476: Harnessing the Heat: Anger's Role in the Pet Sitting Business
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Why does anger management feel like an uphill battle? In an industry fueled by passion and love for animals, emotions run high, and anger can emerge from the least expected corners. To get it under control, we have to understand its roots and its multifaceted impact on both our personal well-being and business operations. From dealing with unruly pets to navigating the demands of particular clients, we talk about understanding anger as a natural response, recognizing triggers, and developing strategies for constructive management. Ultimately, it's about transforming anger into positive change, emphasizing the power of self-care, and enhancing communication skills.
Main topics
Understanding anger
Managing
Transforming
Main takeaway: View anger not just as an obstacle, but as an opportunity for growth and improvement in your businesses.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
anger, angry, client, business, pet sitters, frustration, mondays, triggers, body, control, impact, pausing, confessional, respond, schedule, policies, pet, care, feel, deep breathing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:00
Oh, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. I am Megan. I'm Colin, and we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's show. And thank you to our Patreon supporters who listen to the show and like what we do. Thank you. We appreciate that very much. If you would like to support the show as well, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all the different ways you can support whether it's writing a review, sharing with a friend, becoming a monthly contract, financial contributor, we appreciate it all. Thank you. We talk a lot about emotions here on the podcast, whether it's sadness or frustration or mental health. One of the things that we have not talked about of the almost 500 episodes is anger. So that is what we're going to talk about today, as business owners anger can come in all forms, whether it's frustration with our business, or personal life impacting our business and the decisions that we need to make. It comes from a lot of places, maybe it's anger from the dog that won't stop jumping and scratching us or the client, who always calls and nitpicks at every little thing that we do, or even anger at ourselves, sometimes of messing something up or not handling a situation in the correct way.
Collin Funkhouser 01:13
So today, what we want to do is want to try and understand what anger is, where it comes from, importantly, how we manage it as a business as at the personal level. And then can we do anything with that anger? Can we turn that into something productive or constructive in our lives. So when it comes to anger, it is important to know that anger is actually a natural, emotional response. It is something that our body does. Interestingly, when there is a perceived threat, or unfair situations or frustrations in the world around us, it is a response that is a trigger to us to cue us into that something is going on, that we don't like, it's going to elevate our blood pressure, it's going to increase our heart rate, it's going to get us ready to engage and fight in that moment. It's not just natural, it's also really common, a lot of things are going to frustrate us along our business journey making you even set up earlier about some of the personal side of things. So you have your personal life, you've got your business life, Anger is an emotion that is going to come up sometimes when we least expect it when we have this unrest of unknown response to us when somebody says something or there's this thing that comes up that maybe we didn't know was going to impact us that way. And so while it is natural, it is common. What's important to note is that you have to know how it's going to impact you and your business. What does it do to you, I mean, I just know for me personally, when I start to get angry, my thinking becomes a little fuzzy, I stopped being careful with my words. And I don't really have as good logic and reasoning capabilities in that moment. And that's just because my body is getting ready to engage and fight. And so it's flooded with hormones, the muscles are ready to go. And I'm just only thinking about reacting and responding. In that moment,
Meghan 03:08
we are human, we are going to have these feelings that come up, there may be a lot of triggers for you and provoke you to anger in the our industry in the pet city and industry, maybe that's unexpected cancellations, those are really frustrating, demanding clients who maybe even go as far as talking to you through the camera during the visit. And that that has happened, it makes makes me angry, but are emergencies that disrupted the daily schedule, all these things that are potentially out of our control. And then that is something to really reflect on how these challenges test our boundaries and our patients and our business operations. So it is important to remember what we can control and what we can't, we can control ourselves, we can control how we respond to these triggers, knowing Okay, when the client talks to me through the camera, my blood pressure gets elevated, I really don't like that. And it makes me angry. But I know that this client does that other clients don't. So I can kind of take it into perspective of going okay, when I walk into this client, there is a high likelihood that I am going to be met with a voice through the camera. And obviously you can't be prepared for everything. But knowing in these certain situations, the triggers that you have can almost de escalate in our minds that we can walk through a scenario beforehand to know okay, my blood pressure is going up, I know how to respond to this now, and then you make adjustments as necessary. Again, you know, you can control yourself, you can you can slow your heart rate down, you can take a minute to breathe, you know that it's going to be okay, and you make those changes accordingly. These
Collin Funkhouser 04:36
feelings of emotions of anger really come out when we are challenged or we are confronted, or we are testing our boundaries our patients or even how we run our business. So this anger can actually stem from some deep seated some deep rooted feelings that we may have, specifically insecurities around our business when you have that client who's speaking to you through your camera. Sometimes that starts because we perceive that as being disrespectful to us, and then we get angry at that person for disrespecting us, because we don't feel like that person sees us as a professional. Or maybe we're sensitive around a particular situation because there was a terrible outcome last year, or 10 years ago, and we still carry around that sensitivity with us. And so when somebody presses on that or when that comes up, again, our body immediately goes into this anger because again, this response is, it's a natural response. And it's natural emotion response to protect us from being hurt. When we have that outburst, we have that frustration, that rate, that's a protection mechanism that our body is trying to do going, the last time you had this, it hurt you to guts get away, let's fight this and do something about it. And so it can be those boundaries of no I am a professional or it can be pricing, or it can be being talked back to in a degrading manner. And we get angry about that.
