516: Elevating Your Pet Care Business: From Basics to Differentiators
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What does it mean to elevate your pet care business beyond the basics? In this episode, we explore how to transform essential services into exceptional experiences that set your business apart in a crowded market. We discuss the importance of mastering the fundamentals, like communication and reliability, before layering on unique offerings that truly differentiate your services. Learn how to leverage specialized training, customized care, and cutting-edge technology to create standout moments for your clients and their pets. Join us as we dive into strategies that will help you rise above the competition and take your business to the next level.
Main topics:
Importance of Consistent Communication
Building Trust with Clients
Differentiating Through Specialized Services
Community Engagement and Branding
Utilizing Technology in Pet Care
Main takeaway: Elevate your pet care by turning essentials into exceptional experiences
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, pet, business, pet sitter, dog, basics, care, services, talk, certifications, cat, booking, years, walking, updates, basic necessity, business owner, system, higher quality, confessional
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Hi, I'm Meghan,
Collin 00:03
I'm Collin, and
Meghan 00:04
we are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for listening today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode and our lovely Patreon people. Patreon is a little bit of a weird word, so if you don't know what it means, it's just people who enjoy listening to the show and want to see it keep going. If that sounds like you and you have found value in some of the episodes that we've produced, you can go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, see all of the ways that you can help
Collin 00:31
out. I was recently giving a business talk to a group of other small business owners in our area. I've been talking about some struggles that we were facing as a dog walking in pet sitting business, and a little bit about the state of the industry. And one of the things that there was a discussion on was how crowded is the market. And it reminded me, and it got Megan and I talking about how important it is now more than ever, to make sure that you are standing out and standing out in good ways. But before you can stand out in that way, you have to make sure that you are running a solid business, and you have all of your bases covered, you have to make sure that the things that you are doing currently that they fit in with your goals, your mission, your values, but also that you're doing them exceptionally well. And so while there are basics in the business, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily even easy to do, it doesn't mean that everybody is capable of doing them at a professional level, but to have a good, solid business to which you need to, which you can build on, which you can grow from, there's a lot of commonality that we need to make sure that we're doing to make sure that we're doing the best possible
Meghan 01:35
in our industry. In 2024 some best practices include basic communication, so prompt responses to inquiries and updates to pet owners clients expect to be communicated with on a regular basis, and they don't want to have to wait two or three business days in order to get a response from you. The timeliness and the effective communication is very important. Everybody runs their business differently and has different opinions on what exactly a prompt response is. For me, it's within five minutes of somebody contacting us. Collin has a little bit of a healthier perspective on prompt communication, but it is very important, also straightforward personal services. It really depends on what your business is. If you're dog walking only, well, do those really well niche down, focus on that maybe you are cat sitting only, make sure that they are the best cat sits that could ever be done by by a business. We are a service based business, so if our service sucks, then we don't have a business. People aren't going to talk about us. Well, they probably will, but for negative reasons, doing one thing really well is better than trying to do everything poorly. It's just like the same jack of all trades, but master of none. You really want to focus on quality over quantity. Here, a
Collin 02:45
major complaint that we hear from a lot of pet owners is that the last Pet Sitter wasn't what they weren't reliable. They didn't show up when they were supposed to, or maybe they never did it all. They didn't do the things that they were discussed. So as a business owner, make sure that you are consistent in your scheduling and you're not overloading yourself to the extent that you are unable to keep those commitments, and that, yes, you do show up on time. This sounds like it's the simplest thing in the world, but just showing up, when you say you're going to show up, will take your business that that's actually way next level when it comes to businesses. When you go from from Hobby sitter, from side gate, from side worker to we're going to take this seriously, and we're actually going to start working on this. Showing up when you say you're going to because this does a lot of things as well. It doesn't just start setting yourself apart from other business owners, but it really starts building trust, and that's essential in what we do. That if we say we're going to be there at three and we don't show up until 430 without prior communication. Again, see other comment about communicating well to our clients, if we don't let them know about that, they don't trust us, that they stop taking us at our word, and then we don't have a business shortly thereafter.
