490: In a Slump but on the Way Up?
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Ever wondered how to effectively network and forge meaningful connections within the industry? We share the importance of setting clear goals and aligning expectations in your networking endeavors. We consider the four main reasons for connecting with industry peers. When connecting, it's crucial to freely share information while respecting boundaries, and also understand the nuances between formal and informal referral networks. Ultimately, we offer practical advice for cultivating meaningful connections and robust support networks to navigate the challenges of the industry.
Main topics:
Why network
Know your (and their) reasons
Share freely
Follow-up is critical
Main takeaway: It's important to remember that clients will choose your services not just based on price, but also on your policies and how you offer those services.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, clients, people, service, pet, talking, pet sitters, generalist, year, work, feeling, slow, environment, sitter, niche, company, business owners, sitting, grow, niching
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:02
Hello, I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:03
I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:03
And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us. Thank you also to our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters. If you don't know what Patreon is, it's a platform for content creators, artists podcasters, to have their work supported by those who find it valuable. So if that is you, you enjoy petsitter confessional and listening to the episodes, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the different ways that you can give back. If you were in business during 2020. You know what happened to your business, the bottom dropped out than 2021, there was this resurgence 2022 was even busier. 2023 was just off the walls insane. And now it feels like 2024 is a little bit different that purse strings are tightening up, people are not traveling as much. And we are kind of seeing a downturn in our business. So
Collin 00:56
how is your business doing? Are you up or down from last year? We're really seeing a story of two different businesses this year, it seems that you're either doing really well your way up or your way down. And like Megan said, our business is definitely down compared to the first quarter of last year. This first quarter was the slowest we have ever had. new clients weren't converting as much and importantly, existing clients pretty much disappeared throughout the first quarter and even kind of going into the summer season now.
Meghan 01:26
Yeah, we're starting to pick up a little bit. But this first quarter was a little discouraging. Where is everybody? Where did they all go? Why are people not using us. We've also seen this as well, in Facebook groups recently that other pet's name businesses and even dog walking businesses. They're not doing that great. These seem to be slower times, at least for us. And so we've been thinking a lot about this what actually is happening, we were chugging right along through 2023. And then 2024 has not been that great for us, we've been getting more applicants to our job posts than we do new client inquiries, which is frustrating at times. But it is what it is what is going on with the market. One of the things is that this is a saturated market, when COVID hit people either lost their jobs or went to work from home and were dissatisfied left their job that was it was the great resignation, as they termed it. And it's really a saturated market, there are a lot more businesses out there a lot of hobby sitters, a lot of people who just do this on the side, maybe after work or on the weekends. And so there are just a lot more businesses out there.
Collin 02:29
Well as the economy has slowed. Two things really happen. One, people look to pick up more work and do extra work, they get a second job, they get a third job, they get a side gig. And then secondarily, people look to cut costs. So it does mean that people are starting pet businesses because it's quote unquote, easy. And they've done it before they used to do it for friends and family. And you're coupling with this with potential clients in your community who are looking to save money. So you have an influx of cheap centers or new people to the business, and you have people looking to save money, obviously, they're going to attract one another pretty well. And that's where a lot of the volume of Petcare is is going
Meghan 03:08
right now. And because people tend to go to friends, family and neighbors first before seeking out a professional or a company, people may not understand or like your policies, or they may just not want to go with somebody who has a bunch of hoops to jump through. We experienced that recently, we had a client who was not happy with how we do our payment, we require payment upfront and they were not happy about this, they definitely let us know about that. We continue to provide service to them. After they got back from their trip, they said you guys did great, we have no problems with the care, but we will not be using you in the future because of this policy that you have. So as
Collin 03:47
people can look to decrease the amount of headache in their life, or just the hoops that they want to jump through that is going to go into their decision making process of what are they willing to do for the care of their pets. It's not just about price, it's also about policies, it's important to always remember that just because somebody wants to use pet sitting doesn't mean they want to use pet sitting the way you provide it. And we can't be offended by this. But it was definitely eye opening to realize, yes, people are going to go with and are going to fit with the way they process and what their expectations are. It's very hard to mold people into your business. They kind of already have to be a good fit enough to get in the door. Well and
Meghan 04:27