Meghan 06:02
Yeah, it's almost a PTSD from experiences from the past. But taking those and learning from those of, okay, when this happens, this is how I typically respond. But I know that about myself, so I can learn from myself.
Collin Funkhouser 06:16
Or maybe it's a business operations and, and you feel like there are some frustrations going around that or there's you have anger about having is one thing, I get angry that I have to drive to that client who booked me, and they're 35 minutes away from me, that's a business operations thing we need to make adjustments to that was something that may be you may be right and feeling angry about that, because it is a killer to your day. And you have to sit in traffic, and it's just not enjoyable. Well, check your business operations, check your scheduling, check where you're where how things are put together, and make adjustments to that to just cut those options out entirely. So you don't even encounter those situations.
Meghan 06:58
Because when we do not keep ourselves in check, when we, when our anger gets out of control, it can really have detrimental impacts, it can these effects of unmanaged anger can have potential damage to our client relationships. Or if we have employees, the employees notice those things, and it creates workplace stress that nobody wants, it also impacts the overall health of the business, it's no longer a fun place to work, or you don't enjoy going to client's houses anymore. Or
Collin Funkhouser 07:28
you start making bad and rash decisions out of anger out of frustration, and you stop giving things a second pass, and you start being more reactive, instead of proactive of something comes up, your blood pressure goes through the roof, your mind gets foggy from again, your body pumping hormones through your to get engaged and do something and you just react and you just spit out and maybe you don't say the nicest things on the phone. And so that damages those client relationships. Sometimes you don't respond in a positive manner, or in a kind way to somebody who's really struggling that day on your team, because you're angry about it, and you're not being really supportive of them and you're going to damage that relationship. You know, there are some I was thinking about this. There are two good quotes that I like to think about when it comes to the impacts of anger on us. ones from Ralph Waldo Emerson, he says for every minute you remain angry, you give up 60 seconds of peace of mind. And then one of the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, anger, if not restrained is frequently more hurtful than to us than the injury that provoked it. So in this one that is both talking about now, the impacts to ourselves of remaining angry in that I as Emerson's quote said, I am being angry for a minute, which means I have given up 60 seconds of peace of mind, I have allowed that to me, I've added extra burden, extra weight to my life that I am never going to get back back and you say this all the time, time is your most valuable asset. How do you want to spend that? In what way do you want to spend Now this doesn't mean that anger is bad, and we should not be angry. But it does mean we need to assess and see, do I still need to be angry at this? Or do I need to choose a different emotion?
