we had to go get another business license. So here's yet another thing that we have to keep track of that we have to keep updated that we have to keep, you know, understanding of what our obligations are where we're operating, what am I legally required to do to be here? And how do I make sure that I stay on top of that
Meghan 13:03
there are other obligations that we've said yes to in our businesses like committing to services and all weather conditions, driving through that snow, not necessarily a blizzard, if you have that in your contract, but pets still need to go. Dogs still need to go outside cats still need to be checked on to make sure they have running water. If you take care of elderly pets or those that have come out of surgery recently, you have said yes to taking on those health emergencies or behavior issues if you take on reactive or aggressive dogs. There's also the physical demands of the work that you have said yes to whether it's a joint pain you know tennis elbow, as you're walking the dogs or just making sure that you're you have proper shoes, or lifting
Collin Funkhouser 13:41
litter or bringing in packages or trudging through the snow and the ice and moving in these conditions. That what what we do a lot of people think oh, the dog walking is hard. The pet setting is also difficult and it can be very demanding on our bodies. We're up and down in and out of cars. We're twisting, turning, bending, we are we're pulling, we're grabbing, we're lifting, and they're not always big, heavy, strenuous things. A lot of these are just micro stresses that we do to our body. And because we are working so hard, and we do this so long every day, we never take a day off. We never give our bodies full time to recover, and it's hard to eat well and all these other complications arise from this that do stack upon one another.
Meghan 14:24
Something that's not demanding at all is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet set llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional we can go to checkout. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets at LLC dot Come in your commitment as a pet sitting business owner, you have also said yes to continuing to learn and train yourself and take courses and go to conferences. And these are all good things they should, you should be happy about doing them. They just
Collin Funkhouser 15:12
are a commitment so that we can stay running a business that serves our clients well, so that we can stay on top of the latest in pet care and dog health and cat health and behavior techniques and new systems and new technologies as well as things are constantly changing. If we were to just start a business, and then never touch base with the rest of the industry over the next 20 years, when we popped back up, it would look completely different. And we would not be serving our clients in the best way possible. So continuing to learn whatever that is taking some more courses on on dog behavior, or cat behavior or training or business management, but is Business Administration HR, that's going to help you and your business.
Meghan 15:52
We've also said yes to talking with potential clients, that is something that we have to do. Whether it's answering phone calls or emails, this is something that is a necessity with being a business owner,
Collin Funkhouser 16:02
it does mean being available to answer questions, that is yet another mental burden that we take on as a business owner of okay, I have to be able to answer a question, I need to take this phone call, I need to take this email. Now we can set boundaries around this of maybe I'm only going to respond to emails for two hours in the morning, and then three hours in the evening. And then one hour in the afternoon or however you have that structured, but it's still time attention, it's still an obligation that you have set up because now your business is actively and purposefully interacting with the outside world in your community. People will have questions, they will have inquiries, they will want to use your service, hopefully. But this is something that we have said yes to taking on, we are going to actively engage with the general public and educate them about our business and serve them well. Because
Meghan 16:51
we are in the pet care space. It's an unfortunate reality that we have said yes to dealing with client deaths. It's not fun, nobody wants it. Everybody wants their pet to live as long as possible and to live 80 years, but it's not reality. So we we have signed up for dealing with pet deaths. You know,
Collin Funkhouser 17:10
we that comes with running the kind of businesses that we do as the business owner, you when you take on dealing with a client, whether that is walking their dog or taking care of their cat or feeding their parent, that they stay with you long enough, you have said yes to helping that. And you've not just said yes to dealing with the, you know, the emotional side of that pet passing. But also, you've said yes to helping and guiding that pet parent in their own grief, being there, for them being an assistance being a resource to them, and allowing that process to happen naturally and being there for them when they need you.
