493: Seeking Genuine Engagement Over Vanity with Kate McQuillan
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Are you engaging with the right clients? Kate McQuillan, owner of Pet Sitters Ireland and Pet Business Owners, emphasizes the importance of market research and understanding your audience. She highlights how local content can drive meaningful engagement and how a consistent blogging strategy can significantly impact business growth. Kate stresses the value of genuine customer engagement over vanity metrics and the need for efficient operations to meet client expectations.
Main topics:
Market research
Local content
Blogging impact
Customer engagement
Efficient operations
Main takeaway: People are looking for engagement, not just likes and shares. It's about building relationships.
About our guest:
Kate McQuillan is the dynamic founder and driving force behind Pet Sitters Ireland, a premier pet sitting and dog walking business in Ireland. Since its inception in 2010, Kate, alongside her husband Michael, has grown the company into Ireland’s largest pet care service, renowned for its commitment to providing in-home pet care as a superior alternative to kennels. Passionate about pets and driven by a vision to create a service that pet owners could trust, Kate has built a business that prioritizes the comfort and well-being of pets in their own homes.
In addition to Pet Sitters Ireland, Kate also founded Pet Business Owners, a platform dedicated to supporting and mentoring other pet care entrepreneurs. Through this venture, she shares her extensive knowledge in marketing, blogging, and business strategies, helping others to achieve success in the pet care industry.
Kate’s expertise extends beyond business operations; she is a prolific blogger and a recognized authority in the pet care community. Her innovative approach to marketing and unwavering commitment to excellence have earned her numerous accolades, including the Best Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business in Ireland. Living in the peaceful countryside south of Dublin with her husband and their beloved pets, Kate continues to inspire and lead the way in the pet care industry.
Links:
https://www.petsittersireland.com
https://www.facebook.com/PetSittersIreland/
https://www.instagram.com/petsittersireland/
https://www.youtube.com/user/petsittersireland
https://twitter.com/PetSittersIre
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, pet, business, talking, service, blog, blogging, clients, good, ireland, big, started, inquiries, gift, writing, dog, business owners, customers, grow, blog posts
SPEAKERS
Kate M., Collin
Collin 00:01
Welcome to pet sitter confessional. Today, we're brought to you by time to pet and pet perennials. Today, we are super excited to have a very special guest, Kate McQuillan on the podcast. She's an owner and founder of pet sitters Ireland and pet business owners as well talks a lot about social media, but has been running a dog walking and pet sitting business over in Ireland for quite some time. Kate, super excited to have you on the show. I really appreciate your time on your busy schedule. For those who might not be as familiar with you and your work. Could you please tell a little bit more about who you are and all that you do?
Kate M. 00:34
Yeah, so as you said, my name is Kate McQuillan. I live in Ireland, probably about 90 minutes south of Dublin. So I think most people are familiar with Dublin. We live in right in the middle of the countryside. It's beautiful, that it's very quiet, very peaceful. I have two dogs, two beautiful pointers. And I live with my husband, Michael, who also runs the business with me. So I run it together. And we started our business back in 2010. So it's been a while now. And we've always been passed in and are walking. And really the way the business started was kind of like, we had always been struggling with putting our pets into kennels I hated it, I hated leaving them. They didn't like it was just kind of upsetting to put them into a kennel environment, they weren't used to that kind of thing they used to like sleeping in the bed. And I had a friend who was in the UK and she was doing cat setting. And it was something that I never heard of before. And I just thought this is a genius idea, like somewhere where you can leave your dogs where they're completely used to. And at the time we had a cat as well, you know, leaving your pets where they get the comfort of their own home, someone comes in and cares for them. And that's really how the business started, I thought, you know, there's definitely a market for this, if we would love something like this in here in Ireland, you know, there's definitely a market for it. We did a whole bunch of market research to test out the market, see if it was something people would be interested in. At the time, there were a few people doing it, but very much on a kind of casual, you know, doing it for friends and family and not really as a business. And so that's where that started from. And then in 2017, we decided to look into franchising. Ireland is, is a strange place, really, there's a lot of areas that are Roro. So you might think, oh, Ireland's really small. But in some ways, it's a very big place. Because there's so much rural areas that really make it hard to service the whole thing without having, you know, sort of pockets of people on although at the time, we had sitters in lots of different areas around how to manage them, and really grow in those areas. So we looked at it as way as franchising was the opportunity to have somebody who was dedicated to those rural areas on the ground to really grow it. So we did that in 2017, we had huge success with that we won the 2025 as the Year Award, then COVID here, which put a bit of a spanner in the works. Really, the market has changed a little bit over here, a lot of people now are really working from home. So that has kind of changed things. We're currently sort of restructuring our franchise model, we have a couple of franchisees, some of them sadly, couldn't hang on to get through COVID, which totally understandable. So we took a lot of those areas back in house and manage those ourselves now. But yeah, that is really kind of our journey through the business this year, we won 2024 pet sitting and dog walking business, best business in Ireland. So that was a great start to the year. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey for sure. One
Collin 03:47
aspect of that was you sat down and you said you did a lot of market research before you started. What, what does that mean to you? Because I know a lot of people think market research, they think a lot of people have different perspectives on that. So from from your perspective, what did that what did that mean? And maybe how do you stay fresh with them?
Kate M. 04:04
Yeah, we did a lot of surveys amongst friends and family. And then wider. We did a whole survey and Survey Monkey really looking at asking people like, is this a service that they would use? You know, do they understand it? You know, what would they expect from it just really to get sort of an idea of people would allow you into their homes where people understand this a bit like hiring a cleaner or a workman to come in and do stuff, that kind of thing, what kind of prices? What would kind of put them off using server side there's what they currently do to really kind of gauge the market to see, you know, where as well geographically people would do it. As I said, islands are changed in the sense that you know, you've got Dublin and you've got cork and you've got Galway, and Limerick the big kind of areas. And then outside of that you've got all these little villages and people's. The way they use services is very different. From the city to the countryside, so a lot of country, people might say, Oh God, I would never have someone in my home, I would never do that, or, you know, Mary down the road would do that for me. Whereas in the city, people don't have those close knit communities the way they would in rural areas. So yet they would use services like this. So you know, it's just, I was just really trying to understand the geographics of it all, and where we would be best place to grow the business, because we don't actually live in Dublin, like, say, was in 90 minutes south of Dublin, but our biggest service area would be Dublin.