Meghan 09:28
Yeah, anger is a choice. And because we sometimes get angry, we have control over ourselves. And again, not that you can't sit with your anger and or be angry. But you do need to learn a lesson from it and take it moving forward of how can I respond in a more appropriate way that is healthy for me and my business that
Collin Funkhouser 09:49
for instance, our vacuum was broken and we took it to a repairman to take care of that. Well, it turned into six weeks and then eight weeks and it wasn't fixed and It didn't communicate. And it just really was a terrible experience. When I went to go talk to the representative at the business, I was angry, I was really, really angry. And I let them know my frustration with this and how I didn't think that this was how they would want to treat a client or a customer and how this was not a good experience. And I was very dissatisfied with this. I continued to carry that anger around with me for the rest of the day. Even though it was all resolved, it was all okay. And the vacuum was going to be repaired in full, alright, I had no reason to be angry. And yet I was clinging to this. And this is where that Seneca quote comes in of anger, if not restrained is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. Because some of the implications of constant or prolonged anger or just elevated stress, right, you're going to send your body into a stress response, where you can you know, that major health implications from that burnout, mental fatigue, this impact on our health, where now I just can't handle another thing, I just don't want to take this on. Because I'm angry, I'm already at 100%, I'm already so elevated, I can't even imagine taking something else on. So this leads into we stunt ourselves in our personal life, because we don't want to take new things on it stunts ourselves and our business because we don't want to push into new things, because you don't have the mental capacity to do that. So carrying around this anger with us, as it consumes our life. And that's really what we want to talk about here. The danger of that, because we have these triggers that come up throughout all the day long. Every day, there's something that you can get anger angry at. And if you carry that instead of managing it and doing something with it, you're going to have these health impacts, the stress, the burnout, the mental impacts to you impacting your business and your personal life as well. It's just, it's just not worth it at the end of the day.
Meghan 11:58
Something that will definitely not make you angry is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet sit llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to check out, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com. We can control ourselves, we can control how we manage our anger. So tactics like deep breathing, taking a breath, pausing before we react that is huge. When we take that minute to pause. We are collecting our thoughts we are sitting with ourselves. And we are planning our next action. We also want to establish clear communication skills with clients or even your employees. This will help to lessen that burden that you feel or that anger that you feel in the moment
Collin Funkhouser 13:05
exercises like deep breathing or pausing before you react, you are really trying to take a mental control of a physiological response, this deep breathing is going to take those shallow, quick deep breaths that your body's going to start taking as in response to the anger as it goes into this fight response, it's going to take that it's going to force it to slow down. And by doing that your body that physical action is going to have an inverse physiological response of everything's going to start to unwind a little bit, we're going to decrease that tension across the board, then the pausing allowing, allowing our brain fog to dissipate a little bit because again, with those hormones pumping with the rage going in those moments where we're just so ticked off, we don't think clearly. And so the pausing is actually going to allow our body time to clear all that out to resume normal function and normal Welcome to normal operations basically, and allow us to think more critically about that instead of just responding in the bat. When
Meghan 14:11
we highlight the importance of self care, we really mitigate the impact of the anger. We can say no you will not have control over me today. I am in control of myself and I am going to regulate my anger. There are lots of activities that you can do yoga in particularly is great for breathing, working on that breath, work in through your nose out through your mouth, do the box breathing. All of these tactics within yoga are great. There's also just getting outside I know we are outside a lot, but making it a purposeful intentional outside of going out and just taking five deep breaths in the sunshine is perfect.
Collin Funkhouser 14:46
But removing yourself from that situation is really critical of getting out of that so that you don't have those continual triggers, bringing you back into that mindset, but it is a much more holistic approach as well. It's not just avoidance, we can't do that all the time, we run a business and we interact with the public and we interact with living beings. And as you Megan, you said earlier, sometimes we get mad with ourselves. Because we made that mistake, we did something we shouldn't, we said that thing that we didn't mean to, we have to develop a holistic approach to self care, so that we have outlets, we have avenues for these places for where they can go having that regularly scheduled yoga class, or having that regularly scheduled walk, or that downtime that you have in the evening to just decompress. Because if we find ourselves going to bed angry and frustrated, that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna wake up angry and frustrated, and that stuff doesn't go anywhere. And then we're already heightened in the next level of when we wake up. Or at
Meghan 15:47
the very least, we're going to wake up groggy, because all night our brain was at a heightened level, because we were thinking of the stress and the anger that we experienced during the day. Ultimately, we need to control this and make it productive, transform it into a positive change, make it good and make something good come out of something bad, use it as a fuel for positive change. This may look like introducing new policies to prevent your common triggers of frustration and anxiety in your business. Things
