484: Balancing Your vs Your Company’s Needs
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Ever faced a business roadblock that made you question everything? Here's a deep dive into how we handled an unexpected hurdle and the strategies we used to keep afloat. From employee turnover to shifting business goals, we share the ups and downs you could potentially encounter, and the mindset you need to overcome. Balancing personal life and company demands is a constant challenge, requiring flexibility and a clear vision. That balance is critical to navigate obstacles while keeping your business and personal values intact.
Main topics:
Hitting roadblocks
Self sacrifice for a time
Moving on
Finding your business identity
Main takeaway: Find your business identity and persona to help build and maintain boundaries between your personal and business life.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, employees, clients, personal, pour, work, roadblock, respond, company, pet, divert, moment, pet sitters, associates, level, obstacle, Collin, ceos, hire, pushing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Meghan
Collin Funkhouser 00:02
I'm Collin
Meghan 00:03
and we are the host of pet sitter confessional. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our awesome Patreon people for supporting today's show. If you don't know what a Patreon person is, it's kind of a weird phrase. They are someone who has found value in the almost 500 episodes that we've done. They love what we do, they want to continue listening to episodes and hearing other people, other pet sitters talk about their businesses every week. If that sounds like you, and you would like to support us as well, you could go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can help. We've had employees for a few years now. And one time a few years ago, we have three employees. And they all left us within the span of a few weeks. And it was a really scary time. We didn't know what we were going to do. We had no employees, it was just Collin and I. And we had to reassess how we wanted to continue going. And if we wanted to continue running the business at all, we had hit a roadblock in our business, these come up many times, if you've ever seen that graph of what an entrepreneur is like an entrepreneurship, it's not a straight line, it's got all these curves and arrows, and it's generally goes up. But there's a lot of ups and downs, we had to shift our mindset around this issue, what we wanted to do when we had lost all of our employees was burying our heads in the sand avoided, we wanted to just watch movies and eat junk food for an entire week, and then pop our heads back up when everything was fine. And we have more employees to take over visits. But as the CEOs of our businesses, as business leaders, as bosses, we cannot do that we cannot just avoid issues, we have to face them head on. And that's what you have to do with these roadblocks.
Collin Funkhouser 01:33
It really was a process of thinking outside of ourselves, I think was the first time that we really had to do that, in our business of recognizing that we really and truly weren't growing something that was beyond us something that at some point, we would not be able to handle all by ourselves. And that at this moment, we had to take what we wanted to do at the personal level, which was disappear in a hole and hide for a while. And what was best for the company. Because we needed to think at the company level at that. At that point, it was no longer us thinking at the personal level, because we had externalized. Now the business to the point of it was beyond what we could do just by ourselves, which meant that we had to think beyond ourselves and act at a bigger scale than just us. And that's a really scary place to be because suddenly, we have to recognize it's not about me, it's not about my wants right now, I have these this business that has needs that I have to attend to. And then I have to be thinking about as I progress. And as I grow as a person and at my business level. Well, and of course,
Meghan 02:41
here's the caveat that we always throw in of this your business, if you want to shut it down. If you want to take a pause, take a six month hiatus, you are free to do that. You can make it however you want and structure it however you want your mental health and your personal safety comes first. But it is these times where we hit these roadblocks, whether they're they come from ourselves, or they come from external sources, where we have to reassess. Is our company still on mission? Is it what we do? Is it doing what we set out to do? Does it still align with our values and our goals for our personal lives? Collin and I have a big vision for our family. And every time we hit a roadblock in our company, we say does this align us closer to the goal of that or further away?
Collin Funkhouser 03:28
Does pushing through the roadblock to solving the roadblock bring us closer to that vision? Or does it divert us into a different direction that we don't want to go? What possible solutions do we have before us that are actually going to work better for us, you know our company, we have clients to serve, we have an income that we have to meet. And at that point it is balancing these two. And that's why this is so hard because our businesses, we start them, we run them, we make them our own, we mold them after our needs wants, we structure them around our fears and insecurities. And we try and overcome those the best that we can. And at some point, we have to go what's in the best interest of keeping the company alive versus what do I want to be doing at a personal level. And that is where we have to, to balance those it is it is and it's not it's not definitely not easy. If
Meghan 04:21
you want more personal time for yourself. If you want to go on more vacations and go on 18 cruises next year, you are likely going to have to hire employees in order to keep your business running and you're in serving your clients or cut back on the business and be okay with a lower level of income. If the
Collin Funkhouser 04:40
