504: Navigating Threats in Pet Care: From Robots to Regulations
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Are you ready to future-proof your pet care business against emerging technologies like robotics? We explore the transformative potential of automation in pet services and how it might affect traditional business models. We delve into strategic adaptations inspired by the digital transition of Encyclopedia Britannica, highlighting the importance of evolving with changing market demands. Additionally, we discuss overcoming challenges related to regulatory changes and insurance in the pet care industry. By embracing technological advancements and refining business strategies, pet care professionals can turn potential threats into opportunities for growth and innovation.
Main topics:
Facing Technological Threats in Pet Care
Evolving Business Models in Pet Services
Strategic Adaptations for Future Success
Insurance Challenges in Pet Care
Utilizing AI and Robots Effectively
Main takeaway: The power in business doesn’t come from the product, it comes from the packaging.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet sitter, threat, pet, services, clients, industry, care, adapt, information, wikipedia, years, talked, robots, embrace, people, confessional, insurance, operate, high standards
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:00
Oh. Hi, I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:03
I'm Colin.
Meghan 00:04
And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode, and also our Patreon supporters, who are people that give five or $15 a month to keep the show going and had found value and learn a few lessons along the way. If that sounds like you, too, you can go to pet sitter confessional about comm slash support to see all the ways that you can help out we saw an article a few months ago about robots starting to walk dogs, which is a very interesting concept. Because people are really worried about their business with this. Are the robots going to be taking over and actually doing the dog walking? Then there were people who thought it was ridiculous? Of course not. There are too many errors, too, too much that can go wrong. How do you get the robot to the house? How do you do all the logistical things? But either way, the thought came up to us of what would you do about it? What would we do if there are now robots walking dogs
Collin 00:59
that never thought I'd have robots as a threat to my business on the bingo card. But here we are, we can either choose to ignore it, or we can change something, you know, I even said something like, yeah, you could, you could choose to employ the robots, right and use them in your business. And that's one way of taking that threat, and turning it into a strength of your business to move forward and adapt to that. And it really reminded me the story of encyclopedias. Who saw that one coming in this episode two, we were recently at our public library, and I was showing our kids what the encyclopedias were how to use them. We looked up a few things. And I started thinking, when did they stop printing the Encyclopedia Britannica? Because I know they still publish the World Book Encyclopedia. And it turns out, it was in 2012. And they stopped publishing after 244 years of publishing that that work. I mean, could you imagine being that team that decided to stop that? How terrifying and you really had to feel confident in that move, because it really marked an over a 30 year strategy in their shift towards more and more digital content. Some interesting stats about this, they actually peaked production in 1990, with over 100,000 copies sold. And then just six years later, they only sold 3000 copies. And in an interview with the CEO at the time, he talked through several of the threats to them. One of them was that people were busier than ever, and they were rarely home. So the door to door sales techniques weren't working anymore, and they hadn't actually built out any new sales operations or new sales pipelines. Additionally, because people were busy, they weren't interested in pulling through books and having these stacked up in their homes. Secondly, they had free or cheap options were found to be good enough by the VA for their former market, and people really didn't see a difference in paying $1,200 or more for what Encyclopedia Britannica had to offer. Then there was the rise of CD ROMs. Does anybody remember Microsoft Encarta? Does anybody remember this? This was actually Microsoft included this as a free encyclopedia alternative with every PC sale. So you can imagine the immense threat that that had. And then of course, the internet with the rise of Wikipedia, and now information just became a commodity. Adding on top of this, the change in client expectations where they became used to getting free updates to content, and they were used to getting it quickly and sometimes in in real time.