Collin Funkhouser 16:18
like having a last minute booking or a last minute cancellation policy, where if this is something that really gets under your skin, and really drives you insane, have a policy to point to to combat that. Or maybe like we talked about earlier, the drive time in between visits is just making you frustrated to know it, decrease your service radius, or now maybe you need to start marketing in those areas to make it more worth your time when you are out there. Or downtimes, for office hours or whatever that is, you have policies you have control over this,
Meghan 16:51
since a lot of frustrations come from misunderstandings between us. And the client tried to prevent those as much as possible, enhancing that client communication to build those stronger relationships. So the client knows, yes, you don't need to ask if we're going to show up tomorrow, we are going to show how you can check your calendar, we always are on time. And we're liable, you can always count on us
Collin Funkhouser 17:12
developing that relationship so that you can take those things to discuss them to the client, instead of always feeling like you just have to ignore it. You know, we had an insane situation where we had a client who booked our services, and then called me and was furious that they were being charged, right when they booked and didn't understand this and just read me up one side and down the other. And my blood was utterly boiling, because at every stage of the process we talk about you will be charged when you book and then we have cancellation policies with refunds and credits and all sorts of outline at every state. And this person just completely missed that and didn't pay attention and then was blaming us for again, it was accusing us of deceitful or disingenuous practices, which I don't like being accused of. And I was genuinely furious in that moment. And taking that time to then just go, Okay, let me listen to this person. Let me explain what we do how we do it. And then we're going to go look at our policies and procedures, we're going to look at how we communicate what we do, and why we do it, to make sure that this never happens again,
Meghan 18:23
because it can be really hard to be professional in those moments when you're dealing with a client. And they're, they're saying something that is not true. And it just it you get angry, it's hard to be professional, it's hard to bite your tongue. But ultimately, it's what you need to do. In order to have a more clear head. There's that saying if something like Cooler heads prevail, and that is true. With more time you are able to fully process the thing that happened and you are more able to come to terms with your plan ahead your action. So again, using these this anger for positive change, something that we recently implemented was that so we have weekly team meetings on every Monday and we have for the past few years with our team. It seems that no matter what we do, our Mondays are always going to Monday, things come up fires happen, employees have life happen. Lots of clients want to book on Mondays, I just the world seems to just always want to Monday on Monday. So what we have done is we have tried to eliminate as much as possible to eliminate the number of activities that we have on Mondays because we know that typically things are going to come up so we no longer schedule phone interviews and in person interviews on Monday, we no longer have coffee dates or boots on the ground marketing or admin stuff. We try to just take a minute on Mondays and breathe. We just have our team meetings and then whatever happens the rest of the day happens but we know that our schedule is clear. And we will get to it on Tuesday and the rest of the week. And we felt we needed to do this because as fires kept coming up on Mondays along with all of our regularly scheduled things we were getting angry of we can't fit all this in we You don't have enough time i This can't wait till tomorrow, I have to do it today, I have to stay up later now. And these things kept compounding on Mondays, and it was just really making us angry. So what we had to do, we had to take action, we had to make this into a positive change, we had to look at the things that we were putting on our plate and say, This has to wait until later in the week.
Collin Funkhouser 20:19
And on Sundays, I would personally have a lot of resentment towards Monday, and I would start just feeling the anxiety come up, I'd start feeling like I don't even want it. What's going to happen tomorrow, the frustration comes up. And yeah, the Monday happened. And there are two ways that a lot of people try and go about this and just where they go, Okay, well, I'm going to try and schedule everything to within an inch of its degree and I'm going to try and control my time on that. But in these instances where we just felt like everything blew up and continues to do that, and everything just happened. Controlling your schedule isn't the response to that. It's actually letting go of the schedule, finding space and moving things around so that you can actually take the time to think through process, handle and execute on decisions that you need to in that moment. And yeah, that's been something that will go nope, Mondays there's one thing that's always regularly scheduled two or three pickup drop off of kids, this meeting for the business and then pick them up from school like those things. The only things that have standing appointments on are Mondays. Everything else happens Tuesday through Friday for us, because we know we need that day to just get the week started.
Meghan 21:29
It is important to view anger is not just an obstacle but an opportunity for growth and improvement in your pet sitting in business. That is key. You knowing what your triggers are using that as an action plan moving forward and then transforming it into positive change and learning lessons from it. If you would like to let other pet sitters know how you manage your anger in your pet sitting business you can leave us a voicemail at 636-364-8260 or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. We appreciate you listening to this today and also thank you to Patreon members and pet sitters associates. We will talk with you next time bye