company needs you more because it's going through some turbulent times maybe the economy is slowing down or maybe you have lost a lot of employees. That's going to demand a lot from you personally, it means those coffee dates or maybe those catch up with the friends or that book that you're wanting to get to that may have to be shelved the moment inherently, so that you can pour more into the business. And that's what's this, a lot of people talk about this work life balance, it is a myth, there's only one YOU, you only have so much energy time attention that you can have in a given day. And you have to decide what you're going to divert that to, as your priorities and needs arise. Sometimes you have more or want to pour more into your personal life, sometimes you have need and urgency to pour that more into the business. And that's what we found, we loathe to having to stop pouring into our personal life and back into the company. It's not what we wanted to direct it to. But we knew that we had to, if the business was going to survive to serve another client and do another dog walk, we knew that if we didn't do that, it wasn't going to make it another day. And that's where we went. And
Meghan 05:51
to know that you and I were not in the field for a while, because we had employees, and then we had to transition back to the field, which was fine. We love all the dogs and the cats and the fish, but didn't to know that that was just for a time that we weren't going to be able to build back up that it was going to be okay that we were again, going to push through the roadblock, there's that song about the bear of you can't go over it, you can't go around, and you have to go through it or something like that, I don't know. But, but it's true in business. If you encounter an obstacle, you have to figure out how you're going to get around it is that something completely different than what you were doing. If you were like done with employees and done with the business, you want to just want to shut it down, that's fine, you're going to divert to the left, if you want to maybe just hire one or two people and you are more in the field, then you're going to divert to the right or if you're just going to push through and keep hiring so that you get out of the field completely. Whatever the obstacle is, it could be with employees, it could be with clients, maybe you've had a bad rash of clients really testing you and pushing your boundaries. But no matter the obstacle, figure out how you're going to get around it. And
Collin Funkhouser 06:56
sometimes that does require self sacrifice. I think that's something that we are all familiar with of going nope, self, I have to put you off to the side for just a moment to focus on this other stuff, I have to put aside my current desires or my goals, so that I can do this thing that is really important right now, because again, we can only pour so much of ourselves into one thing at a time. And the danger comes the toxicity comes in is when we stop allowing ourselves to pour back into ourselves because we think that's a bad thing. And that's why the talk of self care and taking time away and mental health days is so critical. Because as entrepreneurs or small business owners, we don't give ourselves permission to pour back into ourselves, we think we have to continue to pour back into the business because it's gonna suck everything up. The truth is, is that you can pour in one one day in one in another. But there are those times where you have to pour into the company versus yourself. And that self sacrifice is where this comes in of knowing if I need to go under the tree that fell across the road, because that's what it is you're being chased by a bear that you just found. And you have to run away from it and figure out you have to go over the log or under the log or over and run it and problem solve your way through that of going, Okay, I may be really tired right now and not run from the bear. But if I don't run from the bear, I'm gonna get eaten. So I've got to keep running. And I've got to figure out how I'm going to get around this obstacle that's before me. Well,
Meghan 08:18
it's something that we haven't talked about in a while is the financial aspect of this and kind of thinking about and working through and crunching numbers of your minimum viable number of services that you need to do in a day. If you've hit this roadblock, and you go, Oh my gosh, I don't know if I can do 20 visits on a day anymore. How many do you need to just make the budget happen? Do you just need eight in a day that then that can work for a time in order to put food on your table? Maybe you don't need to operate at 8090 100%. Because you need to work through whatever you've just hit in your business.
Collin Funkhouser 08:54
And that was something for us to have going okay, well, if our employees aren't doing the visits anymore, we have to do fewer number of visits each day to actually make our financial numbers work out because we are bringing home more a higher percentage of that than we were whenever our staff was doing that. And so that actually took a little bit of burden off of us to know, okay, we don't have to work at the capacity of three employees, we have to work at the capacity of us. And that was a great piece of this puzzle. As we looked at this and as we worked on our mindset in this moment of going, okay, as we assess this situation, how severe is this? Because bad things will happen. It's one of the great truths of our modern world, that things will happen. And when we prepare for that we have that knowledge of going, I know that things could happen. What can I do right now to help me prepare for that? One of those things is knowing your numbers and your financials, so that when bad things happen, you don't have to panic about what you're going to meet and what's not because you have that on hand. Another thing that you can prepare for those bad times for the struggle is Having a group around you to help support you through that having that network of other sitters of other business owners have friends or family that are close to you that you can lean on, that can support and pour into your life, when you struggle with it, or during those times will help understand you when that's happening. Other things to help you through those bad times are having policies procedures, SOPs, having things written out, planned out, so you understand deeply your business and where you want to go. So when things go off the rails, you already have a plan so that you can start working your way back to that or adapting as necessary,
Meghan 10:37
and it probably isn't going to hit when you have a plan, it probably isn't going to hit the specific point that you're dealing with right now. Because there are an infinite number of things that can go wrong in a business, but generally have a roadmap for what you're going to do in worst case scenarios. Every business should have pet business insurance. 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 Pet Sitter 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.