Collin 05:33
Well, it is important to understand the some of the biases and the preconceived notions Yeah. Yeah. Because we may think, Oh, this is the most brilliant idea in the whole world, this makes the most sense to me. But if we start talking to people, what you find that you start cross talking, right, and they're trying to assimilate what you're saying, but completely misunderstanding it, because they're coming at it from the poach approach of Oh, my, like you said, like, I never let somebody in my house, what do you what an awful service and you're like, I don't know, it's amazing.
Kate M. 06:01
And it was really interesting, because when we did the survey, obviously, we had people say what county they lived in. And it was really interesting to see the different results from different counties. Like I say, you know, city people are more open to, they used to have in more stuff, you know, like Uber's, and delivery services, and people cleaners and stuff coming in, or as people in smaller rural areas, you know, there wasn't such a tape up on it. So that was kind of interesting. And also to see sort of some kind of idea of like, ownership as well, in Ireland. At the time, there wasn't used statistics on how many pets people had in Ireland. It's been added to some of our surveys now that the government do but at the time, there wasn't so much data. So that was interesting to see. So that was really what started it up.
Collin 06:49
Well, it's a it's a great one, because we we talked about understanding our market, right, that it really is just going, Who am I serving? What are their needs? What are their beliefs about this? And how can I best meet those is kind of the outflow of that is, is that a survey? Are they I mean, is that do you send that still send out surveys like that
Kate M. 07:06
we've done some smaller surveys, we did some around the franchises and stuff, but not to that extent. I mean, that was really kind of just a setup, to see if it was a viable business. Really, that was my husband was never keen on starting a pet sitting business. So it was kind of my way of proving that this is definitely a good idea.
Collin 07:26
Look, honey, there's a chart here that proves you know, before you got started in 2010, what were you What were you doing? What was kind of your background leading you into this?
Kate M. 07:39
Yeah, so I had a, I have a degree in business studies that I did over in the UK. And then I mainly worked in call centers doing statistical analysis, which sounds really boring. I enjoyed it. I like numbers. I like looking at things, what's working, what's not working. So it's all about making sure people are on the phones at the right time to answer the calls. They're all kind of international call centers. So that's what I was doing. And my husband worked in construction. So he was a site manager in the construction industry. That's what brought us over to Island was his job. And then really, we were just looking for something that we could do for ourselves to get out of that kind of like home to work routine. And, you know, just something that we could do that will be more enjoyable a business of our own. So yeah, we just went for it. That
Collin 08:29
explains a lot about the kind of survey that you sent out now. Because you were you were like, Yes, I can get some data about whatever
Kate M. 08:37
data.
Collin 08:40
It is. Because, again, it sounds big and scary to a lot of people have numbers that I need to know, I hear a lot of people say, Oh, I'm not a math person, I don't really need to know that. What kind of things do you like to look for? Or like, or do you think are relevant to a lot of business owners that maybe they don't pay much attention to?
Kate M. 08:59
In terms of marketing? Is it? Yes,
Collin 09:02
yeah. Yeah, I
Kate M. 09:03
think I think a lot of people are looking for quick fixes. So they think they're gonna do something and say, I don't know, put out what blog posts on social media posts get hundreds of likes, and that's it, they're done, they've got all these customers. And what people need to be looking more at is, you know, the, that answering the questions customers have and meeting them at their needs. You know, they're busting the myths that people have around our industry, and showing people that you know, this is a service that you can use it safe and looking at, instead of saying, oh, you know, this is a viral piece of content and this is how many likes it got look at the actual engagement on it, how people are reacting to stuff. You know, it's interesting when you put out articles about so for example, I put an article out about how much you should exercise your dog you know what the real needs around exercise are. I'm not looking at people like that article. I'm looking for people to engage with it who They have a have a care about how their dogs should be exercised, because that leads them then on to meet her dog walker. So I think it's just a shift in what what I would say Vannett called vanity metrics to actual proper engagement, where you're beginning to talk to the customers that you want to service and you're actually getting their reactions, and you're getting them to engage with you and come back to you. I think that's the thing we should be measuring. Like, you could put something out and you get one like, kinda feels a bit sad. But like, if you get a load of people actually talking to you or contacting you, that's what you should be measuring. And I sometimes think people miss that, which is a shame. And but and I see why, because a lot of stuff is talking about how many, like viral content or this kind of stuff that? Yeah, I think that's if you have a mindset of even if you get to people that actually interact with you properly, that's way better than 1000 Lie. Yeah, I
Collin 10:56
see that that mindset, a lot that virality mindset of, oh, gosh, look at this Instagram reel, that guy, you know, 13 point 8 million views or whatever, blah, blah, how do I do that my business? And I think that's been a big step back of going. Is that is that your metric? Right? Like is that your metric? Because that person, what's important to know is like that person who got the 13 million or whatever, they're making a living off of the platform, right? They are the social media influencer. But how many calls are you getting for your services? And how you link it back to that, of, of really, what is that metric at the end of the day, and that it's not the number of followers that you have either it's the amount of engagement and it man, that
Kate M. 11:36
that's easy. It's much easier if you have a small audience in some respects, I mean, I've had pieces of content that have reached 30 40 million, and nothing out of them nothing at all, like, you know, because it's reached the wrong people. It's not necessarily local people. It's gone on, it's gone viral, it's kind of reached a more worldwide audience and just local area. So I think smaller audiences, sometimes they're much better for engaging and get a higher percentage engagement rate. You get more local people seeing it. It's actually a story and I wish I could remember this woman's name, but she was a massive influencer. And she had a huge audience talking hundreds of 1000s on Tik Tok. And it was in one of the business magazines, she decided to launch a clothing line. And she was the host case study was written out, she was only able to generate 30 sales from these hundreds of 1000s of people that were following her because they weren't truly engaged with what she was doing. You know, how easy is it to click like or view of video, you could view a video and not even realize you viewed it, because it's just whizzed by, and the algorithm. And that just goes to show like, you know, you think somebody's super successful, because they've got this huge following that doesn't necessarily equate to sales. And I think if people can realize that, I think it can be quite comforting that, you know, even if you only have a few 100 followers on your Instagram account, you can still make money and make sales from it.