Meghan 17:45
Another reality that we have taken on when we said yes to being a business owner is taking on people's expectations of you. This is particularly important because we are a service based industry, we serve the people, yes, we serve the pets. But ultimately, we serve the people's wants and needs and desires for their pet and their home. They expect something of us, we expect something of them. And we see if it's a good fit. And
Collin Funkhouser 18:07
that is reality. But it's also a cost because that is a process that takes time. That takes intentionality that takes asking good questions, being available to people and understanding that we're not always going to be a good fit for somebody. And we have to have those boundaries and those policies in place to make sure that we are aligning with our direct clients needs that we are serving the clients that we want to be serving and not just being general and open to everybody, because we can't do that. We've talked about that so much. But we can't be there for everybody. And we shouldn't be. But again, that takes time intentionality and is a cost to us to weed those people out.
Meghan 18:44
Yeah. And so one of the costs of doing business and being a business owner is saying no know when to say no, because you are not for everybody. Your business is not for everybody. You're not for everybody across the country, you're in your specific geographical local area. You're not for every pet owner. And it can be difficult to say no to somebody. But the business takes the brunt of that criticism and feedback. And I'm not saying that you as a person, take that criticism and feedback. I'm saying the business does you are separate from your business, you are the business owner. But at the end of the day, it is the business that takes the brunt of that. So think about are you ready to handle that? Hopefully we don't ever get any but at some point, somebody is not going to be happy with something we did or something our employee did. And we have to be ready to face that. Yeah, to put
Collin Funkhouser 19:29
this into perspective, if you have a business Facebook page, and you respond to a comment, what's the name on that comment? Is it you or is his your business? When you respond as your business you're responding as your business as the business response? And so, there is a layer there, where that criticism is is absorbed by the business not you personally, there is a business layer there. That is a cost because we have to mentally maintain that boundary. That is something We have to remind ourselves almost for me, sometimes, depending on what's happening on the internet that day, or how I'm feeling about our business, on a per second basis of the business is over there. I am here, I love our business, we pour everything into our business, but at the end of the day is not the totality of us or me. And I have to be okay with that. I have to be okay for people to not always recommend our business, because not everybody's going to be happy because we're not for everybody. Again, if you look at your business, and if we were to ask you, Who are you to serve? Who are you serving? Who is your ideal client? If you respond with a pet owner, they own a dog? That's the wrong answer. Because in the reality, that is that is flat out false. There are clients that are not going to mesh well with you, there are dogs that you are not going to want to have to handle to find those outlined those, understand where your limits are and where your boundaries are. So that when people come and approach your company, as they're supposed to do as your business, you know how to screen them, and you know if they're going to be a good fit or not, before you start trying to serve them. And all
Meghan 21:08
of this is made more complicated. If you have a team, the cost of your guidance and mentorship that takes time that takes money, you are paying your employee, your overhead goes up. So it's more of a financial and a mental burden. But with all of these costs that we've talked about, we take on them because of what they bring us because we know that we are providing peace of mind to pet parents as they travel, we know we are providing art an opportunity for our clients to take a cruise for the first time or go see the pyramids in Egypt. These things are important to us as people because we are able to serve others we are in the service industry, we take on these costs. Because at the end of the day, we love the animals. We love this business. And we know that these are not pointless things. They all have a purpose. Our purpose is to serve others. Are all of them fun. No, of course, do we always enjoy doing them? No. But they are necessary for us to be able to run our businesses and run them well and efficiently. Thankfully, though, some of these are temporary taxes once a year, we don't have to sit there every week and go taxes I hate them. Let's get this done with they can some of them can even be removed from our plate by hiring somebody else and delegating them out. The costs of running a business must be counted and they must be understood so that we know what we're getting ourselves into. And to know that we can still have our passion at the end of the day. If our passion is to walk the dogs. Maybe we hire a whole admin team and vice versa. We would love to know what some of the costs are that you have counted as a business owner. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com or hit us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. We appreciate you taking your time, your most valuable asset and listening to this today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates. We will talk with you next time bye