Meghan 03:35
If you've listened to enough Pet Sitter confessional podcast episodes, you can probably see where we're going here. Comparing that to this, yeah,
Collin 03:43
so Encyclopedia Britannica, they were early adopters of computers for their own particular needs it made for faster editing storage of information. So they decided to go fully digital. And when when when they did that it wasn't a huge shift for them. But they had to change their mindset around that. And what they found was that they could take their strength, which was scholarly, independent, dependable information, and repackage it into educational products, they productized information, so that could be more engaging and accessible. Instead of being in the book publishing business, they realized that they were in the educational business, and now they're actually bigger and more profitable than ever. And I pulled this kind of lengthy quote from the CEO, but I do think is worth sharing when we consider our own businesses and the threats that we face. He said, like many disruptive innovations, Wikipedia was a lower quality. If it were a video, it would be grainy and out of focus. But consumers didn't care about that, because Wikipedia has a vast number of entries and easy free access. We couldn't compete on quantity or price. Did we believe that consumers preferred our reference material? Yes. Did we believe they were willing to pay for it? Not necessarily. Is this sounding familiar to anybody? So instead of getting mired in a competition with Wikipedia we focused on editorial quality with Britannica Online and use Wikipedia as quantity over quality approach, and its chronic unreliability as differentiations in our favor. By the time it Wikipedia took off, we weren't head to head competent competitors anymore. We maintain a world class reference source with 500,000 household subscribers. And we take a clearly differentiated approach to informing society. But we are no and this was really big. When I got to this part, we are no longer an encyclopedia only company. Because what they realized was they realized that their power wasn't in their product. It was in their packaging. It was the same great information, world renowned editorial processes. But now it was in a native online format, instead of a book. They took their biggest threat, digital and easily accessible information. And they made it their strength. They took the elements of what the clients wanted, and made it their own. That core product, the encyclopedic content, it remained valuable, it was still important for people to have that quality information. The power of their business evolved significantly when they presented it and delivered it in a different way.
Meghan 06:13
Well, you can imagine that if they did not adapt, if they did not evolve to this new way to this new world that they were entering in by going from 100,000 copies sold to just 3000. That's a huge shift. And so they knew that if they did not make this shift, it would be the end of their company. Exactly.
Collin 06:32
So when you think about your own business, whatever threat that you see coming towards yourself, ask ask yourself, why is this a threat to me? Is it because I'm not as cheap as that other person, maybe I don't offer that service. Maybe I can't be available during those times where I don't have that kind of training. Britannica was able to make these changes. Because they invested over time they invested in infrastructure, they also believed in their mission, and they listened to their markets, those three aspects of investing in themselves. Having that mission and listening to markets allow themselves to allow them so they could see this changes so that they actually understood the threats because they recognized the digital market, and Wikipedia were a threat, because they were so in tune. If they had just said note, we are a book publishing company. And that was what their identity was, they would never have seen the threat of the internet coming. But because their core identity was in information access, they saw how that was changing the landscape of their consumer needs,
Meghan 07:40
it would have been really easy for them to say nope, we print books. That's what we do. Yes, we're not going to we're not going to go digital. It may not last. But you know what a bankrupt 245 year old company isn't as fun as a digital 245 year old company. Again, adapting and changing, making it better making it newer, fresh. Think about what the threats you are facing, we really see 10 major threats to the pet care industry. The first being the economic downturn, we've had a few episodes about this. During economic recessions, pet owners may reduce their spending, not go on as long vacations cut out non essential services like pet sitting and dog walking, they may want to use and rely on friends and family and neighbors more and just have you do one visit a day. Then there are regulatory changes changes in local regulations regarding pet care or licensing requirements for your city or animal welfare laws, they can all impact how businesses operate, and potentially increase compliant cost. Also, if you were utilizing independent contractors, that is essentially going away in the United States of America. The federal government wants employees, they want more control over our businesses. The next threat we see is insurance and liability issues which are