Collin 13:06
Yeah. Well, and and you're, you're kind of you're bringing in the new leads, but also that other aspect of am I nurturing my existing clients, right? Like, what also am I doing with this, it's not just about the number of likes and number of views, but there are people out there in my community, who are my clients that I can be feeding into, as well. And fostering that aspect to
Kate M. 13:29
Yeah, and creating relationships. Because I think sometimes we focus on building that building an audience, getting more followers growing our list doing this, but are we actually, like you say nurturing those people that have already taken the time to follow us that potentially are getting to know us and would buy from us. And that's where having conversations with people online and being social is super important. And it's the fun part, you know, chatting to people, it's just like going into a room and ignoring all the people you know, and not talking to them and just looking for new people to meet. It's kind of rude.
Collin 14:03
Oh, that's a fantastic perspective of because I know like we've gone into, like business networking events. And early on, I did have that mindset of so you're like, you're literally speaking to me right now. Kind of like I had that mindset of, okay, I've already talked to that person and that person, that person who haven't I talked to today, and there is an aspect of that, but there's still the need to go. Hey, John, or hey, Samantha, great seeing you again. How's the business going? Or how is the how are you? How's the family? How's whatever, like, that engagement is so important. And we often go, Well, I've already got that person locked down because I've got their business card, or I've got their contact and my software. So who's the next target? And you're right, it's just, it's just rude at that point, because you're kind of ignoring, and
Kate M. 14:45
you never know who they're gonna refer you too. It's kind of like, you know, narrowing in on those people that might refer you to other people or might introduce you to their network, as opposed to always go and wide with loads and loads of new people. And it's started to talk to people you already know. Yeah.
Collin 15:02
Yeah. Cuz you have that that relationship that you are growing and building from there. You mentioned about blogging. And I was curious about that is, is blogging still as relevant or as important when when you started? Because I know that was something that you were really into it and still are into writer?
Kate M. 15:22
Yeah, anybody that knows me will know what I'm going to say. I love blogging. And it has been the single biggest thing that has grown our business, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind. When we first started blogging really early on, I wrote hundreds I think there's like 1000 blogs on our website at the moment. Yeah, I used to write three times a week, I would blog about absolutely everything, and anything, anything to do with stuff going on in the local area, pet questions, reviews of products, all sorts, anything pet related, I just, I just was obsessed with it, the amount of traffic that it brought in. I mean, we were getting like 50,000 visits a month to our website, from all of the content really early on. And I think I think what worked for us was because we were very consistent with it, we tried loads of different things to see what would work. So I'd have categories of different blogs and rotate through them, like said do product reviews. And that would create relationships with local businesses. So people who were starting up small pet businesses in the eye, we would review their product. I do tons of like pet questions. So answering about health and things like that, which had been great for sharing on social media to show to show that we know something about animals, I do so much stuff about the local area, which I think again, reached out to people local to us, over the years that I've changed our strategy slightly to be more local based. So while I do think that there's a lot of benefit in blogging about pet related products, and topics, I think you're competing more, definitely in the US you're competing with like pet and D and those kinds of sites, because they're writing about that kind of stuff. And with that traffic, it can tend to not always be your local area traffic. That's the big thing. So some of the traffic we were generating, say I'm answering, you know, why does my dog you know, eat its own poo was coming from America, because people were finding it and search there, which doesn't necessarily benefit our business, you know, here in Ireland. So we shifted more towards a total local content strategy. So everything was more about the local area. So writing about groomers trainers, you know, even a local board in places, things like this things that had parents who may use our services in the local area where we're looking for, we still do product reviews, and venue reviews and stuff like that, but it was all local. And what we found was that then those local blogs, were driving all of our contacts. So everybody that was coming through the website was coming via those blog posts, unless, unless it was a direct search for our business same, but they were generating actual leads. So I have a set up in Google Analytics. So you can see which blog post all our contact forms come from. And it's showing that it's that local stuff, and you're talking hundreds of leads a month. Like this is stuff that I've written years ago that is still generating that kind of traffic. So it's I think, where people maybe are put off with blogging, because it's not instant, like I blogged for years. And it takes time to build up that authority on Google. And but once you've got it, and once people are finding those blogs, that's kind of a job done. And I mean, you keep adding to it as new stuff comes up. But you've done a lot of the hard work, and those leads just keep coming in. Whereas if you start posting on social media, that's it leads kind of dried up. Yeah. So it is a longer term strategy. But there's no doubt in my mind. I mean, it's been huge for us, and even in terms of credibility for everyone a huge pet competition out here in Ireland called the nose of Trini. It's kind of the pet version of a famous beauty contests that's been running there for years. And like we've got massive sponsorship out of that, because people were so well known with so much stuff in the press was so high up on Google. And people notice I think, you know, when people are and journalists are even looking for quotes for articles, they're finding your stuff all adds to your credibility. So I think yeah, login is the best. I could talk about blogging all day. I wish more people would embrace it. I really do. Because I think as a long term investment, it's it's massive for your business. It really is.