yes, clients can not respect you during any time that can happen at any time and in any economy. But when finances are tight when the purse strings are getting are getting tighter, people will tend to put up with less they're going to want to just do the easiest thing that thing that gets them the fastest result the quickest. And
Collin 04:45
this is a question as to whether this is a work from home issue. Specifically when COVID hit a lot of people went home and a lot of our businesses were impacted especially with daily dog walks. People weren't traveling, they weren't going out for lunch, they were doing all this stuff. So one thing too Go back and really look at your numbers as to see if maybe work from home. If that issue was originally masked because people traveled more, once people got out of COVID and lockdowns opened up and people began to travel. Were we so busy with vacation clients that it masked our lack of dailies? And that now vacations are diminishing. And we see are we that now we're only feeling that gap in the dailies. And this is something that you can dive into your numbers. Don't just go and look at your gross revenue, your top line revenue there, look at your revenue per service, break it down each quarter and go, What am I bringing in for dog walking, what am I bringing in for cat sitting, or for pet sitting or for poop scooping, to really get an idea of where your money is coming from. Because just a $10,000 a month business that is $8,000 in dog walks and $2,000 in pet sitting. That's a very different business operationally than a $10,000 a month business that does 8000 and petsitting. And only 2000 and dog walks each of those businesses is going to feel fluctuations in the economy way differently than one another. A year ago for us, we had a lot of midday visits, and they've slowly dried up over time for various reasons. But we've had vacation visits that kept us busy. Now that vacation visits are getting scarce. And we haven't been able to replace those dailies, we're really feeling the pinch of that lack of
Meghan 06:20
business, which gets into another aspect of this, a lot of business owners are talking about niching or have to niche over the past year or so a lot of people went into canceling only businesses with the occasional dog walk for the existing client. We've also seen a lot of people transition strictly to midday dog walks, they just they that's what they want to do. That's their bread and butter. But we're seeing them talk about potentially struggling to maintain that work because clients, existing clients just seem to kind of drop off for whatever reason, it could be price, it could just be change of life, whatever it is, but we are starting to see people talking about changing their businesses a little bit. And we've even talked about that as well, because some of our long term plans include going to only midday dog walks and cat sitting visits only. And when we discuss it now or potentially doing it now we know that because we are so heavily petsitting that would not be a wise choice. Now if we had done it several years ago, we'd be able to have that buffer of taking out all the dogs sitting in visits and just do middays and cats. But because we don't have that structure built in, it's not really wise for us to transition at this point that niching
Collin 07:28
is really important, it does a lot for you because you get to stay laser focused and you can potentially grow faster. Because through your marketing through your direct messaging to speaking to those problems that those clients have for that particular purpose. They're going to connect with those clients a lot easier, because your niche is exactly what they need. And they find a better fit faster, it's an easier sell, because they can already see how you benefit them. Without you having to talk about all the ancillary factors of this, they immediately see oh, this is what this person does. And that's my exact problem. But again, like Megan said, making this switch is hard. Because if business is already down, you may choose to ditch the services that you're offering anyway and go into one specific service. But making that transition means that you need to have a lot of cash flow, a lot of business already built up to tide you over. It's basically companies wishing to cannibalize their own business, so to speak of, of you've got this really great service out there. But you want to replace it with another stellar service, but there's very little overlap, you use your popular service to fund and grow the service that you are trying to move into. And so you do this from a place of strength they offer suffer a loss on the new thing, but they're okay with that because they have revenue being driven by something else. Let's put this give an actual example here. Think of apple and the iPhone, the iPhone for them generates so much money, it throws off billions and billions of dollars, that they can actually play around with doing things like making a car or making a fancy headset, things that they know aren't going to win right away. But they can take bets on those and they can afford to lose on them until one of them takes over the revenue from the iPhone. It's this cycle of constantly replacing your most popular service with something else to serve people in a different way. So if you're looking to niche a service, you can launch yourself into that by using your most popular service of let's say you're doing vacation visits for pet sitting. Continue to offer those while you slowly build up the other service to a position of strength so that you can slow down the pet sitting and focus more on those dog walks or more on those cat sitting services. If business is already depressed and you don't have revenue coming in, making the switch is actually a lot harder to do from a financial perspective. But it can be beneficial from a marketing perspective because you're able to focus only you can decide what you can do and what you can make manage what you can leverage with your numbers, and what kind of runway you have with your financials and what you haven't savings to make that switch.