increasing, it can be difficult to obtain adequate coverage for the liability related to Petcare incidents. What we do is weird, this, this business is different, a lot of insurance or workers comp, businesses don't understand. So we have to explain it many times over because it sometimes can be a huge liability of what we do going into people's homes. So it really can affect business profitability. If the insurance companies or the worker's comp company say, Hey, this is a lot of risk we're willing to take you on but it's going to be at a premium and it's going to cost you another major threat, as we've just talked about is the technology disruption, lots of AI, lots of robots. Advances in technology and the rise of the pet care apps on our platforms really connect pet owners directly to the sitters and walkers and it could really disrupt traditional business models. I mean, it already has rover and wag had been around for more than a decade. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. So think about what your business can do to change and adapt as the industry becomes bigger with a lot more pet sitters and dog occurs, there is this public perception and trust that is at stake when there are negative incidents involving in pet care businesses, whether it's pet injuries or lost pets, and it can be on an app or off, it can really damage public trust and lead to increased scrutiny and regulatory intervention. In some ways. It's kind of nice right now, because we are able to operate our businesses with very little oversight from the government, except for your licensing for your city and your state laws and all of that. But unlike other service industries, like financial advisors who have a lot of regulation and overhead on them, we have a lot of freedom in our business. But that also can come with a price of bad eggs coming into the industry and disrupting that trust. Then
Collin 10:45
there's competition from non traditional providers with the rise of the gig economy platforms, hobbyists popping up and offering Pet Care Services at lower prices. These challenge established businesses that maintain possibly higher standards of care and professionalism. It seems these days more than ever, there's competition on every corner. And we've talked about this before on previous episodes, when the economy turns south, people look to save money, so they look for a cheaper options. And people also look to make more money. So they look for side gigs, meaning that people try to save money on pet care. And there just happens to be more pet care providers than normal, because other people are looking to make a few quick extra bucks. That puts us in a really tough spot who may have fixed costs, you may have things that we have to pay for, and we're not as flexible with our pricing. And we may be locked into certain things. So we have to figure out how does that actually impact us. If
Meghan 11:41
you've been in the industry for any length of time, you know that there are seasonal demand variations, and that is definitely a threat to the industry. These fluctuations in the demand for pet care services typically go up during the holidays, major holidays of the year and down during it's cold and snowy and I don't want to get outside. But these, these seasonal factors or regional events that happen can really impact revenue and the staffing and requirements
Collin 12:06
that we've often talked about how if we only staffed for our busy pet care services, we would only need staff for about six or seven months out of the year. Because then after that everything else is pretty manageable given where we are and the seasons that are our company experiences. Another threat is one that even a few years ago, we didn't think was actually all that important, but things like health and safety concerns. Like I don't know pandemics and how those may impact an industry or how to operate safely and meet client expectations for cleanliness and hygiene. While obviously we don't expect this kind of threat to come around back anytime soon. We've experienced it once. So we have to recognize that this is a potential threat in the future as well and plan accordingly.
Meghan 12:49
And then of course, there are extreme weather events, you know, environmental factors, natural disasters, depending on what part of the country you live in, it can really disrupt business operations really affect the the scheduling of the pet care visits, and ultimately, client satisfaction. The pet care industry has seen a huge shift in consumer preferences over the past few years, this change to more personalized specialized pet care services or maybe eco friendly products that they want you to use more sustainable practices. And it's probably going to require you to adapt your offerings a little bit. But that's not to say that if people want you to do house sitting, that doesn't mean you need to offer house sitting. So how do we embrace all of these threats? We don't want to be doom and gloom here. But we do need to be realistic that these are on the table. Something that is definitely not a threat to your business is pet sitters associates as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet serves Associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet set llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. So how do we embrace them? How do we turn these threats into our greatest strengths?