Collin 19:56
Have you heard of time to pet, Chris and from raising kids? Cats and Dogs has this to say, becoming
20:01
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Collin 20:26
If you're looking for new PET scanning software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show can save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional. Why do you think more people don't go into blogging? I know you talked about like the it's not an instant gratification kind of thing. What other things do you think holding people back?
Kate M. 20:46
I just don't think people like writing maybe maybe they don't feel confident. Right. And it's a lot of people convince themselves, it's not that thing. For me, though, I'm always looking at what the reward is. I mean, there's loads of things in life we don't like doing, but we do them because of the reward. You know, and to me, even though blogging sometimes can be, you know, a time consumption, you know, the reward totally offsets that. But I think for some, maybe they just feel that they don't have that time. They don't want to ride they don't know where to start. They're not very good at it. I mean, some of my early blogs were horrendous, like, so you do get better. That's the thing. Yeah,
Collin 21:31
it is it is a practice, right. And so it is a process of of understanding, what's my writing style, and being comfortable with that too, because this is also a an insight into who you are as a person, what when this person is reading, when that potential client is reading that blog, you know, they're hearing how you put things together, they're hearing a little bit of yourself are reading also reading a little bit of yourself in that in that content and knowing that it can be a very personal connection that you develop with people through the information that you put out there.
Kate M. 22:04
I don't think we have to, as well just accept that we're not going to be perfect at it from the beginning. I never had any issue with that I just was so determined as this was going to be the thing that worked for us that I just didn't stop until I kind of got it right. So like I say, if you go back at some of the beginning ones, they're horrific. But you get better at it, you get more results from it. Again, I would look constantly look at the analytics of which was working, which wasn't. And I think that's the big thing. Maybe people don't do that when they do in blogging, they don't look to see what results they're getting. Because once you see the results is kind of quite addictive. You're like, oh, well, can I get one to do more, you know, kind of get more like inquiries from it. And maybe that's my numbers background. But I think that, for me was a real driver, because it's free traffic. You know, when you think of the cost, I mean, we do some Google ads, and we've done Facebook ads, when you look at the cost of those to acquire one customer compared to the cost by a blog post that you write once and can generate hundreds of leads. Like it's a bit of a no brainer, really. There. Yeah, I
Collin 23:17
was just going to bring up the paying for the ads thing of just as much as we don't like writing, like, a lot of us don't like having, quote having to spend money on those ads to drive traffic to us. But it's a sacrifice that we see is worth making to us in a lot of cases. But if we get into that mindset of long term view, it's also going to do a lot to build my credibility, right? build that trust, build that relationship instead of just throwing ads in front of people, because that can be a bit spammy, or you have different thoughts about that process. It's going, No, this is a way for me to also dig into my local community, you mentioned about how now you're doing all this local content. And that's a great way to foster those relationships with the vets with the groomers with them, having them on or talking to them, allowing them to contribute to this stuff is much more, much more holistic approach about it in that way.
Kate M. 24:07
Yeah, it's definitely more community. And as well as when we've done blogs about that, like you say, then not only are people finding us through those, but also the vet feels good because they've got a little shout out, you know, and so when someone comes in, how are they going to recommend as you've actually taken some time to get to know them? Or somebody who's just come in and said, Can I leave my cards for you to hand out to all your customers? You know, I mean cards do work. I'm not taking that away from it. But I think that kind of relationship building and it's something that you don't always need to do in person. A lot of this can be done over email, you know, interviews like this, that kind of thing.
Collin 24:46
I think one of our single best performing blogs on ours was one we wrote about a very local Cat Rescue because we I mean when people say like surrendering cat or when they type in, you know Cat Rescue near me or whatever. or our our blog is usually the first hit on that, which is, you know, instead of there, which is fine, because now we can get connected with that person, we can help if we view it more of like a, here's a resource for the community, and people who are interested or find those kinds of pets are also pet people. So we have a connection there of just being more engaged as well, for there,
Kate M. 25:20
I think is a natural way of people finding you as well. Like you mentioned, it's not the whole army, you know, ads on Facebook and things like that. It's a way someone can find you and get to know you and see, you know, these people care they're writing about at rescue, there must be cat people, you know, if you need a cat sitter, who they're going to think of
Collin 25:40
now, you mentioned, you've got 1000s of blogs out there, or do you go back and re edit them or delete any that maybe aren't driving traffic to your website?
Kate M. 25:50
I have deleted some because they were very dated, you know, they've gone out of date, but I will always redirect them to something else? Well, yes, I do update them. And I had a massive updating process through COVID. Actually, when I had a little bit more time, just to go back through some of the old ones that needed a bit of love for should I say, and I've used chat GPT to help with that. So just to put it in and tidy up the grammar. And, you know, then I'd put in what I wasn't doing in the beginning, I wasn't putting in a lot of call to actions. So now in all my blogs, I have like banner ads, which say book, et cetera, et cetera, dot dog, Walker, whatever is appropriate for the blog. I wasn't doing so much of that in the beginning. And I've maybe I've aligned sentence that said it. Whereas they've gone back and put all those graphics in a lot of the blogs, and a lot of them are performing a lot better. I've started re sharing them on social. So that's good. Because all that content is great to have for your social media, you know, so that you've got other stuff to share. We share tons of blog posts on Facebook. So yeah, updating is good. And check GPT I wouldn't recommend having it right or your blog post. I think it can be a great assistance. But yeah, just to be careful. What it kind of spits out is fact and that still has your personality, I think.
Collin 27:13
Yeah, I think my my most use prompt is please spell check. Pick a grammar, grammar for me, because I I'm terrible at that. So yeah, it's able to go. Yeah, I've written everything. I just need somebody to review this real quick and then seeing did it change anything major, right? Because I haven't had it. I've had it spit out a few things where I was like, that's more than spell checking chi PT? No, no, no, no.