Meghan 10:06
Yeah, it is critical to look at the numbers because you don't want to make an unwise choice. And then find yourself a couple months in having made that switch and regretting it of, oh, I actually can't support this, I can't put food on my table, I really needed to just ride this out and stick with what I was doing for just a little bit longer until my clients came back. But
Collin 10:24
niching in lean times is is difficult. I mean, just from an ecological perspective, there are species known as generalists. And there are a species known as specialists. generalists tend to thrive in unpredictable environments, think of dandelions, right. If you're like us, you can look out into your front yard right now, those things will grow on concrete and love it, they have a wide tolerance for all environmental factors. Too much water, not enough water, too much heat, not enough heat, too much salt, not enough salt, too much nutrients, not enough to nutrients, and they reproduce quickly and are hard to kill. However, in a more constant and unchanging environment, the species tend to niche and become specialists. This was actually something that I worked on, for my master's degree in a species of spring snail out in New Mexico, they were so specialized that each species was only found and could only survive at a single springhead, any slight change in water quality, or chemistry, and they completely die out. Now, in that spring, where they were highly adapted to, they dominated everything, they were so abundant, they thrived. They didn't have any problems existing there. And they would have huge populations. So they did really well in that one specific environment. But if you change that environment just a little bit, they could not thrive and their populations would die out. When we think about our businesses, we have to go from generalist to specialist, sometimes we have to change our focus and how we operate, so that we can adapt to the environment niching down in a business to focus on dog walks, or cat sets, or pet setting or particular breed or particular, whatever that is, you know, training need or special needs pet is a fantastic idea. But be ready to pivot and grow and expand beyond that. If you need to become to become more of a generalist so that you can survive in the more unpredictable environments or economic environment. Now, that's
Meghan 12:21
not to say that if you want to burn it all down or burn most of it down and start something new and completely change your business. I mean, now would be the time to do that. If there's no business to burn down. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we've talked about that, too, of just, if you know, we really want to make a hard switch, and we don't know exactly the right time. Well, if it's a slow time, if clients aren't really booking you or you aren't getting a lot of inquiries, maybe now is the time to make that switch and just do something completely different, because
Collin 12:52
you're not sacrificing too much, because there's nothing to sacrifice. But this is that mindset of being a generalist, because now I am being an opportunist, I'm being opportunistic to the environment around me. So when we talk about understanding the economic environment around you what's going on in your local community, you know, sure, pay attention to the national news, but really specifically what's going on in a seven mile radius around where you live, that's what's going to impact your business. And that's what you should have your finger on the pulse up. So getting involved with the Chamber of Commerce, talking with local professionals, other business owners, especially realtors, and people in that community, you're going to have a better idea of exactly what's going on and what's driving those factors. So that you can pivot so that you can expand out your services or shrink them down or offer something new, or, you know, go back to something you offered a couple of years ago, because you know, it's already there's already in your wheelhouse. It's kind of this, this, this idea of a pre adaptation, you have something sitting there that's not currently being utilized in the business environment right now. But as soon as that business environment changes to something more favorable for that service that you have, all of a sudden, you can thrive in that environment. So keeping your options open and looking at opportunities around every corner is one of the ways that you're going to survive a recession and economic downturn. And
Meghan 14:10
that does get to what do we do about all of this because you don't just want to be doom and gloom. But before we get to that, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their very 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 pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you got to check out check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at Pet set llc.com. So again, what do we do? What are some options when things are slow? Or we're just not really feeling this anymore? Or clients aren't contacting us or existing ones, aren't we looking at, what do we do, one of the options is you can just write it out, businesses will always have an ebb and flow to them. And we because we cannot control the economy, we just have to do the best that we can and control the things that we can. We talked about the oversaturation of a lot of new sitters coming into the market. Sometimes you have to wait for it to become not as saturated as it has been. We've been contacted by several potential clients who had a sitter who got a job, and now can't do this anymore. Well, they're looking for a new sitter. And here we are. As frustrating as that can be to be somebody's second choice or fifth choice. Sometimes, as we've experienced, you do just have to continue to be there businesses with that longevity who are standing the test of time who are a staple in the community, and they've always been there, they are going to win out, they're going to continue to be referred to people it may be a little slower sometimes when the market is saturated, or there's an overabundance of people who are less expensive than you and an economic downturn. But if you continue to be there, if you continue to ride the out, you'll be able to grow your client base and accumulate those clients faster when the economy comes back up.