Meghan 03:58
And again, because we are a service based industry, our customer service has to be top notch. It has to be friendly and courteous. People expect to be dealt with professionally, and they expect their problems to be solved. Take a few minutes to think about customer service from the client's perspective. What would impress them or satisfy them, or what would you want for your own pets, and then emulate that in your business? I know that's what we did. We had our docs and Coby for 14 years, and everything that we did and still do in our business is would be for the benefit of him, the care that we provide, the updates that we send, the constant communication that we have with our clients, all of these aspects we would expect our pets that are to give us. So we want to give that to our clients, because it's 2024 another best practice is having a social media presence. Regularly post on Facebook and Instagram. It's free, and everyone does it, so it's pretty easy, but the trick here is to really stay consistent. Don't just post once or twice and then be gone for three months. That's not to say that you need to swing the other way and. Post four times every single day, but just stay consistent with whatever you do. Make a
Collin 05:05
plan for the month ahead. Think about events that are coming up, or holidays that you like to post about or or maybe you want to have a quarterly reminder about certain things to your community or to your clients that you can you can post there, and it's important to get those written down somewhere in in a planner so that you don't forget to do them, because we get busy in a lot of things. And so when we, when we when we focus on other stuff, when we stop putting this as somewhat of a priority in our business, it just goes by the wayside. And then, yes, we look up and it's six months, seven months before we last posted. It just
Meghan 05:36
takes one Incident of the Dog getting loose or something breaking in the client's home, and then the client blames you wants you to pay for it. So having insurance coverage is critical. Offering general liability insurance to cover accidents and mishaps. That way, you can say to your clients, you are protected when I am in your house. We've already talked about communication, but it is essential to send client updates. If you use SMS or WhatsApp or you have a booking system send updates in text formats with photos. Clients love seeing those, and they share those out on social media and with their friends and family. These really are the basics. They can still be done very poorly. You can still take blurry photos of a dog playing or at night time. But it's not about having them necessarily. It's about doing them well again, the quality over quantity. Instead of taking 20 pictures and half of them being blurry and sending all of them to the client, choose three or four that are really good and send those. I just mentioned having a booking system, but have a basic system where the client can go in and schedule for themselves, an easy appointment management tool or a robust pen and paper system. The point is that you do need to have a system in order to stay organized. 15 years ago, these points were able to set your business apart. Constant communication, being reliable, showing up when you say you were having insurance, having great customer service. These were the things that made a dog walking and pet sitting business stand out, because very few people had them 1520, years ago. But now, with the accessibility of information, an increase of businesses in the space, and a commoditization of services, the things that were once differentiators really aren't that anymore. There are so many people entering the industry, especially after covid and we need to be elevating the industry and making our businesses stand out even more. There is that thing, a rising tide lifts all boats, and we need to be doing that here in the pet sitting industry. You know, I
Collin 07:29
recently saw a statistic that said that of the pet sitting and dog walking businesses, we are at the highest percentage that have reached the five year mark or are older. And I don't remember where I saw this stat. I need to dig in to find that. But that was a sign of a maturing industry that businesses are sticking around. They are persisting, and they do that for many reasons, right? There's the more of a demand. People are focusing on this as more of a career, and there's more space available. The industry continues to grow as people spend more money and there are more pets, and it's more acceptable to have this kind of service as that happens, it means that, as Megan said, the things that used to differentiate businesses don't do that anymore. And that's not to say that these things aren't important. They're absolutely mission critical to you as a business. If you don't have the basics covered, if you aren't doing these things well and with professionalism, you're not going to get very far. So doing these things is important to having a business, because you will get you, will keep you, will run an amazing business. The problem here comes in is when you look to grow more, or maybe you're in a really, really crowded market, and you're looking to set yourself apart, or, let's say you're just not happy with where your business is, and you're looking for areas that you want to focus on, to go to the next level. Or whatever that means is you have to professionalize or operationalize or just run a better business. Because right as we look to expand our clientele, as we look to serve more people or serve a different kind of clientele. It's easy to get that kind of middle of the part of the of the histogram, of that big hump in the middle of that graph, because that's where everybody is. It's as we start to get out towards the tails, as we look to get out on the kind of the fringes of people, it's harder to get to that next 5% that next 3% as we're going from 85 to 90 to 91, to 92, to 92.5, each incremental increase becomes harder and harder to do, and the basics, those foundational stuff, will will only take us so far. So what are some other things that we could focus on? What are some possibilities if we would look to differentiate our business or to where we see common problems that people have in their business? But before we
Meghan 09:40
get to that, we'd like to tell you about our friends. At pet sitters associates as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections. And complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet 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 when you are ready to take that next step in your business and go to the next level, you can customize care plan when you offer tailored services that meet the specific needs and preferences of each pet and owner, like special diets or medication or exercise routines that can show the pet parent. Oh, this person actually cares about my pets because they want to see each of them succeed going the extra mile to tailor the services. Can make clients feel special, like they're getting something extra and they feel valued.