Kate M. 27:40
Yeah, but it is very useful. And especially if you don't feel you're a great writer, it's great to just run it through there and let it kind of do its thing to make it. One of my favorite is can you make this sound a little bit better? And I hope it's maybe like a paragraph or something and you just can't get it right. Well, yeah, even like a lot of blog posts, then if you're updating you might be linking more blog posts to other ones, you know, so that's good for your SEO is to go through and say you had one on dog training, linking it to other dog training ones, or I did a whole thing with all our local content. So I would set up a page for each of the counties. And then I started linking all the content for that county to that page. And yeah, so that's made a huge difference as well.
Collin 28:26
Yeah, we have we've we've started doing that as well, mostly because we got a lot of people. It's our repurpose started because we'd get a lot of new people to our service area. And they were like, Do you know any other group? Do you know any other names like, oh, well, I've got this blog, and this blog, this blog. So now you can just take that whole page with all those blogs on it and go, here's your resource to the local area that kind of gives them that that kind of almost as a little bit of a welcome packet to them as to where you're living, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
Kate M. 28:57
I think people like people who are helpful, and that's what you're doing them are helpful, you can beat people, the more rememberable you are, the more they trust you and like, you know, they'll know like and trust. Yeah.
Collin 29:08
Well, and, and that trust aspect in this business in this industry is absolutely huge. And so I was curious, you know, you've you've kind of been pushing the envelope in your own business, you know, you're changing into franchising and then changing other ways and pushing services and staying up to date on all the modern technologies. How, how do you go about balancing that push to always kind of be on the leading edge of things versus needing to build trust with people who a lot of clients like stability and kind of don't like change in a business?
Kate M. 29:39
Yeah, I think we've always stuck to our core things I think from the beginning is, you know, we're going to turn up on time when you want us. We're going to follow your instructions and we're going to let you know your pets are safe and your home secure. That's always kind of been our message when we're talking to people. This is like the basics of what we do. And that has now for change, that service never changes. What has changed for us with the technology with pushing things on is actually more efficiency, more automation. You know, getting back to people much quicker, we have a lot of our kind of communication system automated now, we have a call center that takes calls. So people are getting responses much quicker to their inquiries. So I think, in some ways, people haven't really noticed that we've evolved, they just see things quicker and more efficient. And as time has gone on, I think people want that more. I mean, you have all the wax and the rovers, we have similar apps here. And those apps are so quick people like that kind of immediate service. And I think we've kept our core values, but we've just been able to speed things up, but yet still give that kind of feel of being a sort of a personal company. I mean, our phone number is still on the bottom of everything that goes out, we would always answer the phone, we encourage anybody who's got questions ring us direct, you know, you don't need to go through the call center if you don't want to, we're always available. So I think I think that's kept it and everything about is on the website is about the two of us. You know, even though we have franchisees, we do have their stuff on there. Like the homepage is about US Social Media, I'm very much kind of front facing with any press that we do that kind of thing. So yeah, I think we've managed to keep a good enough balance where it's sustainable. And you know, it's scalable. And we don't really try to introduce anything into the business that we can't scale. I remember the thing was the first year we're in business, we're like, oh, we're gonna give everybody a calendar. That is our customer every year. And the first year that was like, Oh, wow, this was kind of pricey. But this is a great investment. The next year, we were like, holy crap, no way. Can we do that? No way. And Frank's ever since that I've thought whatever great genius ideas you have, that you want to do just always think about, is it scalable? You know, the bigger that you get, because a lot of things are, you know, for businesses like ours, just as from a cost point of view, I think that's where you let people down. Because if you start off with all of this stuff, when you're small that you're doing for customers, and then as you get bigger, you can't do it, people become dissatisfied. Whereas if you just kind of think, okay, am I going to be able to do this, where my business is four times as big, if that's what you want to do. And if it's not, then it's probably something that you want to scale back or not do. I mean, we find customers just want us to do what we've promised and be there, when we said we will and look after their pets and love them. You know, they're not looking for a lot of this over and above stuff, they just want a good service, and then they're happy. And if they
Collin 32:58
had wanted a mobile treat delivery service, there's a lot of things that you can go on Amazon or chewy or you know, other services like that, they don't need us for that aspect. Now, it's can be a kind thing to do. But as you started off going, how do we balance that of being innovative, and also building trust, it's core values. At the end of the day, it's it's, we're always going to show up on time now, how the client knows that may be different versus you know, the automated messaging or our app or whatever we're using the updates that may look different as we introduce technology or or increase those efficiencies. But at the end of the day, they're still getting those updates, they still have that reliability, that predictability. And it is up to us as the business owners to go. Can I continue with this is just like you talked about with the blogging of can I be consistent in this? Because there's so many good ideas out there, I see it every, every Christmas, and every holiday and every birthday is what what gifts do you give your clients and it's like, Well, be careful with that, because it can get out of hand where if you're just starting out and you do have maybe 10 clients, it's pretty easy to get them all kinds of nice gifts for Christmas, if you have 1000 clients a little less so and
Kate M. 34:11
so quickly, you know, even if you think I'm just gonna get the retreat and a card, even if you're just sending out Christmas cards, you know, that can add up really quickly. So I think I don't know whether people need it. I don't know whether they need all this stuff. I don't get any stuff from any service providers that I use, and I don't feel any less satisfied by them. Like the laundry service I use. They don't send me a Christmas gift. But you know, they do my laundry on time they have it ready for me to collect and I'm delighted with the service. That's good enough for me and I think for a lot of people that are just looking for you to deliver on your promise. Yes, I really do believe that. If we focus on those core things and the core services, that is enough for people that is good is better. than most, because some companies by terrible service. So I think we're winning if we're meeting those core values, right?