Collin 14:16
And through all this, remember that the power is not in the product. It's in the presentation. It's in how you connect with people. It's how you focus your efforts in making sure that what you are providing is in alignment with people's needs. So when we think about that economic downturn, lean into your higher end clients have a diverse range of services at various price points that will allow you to adapt and possibly still attract clients through that downturn. As people look at their options and the landscape that they have before them. When you
Meghan 14:50
see the regulatory changes as being a threat. You can counteract that by being part of local and national organizations that have a say in the regulations join things like pet sitters internet National or naps, those are great organizations
Collin 15:03
because what they are working on is having set standards there so that when regulators turn it to decide how to regulate the industry, those organizations already have answers for them, they know where to turn to go to for that good information. If we fail to self regulate as an industry, we will be forced to regulate at across different national and federal levels, which is what we don't want. We want to be able to help educate people on what exactly we do and why certain requirements are important. So speak up about the standards, speak up about those and hold high standards for not just yourself, but others as well. Because
Meghan 15:40
when we all have high standards, then there's less likely for liability issues or insurance claims when we work with others on training and have good SOPs, we can raise the bar for everyone and keep insurance down as best as we can. All
Collin 15:54
those new people who are entering the industry, a lot of them are actually looking for insurance options as they start their own business. When we have people who don't have a lot of education, who are not well connected and don't have high standards, but do have insurance. That means that everybody is impacted when they file an insurance claim. So it is beholden on us we have a responsibility as an industry to help educate people who come in to not just oh, we can't, you know, it's no longer Oh, just have insurance. It's have insurance. And here are some standards to hold yourself to so that you don't have to file a claim.
Meghan 16:28
If you see the robots as a threat, you can counteract that by seeing technology is not a threat, but integrating it into your business operations. We've talked a lot about AI and chat GBT and using that for your marketing, messaging and your social social media posts. But use apps for scheduling GPS, track your walks, have good client communication tools to enhance that delivery and client interaction. When robots start walking dogs hire the robots maybe.
Collin 16:57
But lean into that technology that AI that automation so that it helps run your business a lot smoother, so that it allows you to have time to do other things. And just like with Encyclopedia Britannica, they were early adopters and investors of technology themselves so that when it was time to make a big pivot in the core of their business, they were actually set up better for success because of that long term investment that had been making. We
Meghan 17:22
mentioned the issue of public perception and trust. So partner with other businesses, position yourself as the expert through blogs, social media workshops, maybe you want to certify yourself as a pet, first aid and CPR trainer so that you can train your own clients on how they can do that on their pet. So if needed, provide valuable information on health behavior training builds a strong local presence by engaging with pet related communities, groomers vets pet stores participating in local events, this can really help attract new clients and build trust within your community. Because when you partner with other people and other businesses, they have a network that you don't. So you are in front of more eyes just based on partnering with them. It also
Collin 18:04
helps social proof you to potential clients and even your existing clients knowing that you are well connected within a particular industry. I mean, you can imagine where if you had zero connections, you had no references, no other people to speak to you or your business ethics. And somebody asks you about that. You could see how they would find that suspicious of oh, this person, why aren't they better connected? Why don't they have anybody else's phone numbers? Why can't they refer me to other people being connected helps with that shady people don't like being in the light. So when you're in the light that Telegraph's to other people that you have nothing to hide that you're out there in the open, being an active member and participant of the large, larger pet care community. Instead
Meghan 18:45
of thinking of other pet sitters and dog walkers as competition, use that as motivation to elevate your service quality, again, raise the bar for the entire industry. Focus on that personalized care of that professional training your exceptional customer service that really set your business apart. As
Collin 19:00
more hobbyists continue to enter the industry, we should be reaching out and partnering with them, elevating them and educating them on best practices and having high standards for them. We should also not view that as detrimental to our business. We can't take care of all the pets. That's something to continue to remember. But we can go okay if that person is now in the market and is going to be attracting clients. What does that mean for me? And how can I differentiate myself and things that truly truly matter to the clients and their demands that they have? If
Meghan 19:31
you see the seasonal demand variations as a threat, you can have a diversity of service instead of just being a pet sitter and really super busy and cram during the holidays offer a variety of services that span the season. So when one service goes down, another one becomes more popular.