Collin Funkhouser 11:27
But before you act at any time, take a moment and assess and sit for a minute. You know, during this time where we lost our employees and they went off to do other things, it was so tempting to just panic and then freeze and get stuck in that moment, really taking a few minutes, a few hours to sit and breathe, and almost go through that grieving process to recognize, okay, I'm going to have to grieve the loss of the at the personal level of what this I'm going to work through that emotionally. For me what this means for me as Collin, and as maggot what does that mean for us and how we feel about this? Then we have to put on our business hats in our CEO hats and go now at a business level. What do we do? How do we implement new things? What changes do we need to do? How do we communicate to people and coming up with that plan, but the only way you're going to come up with that plan is a if you've done a little bit of prep work, you know your numbers, you have some systems in place, and then be you've sat and sat with it, you've taken off to sit with it for a few minutes or hours so that you can approach this with a cool, calm and collected manner. And ask yourself at the personal level, how do I want to respond? And then at the business level? What do I need to do in this moment, whatever
Meghan 12:44
the obstacle is, think about how you're going to respond to it, how you would respond to it as a person, but then also how you will respond to it as a business in a professional manner. Because sometimes our personal emotions may get in the way of how we actually should respond as a business, we want to lash out we want to say the curse word over the over the internet at somebody, we want to not act appropriately. But because we are CEOs we are held to a different standard. And we should be we should be the professional one, an employee can say whatever they want to us, but we can't say really what we want back we have to we are held to a different standard. We want to be a keyboard warrior and go off on somebody. But for the person on the other side looking at this in six months as a potential client going, Oh, that business responded this way. Oh, I don't want to do I don't want to have anything to do with them. I don't want them to look after my pet because they didn't respond in a kind way.
Collin Funkhouser 13:45
Yeah, I like to think of it a lot of times of going How would Apple respond to a situation? How would How would Facebook? How would Tesla How would Microsoft or? Or how would I don't know, you know, Tiffany's respond to these kinds of things that come up. I'm sure the CEOs the presidents, the entire C suite board is just furious in livid about certain things. But they can't come out and they don't come out and respond and act in that way. Because how damaging that would be and how off putting that would be to the other clients and their obligations to the business the company as a whole to their existing or their their remaining staff, employees and clients. How would they want to be viewed how do they want to treat others in that moment, and really making sure that that line is walked and understand what we can and should not be doing?
Meghan 14:39
And not to say that we need to be robotic and be heartless and cold and say client died I don't care about you. This is this is a strictly a business transaction. I mean, we are a relationship business. So there does need to be some tact and some some grace and some warmth there when we respond to clients or employees. But oftentimes we You just need to stick to the facts and and do kind of leave it emotionless as best we can.
Collin Funkhouser 15:05
Because once you've assessed those facts and you've come up with that action plan, now it's time to actually implement it. And importantly, here move on, when we get stuck in these positions, like for Meghan and I, when we had these employees leave, it was really tempting to not move on, to really start continue to circle back to that and really circle back to that pain and the hurt and the anguish. And we had to make sure that we personally were processing that in a healthy manner. And we weren't bottling this up and pushing it off down the road. But our personal patients are also sometimes going remember that time and remember that and think about that, oh, they still made me so angry, we had to in the best interest of our company. And importantly, because we were going to decide to continue to hire, we couldn't bring in any of our negative emotions, with the past experiences with our employees into the current ones that we were trying to hire and entice to work for our business, we couldn't bring any of that past experiences, or of emotions and feelings into our conversations with them, because then that would impact how they viewed us in our company. So we had to leave those interactions in the past and move forward and actually implement the plan that we had done, and try our best. And again, this is where the personal and the business intermix so much of recognizing, I still am really hurt about this, or I'm, I'm reminded of the time that this XYZ thing happened. But I can't let that impact how I'm going to interact with this new person, this new client, this new pet, this new employee, this new potential sponsor, or partnership, or whoever that is that you're trying to do, because you are focused on the positives and a plan that you need to implement.
Meghan 16:45
Yeah, it really is about separating them and moving on and moving upward. And this conversation is important whether you are solo or have employees because as a business, you have a business identity, your business has a voice. So what is that voice going to be, it should obviously be professional at every level. And it should be one that is clear and consistent. Your clients and potential clients know what is going to come from you
Collin Funkhouser 17:09
think of it this way, if you respond back in a Facebook message to somebody who's made an inquiry to your Facebook page, whose name is on the top of that message. That's your business name. It's not you, you're not responding as you you're responding as your business. That is a great way to start thinking about every single one of these interactions. When you respond when when when there is a response, when there is a post, when there is a phone call, when there is an email, whose name is at the top of that. It's your business, there is a distinction between you and your business. Now we make them as personalized as we can't, we want them to be warm and authentic and personal. So that that connects with the clients that we want. And we can build that trust and that deep relationship that we all want. At the end of the day, your business name is at the top of that, not yours. So as we struggled to find out how we separate that developing that business persona, developing that business voice, again, this that's all part of your brand. This is what the colors are, this is what the font is, this is what the meaning is behind all of that. And that can be different than it should be a little different than who you are. Because who you are versus what your business is, is connecting with other people out there. And operating in that way of going my business is like this. Here's my business brand. My business name is this logo and colors. And then I'm here and allowing yourself to sit in that and be okay with that and rejoice in that separation. Because then it's just that much easier to not bring in the personal side and be personally hurt when things happen.
Meghan 18:45
We would love to know how you find boundaries between your personal and your business life. You can either email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Or you can look us up on Facebook or Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. We want to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode and thank you for taking your time your most valuable asset and listening to this. We hope that some of these episodes are helpful to you. And if there's ever a topic you would like us to discuss or somebody you want us to interview, let us know. We'll talk to you next time. Bye