Collin 35:08
It is that promise that we made to those clients. And at the end of the day in a lot of that actually caters like we have to be okay with that we have to feel satisfied in a job well done, in that we met all of the criteria, not that we left an extra goodie bag, or we left the handwritten whatever, or we sent the card or whatever, it's, it's, we were enough, we were sufficient. And that takes a lot of with personally accepting a lot of like, it's just my work. I knew I did a good job. And that's enough for that client. And a lot of that is a refocus back on on us and how we view ourselves. Yeah, exactly. Okay. You mentioned that that scaling in that growth aspect. I know, I know that you you now run the largest dog walking and pet sitting company in in Ireland. When When did you or did you ever see that in the trajectory of your business? Or was it kind of a Oh, wow, look, what we've looked at we've accomplished.
Kate M. 36:08
X you in some ways? Yes. In other ways? No, it wasn't like a conscious thing. I think, because we knew our market so well from the beginning. And we really had a clear idea. And we were both very clear that we didn't want to be sitting ourselves just as a job, you know, that we did want a business. I think the traffic that we generated, I think it was just inevitable that it would grow that big. And we knew that there was a demand for this service. Now, not to say there hasn't been some difficulties along the way and resistance from people who, you know, think that kennels should be the only option and things like that. But yeah, I think it was always on the cards that it was going to grow. And I think as well, because we ran so many things alongside like, we started that competition like that's been in its 11th year this year for that annual competition like that generates articles all over the press, we get on TV with that huge, and we have big sponsors now, and then doing the franchise thing and winning the awards and things like that, that as all helped. What's
Collin 37:16
it been like managing that? Maybe from a business? And also a personal side as well? Yeah,
Kate M. 37:20
I mean, we now we very much split the business? Um, you work with your wife, don't you?
Collin 37:26
Yes. Yeah. Megan, I
Kate M. 37:27
do work very closely. Yes. So I think for us, we had very clear roles from the beginning. I think when you work together as husband and wife, you don't want to be stepping on each other's toes. So we used to do a lot more operations stuff together. And then I kind of split off to do more of the marketing, then obviously, I have my business owners stuff as well, Michael's background is very much in managing people and motivating, like he worked in construction, the site manager, and that's very much about getting people to kind of be where they're supposed to be doing the right thing. And so I suppose we both bought good skills to the business. And that helped us kind of grow it. And it
Collin 38:08
is about finding that that proper skill set. And yeah, and if you like a lot of people are running a business by themselves. And so going at the end day going, but But what skills do I have, right? Let's just be honest with myself of what am I really good at? And I may still have to do some other things that I might not want to do or whatever. But what can I split off? What can who can what can I hand off to somebody else? Or take over? Or what skills do I need to try and get better at that if I need to if it's really mission critical right now?
Kate M. 38:37
Yeah, I think that's important is getting help. I mean, like, as mentioned earlier, we have the call center, which is great, because there is a kind of booty call center where you have a team that are trained just for your company. So that yeah, so they would answer the phone as if they work for us. But we're obviously hiring them through and through the call center. So that's been really good in terms of just getting response to inquiries handled quickly. And then they do a lot of quotations and stuff, they trained on using precise Petcare and all that kind of stuff. So that does make a difference, meaning that we can focus more on, you know, hiring, which is a huge thing, and marketing the business because obviously, when you're paying for outside service providers, you need to be making money to pay for all this. So marketing is a huge part of that. And then like I said, all the other things we have going on so yeah, I think upskilling is something that perhaps as business owners, I don't know, I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be good at everything. You know, good at hiring, good at managing people good at motivating people, you know, good at marketing and good at this. And that's just impossible for one person to be amazing at everything. So yeah, upskilling is key, I think and then handing off what really isn't your thing. To other people if you can.
Collin 40:01
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Kate M. 41:13
I mean, even for is like, you know, handing it over to an independent call center is a huge thing. Because, you know, they're going to sell our services as well as we can or they're going to be as passionate about them, you know, will the conversion be as good as inquiry to customer? And maybe then the conversion isn't as good as perhaps we would do. But however they answer calls much quicker they get back to people. So they talk to more people. So all in all, it averages itself out, you know, and they're very professional, you know, so it does take it is hard, though, because it's kind of like your baby, and you don't want other people to touch it. So I do get that. But that is how you grow. You know, you have to kind of let things on some. Even when we franchised you know, can you trust other people to run a part of your business? Will they do it as well as you know, you have all these doubts, but people do people and sometimes they do it better than you? So, yeah, I think you just have to kind of let some things go so that you can grow and that you can have a life because I do know this business is all consuming if you let it be because it is so 24/7 Like, you know, pets be cared for all the time people travel away for weeks. And and you know, if you're just on your own, like I can see how burned out would be very quick.
Collin 42:37
Well in recognizing what why did we start the business? Because I don't know about you, Kate, I did not start my business to be on the phone all day long right now that now that that is that is kind of a consequence of running a business is phone calls now must be answered. Now. Very few of us knowingly signed up to be on the phone basically 24/7. But it's now a necessity of the business. And so how do we now manage that? What do we do that could look include a call center or sending everybody to voicemail directing him to the website or having things an automated phone tree or whatever, but there are ways where we go, I don't have time to answer 100 phone calls today, I just don't and I'll never get back to them. If that's the level that I need to be in wanting to be going to, I have to find a system or a way of solving that.
Kate M. 43:23
Yeah, and I think for us, we were getting to the stage where we were just missing a lot of stuff, because there was so much stuff coming in that, you know, we weren't getting back to it quick enough. And unfortunately, more and more if we don't get back to people quickly, they've already tried somebody else, you know, because we don't just try one company and then wait five days for them to come back to us. You know, we're like five minutes, people are kind of wanting a quick response. So I think that has helped and, and the other thing is, you know, you send them to voicemail, you send them to your inquiry form, but they're still there, you know, you're just pushing them down the line, aren't you to be dealt with and another time and another way. Whereas if you can get like a VA or call center or someone on your team, even to help you with calls, I think that can be huge, you know, to really get through those inquiries and deal with things in kind of real time as opposed to letting it all back up and then feeling overwhelmed.