Collin 16:10
And when you do get contacted by potential clients who have this story, always ask them again, this part of our onboarding of, Hey, have you used a professional before or what kind of care have your pets received Previous to this, you'll get an idea of who they've used, how long they use them and what those conditions were. Now you can use that as a talking point for you as a company, you have longevity in mind, you're not a fly by night person. This is something that you do that you are dedicated to that you've done for X number of years that you are dedicated to continue to doing for a number of X years, because switching costs are really high in this kind of industry. Because people have to fill out information, they have to the client has to know who's coming over, they've got all these questions, everybody's process is slightly different. It's annoying for the client to switch. So once they get in with somebody, and they're comfortable with what's going on, they're going to stay there. So you can give them peace of mind before they've even used your services by letting them know you're going to be there tomorrow. And you can now use that as a selling point for this.
Meghan 17:06
If you are seeing a slowdown in your business, it's important to keep marketing and cost effective ways. So you probably aren't going to go spend $1,000 on poo bags and tennis balls to just throw it people at random when you're driving. Or don't recommend that. Or do golf course advertisements or major banners, you're going to do it in maybe social media where you can get a lot of exposure fast or Google My Business, it's a great free way
Collin 17:32
or smaller direct mailings group, you know, that's the rule of five, if you have a client in a particular neighborhood, you can mail something to the person on either side of them and the three people across the road from him. This keeps it really focused. And you're not going to grow too fast doing this, but you can continue to say is top of mind for people who are in those particular areas. And a great way of doing this is also going and talking in person to local business owners, not just rumors, and vats, and trainers and nutritionists, not just those people those are in continue, it's important to continue those relationships, foster those relationships, go in and say hi, make sure that they have your banners, make sure they have your most recent card and your most recent information, remind them of what you do. But then go and talk to other business owners go down Main Street or your historic district and knock on doors and say hi to people see who is out there in what they are feeling what they are experiencing. Always show up to see how you can help them. This is the best way to grow these relationships. It's not just a hey, how you doing? You've never met me before. Can you put this flyer in your storefront? It's a what is going on with you? How are you experiencing things, what's your business doing, like, introduce yourself talking about what you do in your pet sitting and dog walking company, but then make sure that it's focused on that person, because then you're really going to get to know them. And as they talk, you're going to think of ways that you can connect them partner, truly partner, not just, you know, be a tick on their company. But really just we can both help each other in very specific ways,
Meghan 19:02
or apartment complexes going and talking with some of their management staff there or maybe even independent and assisted living facilities. Something that we've struggled with is the feeling that you get during this time have. Nobody wants to use me my existing clients don't even want to use me I'm not getting very many inquiry calls. Nobody seems to know about me or want to use my services. And we kind of just get a little depressed actually. But knowing that there is action that we can be doing is should be motivational to getting out there and continuing to do this because really, you have the time now if you're in a slow time in your business, you have the time you should be utilizing that time for the benefit of your company if you want to keep it going well
Collin 19:47
and it can be very arresting to when when time is slow. When you've taken the 10th phone call for that day and somebody still doesn't want to use your services. It is extremely defeating. It just is it's really hard. hard to wake up the next morning and continue pushing through. But that's what it means to be a business owner. That's what it means to be running a small business, especially in this economy in this modern era of it's a lot of hard work to get in front of the people that you need to be in front of. And that's what's going to define you as a business owner was is if you want to, if you feel the desire to get back up the next morning, and try again, all while having a hyper focus on yourself and your mental health and to stay connected with other people during this time. It is extremely draining, it can be very defeating, you can go into some very dark places, and not really happy, joyful places, when business is slow. And when you feel like you're just not making any progress, even though you're sending out flyers, and you're talking with people and you're making all these contacts, and you're going to the chamber event you're going to these networking events, but no business seems to come in, still take time for you to focus on you make sure that you are okay. Because if you are okay, you will always be able to show up again tomorrow. And