Collin 19:48
I interviewed Kirsten Cresco on episode 477. And we talked about this exact thing about how she has a variety of services that fluctuate with busyness throughout the year so that On totality, she's busy, but never busy with the same service throughout different seasons. This gives her a lot of fluctuation and variation and keeps her clients satisfied. So they don't completely drop off the map, they can use her year round. For all the different services that she offers. We mentioned things about the pandemics and health and safety concerns. Well, educate yourself on procedures and have alternative policies that you can implement when necessary. And share about those on social media again, as we look to figure out ways to differentiate ourselves and elevate ourselves, talk about your level of preparedness. And this goes straight into the other environmental factors threat as well have evacuation plans for extreme weather and disasters. You know, just talk to people on the coastline about the issues that they face, or people who live in Tornado Alley and operate their businesses there, or the forest fires that happen, the work to get certified in emergency response and have the appropriate planning so that now you've taken the threat of an environmental disaster, and you've turned it into a strength in education and policies in action that you can implement when necessary. And also mark it about yourself so that you become more attractive to clients. Because people who live in those areas, they're very aware of the fires that come through, they're very aware of the hurricanes that come through, do you have a plan to solve that and help put them more at peace in it and give them peace of mind. And
Meghan 21:26
probably the biggest threat of all is changing consumer preferences. But to embrace this, stay flexible to meet those changing client demands. Again, that's not saying that you don't you provide services that you don't want to, but offer additional services like grooming or training nail trims, specialized care for elderly or special needs pets, anticipate the trends and adapt your services accordingly. Maybe you paused a specific service for a few years, because you weren't really feeling that anymore. But now you're going to bring it back?
Collin 21:55
And how do you know to do this client surveys, feedback, and reviews, listen to these and actively seek them out. I know, as a business owner, it can feel really I get really self conscious anytime we ask somebody for a review, or anything like that, but know that when they give you feedback, you can use that to make you better that you can embrace that, you know, comments, concerns, questions or criticisms in a way that you go. Okay, I know now what how they felt? Do I have agency over that? Can I control that? What can I do better to prevent that for next time, that only makes you better, and you will miss entire market shifts and market changes both local and national and global, if you fail to do this, and when we think about building a business for the long term, we have to understand the threats that we face, we detail the 10 right here that's kind of like industry wide, and big, big picture stuff. But you know, threats in your local market that we didn't mention here, how you wrap your hands around that and truly understand what it means for your business. You do that through talking with others, other business owners another reason to network and get connected to a broader pet care service industry, right. So you can talk to one another. You also know that by talking to your existing clients. And again, when we become so insular, where we think everything's fine, where we are totally okay, and we don't need to change anything. And what I do right now be exactly what I offer in the next 20 years, we won't be operating in 20 years. That's just a fact, in order to continue to operate. After 244 years, Encyclopedia Britannica had to make a hard choice they faced and they looked in the mirror, they recognize that their identity was not what they had been operating in. And they were okay with that. Because to set themselves up for success for the next 250 years. They needed to make a big change. And they embrace that.
Meghan 23:46
And I'm sure it is hard. I mean, our business is our babies, we we want to protect them and hold them close. And we love the services we offer. We build our businesses in order to ultimately serve us and what we want to do. So while the change may hurt a little bit, it ultimately is going to be for our good our businesses good because that means our business is going to be around for a long time. It's also important to get connected with your civic and local government because you were just talking about changes in your local community. Maybe there is a massive manufacturer that is coming into town and is going to create maybe 1000 jobs or 500 jobs and you need to be in the know of those sorts of things in order to adapt your services and make them better. When we
Collin 24:29
think about what are businesses do a lot of us say Oh, I'm a dog walking business. I'm a pet sitting business. I tell everybody what we do and ours is we are in the peace of mind business. And we do that through high quality, consistent pet care. When we can think of ourselves in that way of oh, I'm in the peace of mind business. At that point. I don't care whether I offer peace of mind through dog walks or cat sets, or through grooming or through training. As long as obviously as Megan has said several times here of like as long as it aligns with your personal mission vision values and goals that you have. As long as that core focus, peace of mind, we can adapt in a million different ways to still provide peace of mind to our communities, and be okay with that and embrace that at every step along the way. We'd love to know
Meghan 25:15
what threats you see and how you are embracing them to make your business stronger and thrive for many years to come. If you would like to share those with us, you can email us at petsitter confessional@gmail.com. Thank you for listening today. We hope you have found it valuable. If you are interested in supporting the show and becoming a Patreon member for five or $15 a month you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and we will talk with you next time. Bye