Collin 44:20
Right. Well, and recognizing what are the clients expectations of me in this moment, right? Like, what what what are they looking for just like you said, Kate? Well, people are kind of looking for that immediate response. Right? And we have to go, Okay, how do I meet that? Do I meet that and what does that look like for me as my business?
Kate M. 44:40
Yeah. And I think setting up expectations as well as key. So when someone contacts us via our contact form, we have an email that goes back sent me this is an automated response. However, here's some information while you're waiting to hear back from us, so that you can have a read about what we do, how we do it what you can expect from a service like ours. So that that expectation is set up that this isn't a person replying to you, because what we found was people would reply back thinking, you're going to reply straight back to them, telling them this is an auto responder, because some people don't realize, I'm telling them, you know, you can expect a call back within X amount of time, and then giving them some stuff to read. while they're waiting, that is probably going to answer a lot of their questions. And just setting up that expectation, so people don't contact you, and then think, oh, is, is anyone gonna get back to me? Or when will they or that kind of thing. So letting people know what to expect all the way through the process, I think is key. You know, we have all this automated stuff going out for inquiries and follow ups. And I think it just keeps people informed throughout the process. So again, they kind of trust you while these guys are on the ball, you know, they're not letting things slip through the cracks, you know? And I
Collin 45:55
love that that idea of making sure they know it's an automated response. Because so many times like we've we've sent out emails that we hand wrote, or we have some automated ones that send and right people do go well, wow, you responded at 1159 at night. Okay, let's, let's talk now that Petcare. No, no, I was sleeping.
Kate M. 46:16
And then they come home, it's kind of disappointed. They're not getting a reply back. Because to us, we would know Oh, that's obviously an automated response. But for a lot of people, they don't even think about it, they just assume. And nowadays, some small businesses do reply late at night and do emails and business and stuff late into the evening, because that's there a lot, a lot of time to do it. Yeah.
Collin 46:38
Yeah, it is. It is that kind of it keeps that personal relationship to have no, there's somebody here, these people care about this process. And it's way more than just I don't know how many times I've submitted a form and it just says little pop up just says, Thank you for submitting, and yours kind of staring at your computer going Yes. So what, what do we have
Kate M. 46:57
ours set up and it jumps to another landing page, which has a video which thanks you for contacting us. And again, just reiterate some more information. So I think whatever opportunity you have at different stages, through dealing with someone that you can just, you know, reassure them reconfirm, let them know what's going on, or this kind of stuff. I think that takes a lot of work away from you, but gives people a lot of comfort. And even though it's done via email, I think that's fine, because I think a lot of people now don't always want to talk on the phone, they want things to be quick and automated. And, you know, they don't want to be dealing with 100 different things. They just want to get it set up and kind of be done. So yeah, a big thing is setting up people's expectations, because then they're not disappointed. You know, if you tell them it'll be two days before we do this, or 48 hours or whatever they know, they've been told, you know, they're not left wondering.
Collin 47:55
I just went through a big ordeal getting our vacuum cleaner repaired, it was talked about nobody updating us about the process, it was so infuriating, it was raging. Yeah, we were the ones calling every every week and a half it took it took six weeks to fix our vacuum cleaner. And it was terrible. It was it was not a good experience. But the worst part about it was is if they had just called us when they said they would and said, Hey, we're having these delays. Here's the new eta, we're going to call you back in a week to let you update to update you on this. If they had said that. My vacuum two months, I'm sure I have to use an old one. And I'm not as happy about it. But at least you're keeping me informed about this process. And we can't just send things out and go well, they'll be fine. They'll be patient because they won't.
Kate M. 48:43
And it's such a little thing to do to just let people know. But it makes such a difference. You know, it makes it doesn't infuriate people people are kind of like, okay, well, it's not great, but at least I know, you know, that's kind of always my attitude. If you tell me at least I know. And then I'm not wasting my time wondering or thinking about it or getting annoyed or thinking now I'm gonna have to email the, you know, all the emotions. So yeah, I think I think it's good to keep people updated. Okay,
Collin 49:14
you mentioned it earlier about your pet business owners. And I was curious about this about kind of why that was important for you to start and kind of tell us a little bit more about what that is.
Kate M. 49:25
Yeah. So when I started with all my kind of blogging and social media, there was tons of information out there, but everything was tailored towards marketing people helping other marketers, or helping them to learn how to market there was nothing that was focused quite so much on kind of small businesses and definitely nothing but pet businesses. So everything I was learning, I was trying to then think, how would that relate to a pet business? How can I adapt this strategy or this technique to some thing in the pet business industry. And really, that's why I started pet business owners because it's exactly what I would have wanted to save me hours and hours of trying all sorts of stuff to figure out what worked. So just having that kind of blueprint of ego, these are things that you can do. These are the blog's, you should write, instead of having to write a million before you figure out what works. These are just the little things like I was talking about earlier, you know, putting in your call to actions in your blog, if I'd known to do that thing, how much more traffic I would have got, you know, all these kinds of things, just to understand the the little kind of nuances on social media, and what type of thing works for pet owners, what they kind of react, to relate to engage with that kind of thing. So it was really kind of a turn in a passion of mine, because I love blogging and social media, into helping other people in the same situation as me. So that's really where that came from. And then it's just kind of grown into kind of like, now I have the membership, and then my marketing plan. And that's kind of thing.