Meghan 21:08
in terms of your business, it is important to stay top of mind, particularly now maybe people don't need you now. But their sitter is going to get another job in six months. And they don't know about that yet. Or life just happens for everybody. And so maybe they don't need you right now. But they may later. And if they know, oh, there was this one company that did something with pets, let me Google them. Or maybe you gave them your business card or magnet and they have that they can go oh, okay, it's all about this top of mind what you can do to just keep pumping that information out at people so that in the event that they do need you they know your company name and what you do, and how you can help them. And
Collin 21:46
during that process, really take a look at your mixture of services and what you're offering. And we already mentioned this, but really take a hard look at what you are offering what is actually popular, what are people asking for and requesting from you and your business. And again, you may have to become a generalist, or at least offer more ways for people to spend money with you, no matter how big of a ticket item or how small of a ticket item, have some way for somebody to spend money at your business. I'm actually during this process, I'm reminded of an actually a car company. Okay, so the French car company Peugeot, they make cars, there's still modern day making cars. But they didn't always start out making cars back in 1810. They actually were just a steel foundry. And then they made saws. And then they made other hand tools. And then like the mid 1800s, they started making coffee grinders, and then they moved into bicycles. And then they moved into petticoats and dresses, and other sorts of umbrellas and chisels and all sorts of different things. Year after year, every like 10 to 20 years, they completely reinvented their company of what they made. And it wasn't until the early 1900s, where they started to get into cars, which is now what they are well known for. So there are these growing pains, but what they were doing was finding needs finding niches and filling them one at a time kind of like this, this serial niching of oh, I can do that really well. And then I can do that really well. That may be a process for you as you learn about what your clients are needing, or what potential clients are calling you for. Really listen to what they are asking, before you start telling them how you can serve them. Make sure that they have told you fully about what their expectations are. Because that may give you some hint or clue into how you can start marketing, either existing services or new services that you want to use,
Meghan 23:34
as long as you're not sacrificing quality, because that is where in the trust business, we need to be top professional quality always.
Collin 23:42
And really this entire process is is you working on defining what your business actually is.
Meghan 23:49
Yeah, maybe this year isn't the year when you hit six figures. And that's okay, maybe this isn't the year when you switch to being totally out of the field, maybe you have to step back in for a few days or a few months. That is okay. Maybe you can't pivot into a niche this year because you need the income right now or you need to add back services that you took away because you need to feed your family. That is also okay. If you don't hit your goals this year. As much as that will hurt. It is going to be okay. The market is going to turn around. We are going to see this resurgence again. This is kind of just the backlash of we had COVID Nothing that we had a huge boom and now we're kind of in a bust again. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. These economic turns happen all the time ebbs and flows of businesses, entrepreneurship, it's all ups and downs and just need to stay focused on our businesses and make it what you want. We would love to hear how your business is doing. If you have implemented some of the things we've talked about or if you have other ideas, we'd love to hear them. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com Thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode. Thank you. We appreciate you always listening and we will talk with you next time. Bye