Collin 51:04
Did you did you see yourself as a, as a coach or kind of what was that process like, because I've kind of stepping into different shoes. Now, as a personal. Yeah, I've
Kate M. 51:15
always enjoyed helping people, you know, and showing people things. And I just think it was just a natural kind of transition of sharing stuff that I'd learned. But just doing it in a way that was like, say, targeted towards the pet industry, I find it fascinating how you can do different things and tweak them and slightly change an angle and it can have such an impact on your business. So yeah, I like sharing that with people, as
Collin 51:46
well. And just all the nuances of this industry of how it's like, you hear a lot of you know, we go to different marketing events, we have people who are in marketing, and they say a lot of things, and as a business owner going, Oh, that would never work for what I do, right? To go? No, here's actually how you can take that and now apply it or, or, you know, make it your own. Like that's, that is so interesting, because there's just a lot of information out there, but trying to understand how does that impact me, and
Kate M. 52:13
also sometimes scale it down. Because, you know, you see these people talking about all these kind of, oh, you need a funnel, and you need an email system, and you need all this and the other day. But for us, you don't necessarily need that complicated of a system, you know, you can take something that would work in the marketing industry, and take it for a business like ours scale it down. So it can become something quite easy for us to implement, but can have massive impact. So I think people see these things like, they've got to do this massive thing. Whereas actually, you can just get it down and have just as good results, you know. So I think that's important too. Like, we were talking earlier about tiktoks that have 50 billion views. It's not necessary. And in some ways, it's harmful to your business to get all this traffic, there's nothing that will never buy anything from you. So showing people that they can just do something relatively simple and easy on the go. You don't need all this tech or these systems, you can just do it on your phone. I think that's what I enjoy most. Because I know when I saw all that stuff, I thought, oh my gosh, like I'm never gonna be able to set all this stuff up and do all these things and be a video editor and blog and all this kind of stuff. It's and realizing as well, you don't need to do everything. I think in the beginning, I probably had a podcast, I had a live Facebook show I was doing everything. And I you don't need to do that much realistically, you just need to do the core things that were
Collin 53:44
that scale aspect. I remember early on in our business, I was trying to learn about email marketing. And I remember reading an article that was basically like, well, once you have 5000 emails, and I was like, Wait a minute. I have 100 clients, maybe what are we talking? How does it how do I did it? It was very,
Kate M. 54:02
and it puts you off doing anything then because you think oh, well, that's not for me then whereas you can have great results with email marketing, even with a tiny list. I mean, most people in this industry aren't looking for 10,000 new customers tomorrow, you know, they might be looking for 20 dado hawks, or, you know, a handful of new castling customers. So some of this stuff you you put up with because you think you have to have all these big numbers to have big results. And really, you're looking for handfuls of people that connect with you that understand what you do that can see your passion. And it's how to connect how to get in front of those people. So I think that's a big thing. You don't need big audiences.
Collin 54:46
And talking with traditional marketers. They really are like, you know, we talk to people we have people who contact us from radio and TV and they're like, look how many hundreds of 1000s people we talked to and we blah blah blah blah, like wow, if if people Wheat Oh, 1% of those people call me, I can't take care of them. So that's all. That's all wasted ad dollars at that point. And, and not manageable for us either. So it is a reminder of just like scale, like, what? What is manageable for me both in the content and the ways that I'm marketing? And what are my actual goals from this, just like we linked back to at the very beginning of our conversation kind of going, how what is the metric? Is it is it if I if I'm after two people contacting me this week? Okay, that really sets up the expectations for me as to what needs to happen here.
Kate M. 55:33
It does, and I think it makes you see your results and you feel more confused by them. You know, if you're not thinking you need 5 million people to see something, you're right. Okay, so you want two new customers? So you just need to find two people that want a service like yours that have a need for it, how can you communicate that message to those two people and just talk to them? You know, you don't need to have millions, like you say, you wouldn't be able to service them anyway. If they all decided, hey, I want a dog walk today. So yeah, I think once people get that and get how you can scale stuff down, that's manageable. I think it gives people have so much more confidence to go out there and do something and not feel disappointed when they don't get these huge numbers. Okay,
Collin 56:19
I really want to thank you for coming on the show today and encouraging us in that way of that there are these manageable things that we can make this our own, and have that long term mindset pretty much in everything that we do. I know that there's a whole lot more here, including all of your the membership and things like that. So for people who are interested in learning more getting connected and following along with with everything you do, how can they do that?
Kate M. 56:43
Yeah, so I have my website, which is pet business owners.com. I have a free ebook you can download which has 27 ways to get more customers, which has a lot of stuff in than I would have talked about. I'm not suggesting for a second you do all 27 things. Pick a few things that you know, appeal to you, that you can get better at business owners.com forward slash customers. So you can grab that there. We also have a free a free Facebook group marketing your pet business with Kate McQuillan, and Instagram, I love Instagram. So if you go onto my pictures, as soon as Instagram, you'll see lots of funny reels, they're very relatable loads of tips, that kind of thing. And you get to see some of Ireland if you follow me on there as well.
Collin 57:23
That's just a bonus. That's wonderful. And Kate, we had the immense pleasure of getting to meet you at the at the Texas pet sitters Association Conference. So absolute pleasure. And thank you so much for coming on the show today, I'll have links to everything that we've talked about here and to those resources, and that free download for people to get to get right away in the show notes and on our website. So it's an absolutely immense pleasure, Kate, thank you so much.
Kate M. 57:51
Thank you for having me,
Collin 57:52
I appreciate it. Consistency in this business is everything. When we say we're going to show up, we need to show up. When we say we're going to scoop the litter, we're going to scoop the litter. When we say we're going to blog, we need to blog. When we are consistent. This is what builds trust. And it helps bolster our reputation to our clients and our community. When we focus on those services, those core things that we as a company do best and when we deliver on those promises. That is what helps grow us. It allows us to position ourselves as an authority. Because we are an authority, we follow through on what we say we're going to do. When Kate talks about building and looking for and seeking engagement over vanity, it's about being genuine to our clients, and being realistic to ourselves. At the core of what we do, it's a relationship business. So when we focus on our core service, are we serving others? Well. By communicating effectively, and setting clear expectations, everything's out on the open, and everything's on the table for us to discuss and present to our clients so they know what to expect from us so that we can deliver the best service possible, while putting them at ease and peace of mind and building and furthering the trust that we need to run the kind of businesses that we do. We want to thank today's sponsors time to pet and pet perennials for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. We'll be back again soon.