Collin 10:47
It is also a way to showcase your professionalism, your expertise, your education, to the client, by taking their request and going, Okay, I see you're asking me for a dog walk. I noticed that you have, you know, this kind of extra healthy diet food in the the garage that you're feeding them, and you have these different kind of treats over here. Are you looking for more of an exercise or enrichment outing for your dog? Then you can start having that conversation to make sure that they are getting their expert expectations met. I know when we do meet and greets, this is a time where we really get to know the client, and you have those good conversations with them when we I spend a lot of time trying to listen and not get distracted by my phone or distracted by what's going on, but just paying attention in that moment. So when we can hear what the client is telling us, we can then say, because a lot of times, a lot of clients will say, Well, I only want you to come over twice a day for my cat, but usually they get fed three times a day. Well, that's where we step in and go. We think it would be better to keep your cat on their existing routine, if we did for it in this and this is what we could make each visit look like, so that it's extra special to them that they are getting exactly what they need. And the number of clients that'll go, Oh, you'll actually do that. Say, Yes, that's exactly what we do. You're not being an imposition to us. A lot of people come in with past histories of dealing with friends, families, neighbors and acquaintances, and they have had to sacrifice the quality of care that they would actually want because they feel that asking somebody else to do it, we listen to what they're actually saying and go, you're saying this, but you're requesting this thing, and those two don't match up. So let's make those a little bit closer,
Meghan 12:26
and because you're paying attention to what they say, you can bring in aspects of technology that will help showcase the expert that you are of maybe their dog sometimes runs away. You can suggest an apple air tag, or tell them we do GPS tracking, so you will know exactly where we go. If they have a really shy cat that they say, Oh, you may not see this cat for several days, you could suggest a pet monitoring camera, and if they are particularly anxious about leaving, you can assure them that you provide real time information and peace of mind that you will they will always know what is going on with their pet. And their home
Collin 12:59
clients are becoming increasingly tech savvy. There's more technology in the home now than ever, and especially around pets that becomes a lot more cheaper and a lot more accessible for clients to use and have access to, and they're trying to integrate it into their pet's life. We can give recommendations to them. We can discuss how they can use different cameras and such. And we had a client who was very worried about their cat and whether it was going to be eating while they were away. Were away or not. I noticed that they had a camera actually in their living room pointed at the back door. I was able to suggest, well, why don't we move that and angle it just a little bit so that we can still see the back door, so you get the security that you want, but you're also going to be able to monitor the cat's eating and feeding regime while you're away, and this was a revelation to our client as they went, Oh my gosh, you know what? With a few minor tweaks and changes to an existing setup and with the camera angles, the client's entire perception of how the visits were going to go and their time away was different and much higher quality than it would have been otherwise. When
Meghan 13:57
you were trying to differentiate your business from the next business down the street, you can talk about your specialized training and certification. Maybe you are certified in pet for state and CPR, or a specific behavior management, cat behavior, dog behavior, or specific breeds or types of pets. Maybe you only do exotic pets. That's definitely a niche that you can talk about on social media.
Collin 14:16
It was important for Megan and I to become fear free certified pet sitters and dog walkers, so that we could assure our clients that our practices are good, that they are high quality, that their pets are not going to be stressed out. And then we're able to take those practices, that we know, those certifications, those specialized trainings, and we can instruct our staff as well. So it's making sure that everybody in your business, whether you're solo or whether you have a team of employees that they have the proper training, that they have those proper certifications, and again, clients don't know to ask for this. They don't know what any of these letters mean. They don't know this stuff. But they see the results. They can hear you talk about it. They see how things are presented. They can see the quality of care. That's where this really gets showcased. They. Don't care that you have 13 letters after your name. They want to know, how does that make them feel? And you, as the business owner, you have to be the one who takes the specialized training, the certifications, and translates that into a higher quality of care for the customer to actually experience and see, well, yeah,
Meghan 15:17
the letters don't mean anything to them, but you have to show them how this impacts your business and how they care for your pet as you
Collin 15:24
look to establish your business as a tent pole, as a pillar of your community, be involved in community events and engagement with them. This is a big one these days. Actively participate and support your local animal shelters or attend. We go to adoption events community pet initiatives like bark in the parks to build stronger community ties. And what we're doing through this process is demonstrating a commitment to animal welfare in its totality. Now this isn't a quick fix. This isn't just we go to this event and then I'm going to get 17 clients from this. This is a long term brand building, community building exercise that actually builds relationships where you live. People begin to know us and understand that, yeah, we go to these events, we do say hi to people, we contribute, we donate, we begin to be seen as much more than just a dog walking and pet sitting company. We're contributing to a much bigger thing. Pretty
Meghan 16:16
much every pet sitting business offers dog walking and pet sitting. But think about the enrichment and socialization activities that you can give to the clients. Provide those activities that go beyond just the basic care of a dog walk. Maybe you offer chilled water on the dog walk, or you have organized play dates with a select group of your clients. Or for clients that go away on long trips, you can offer puzzles to their pets, snuffle mats, lick mats, Kong recipes. Show these things off to your clients. Let them know that you offer these things. You may be
Collin 16:45
feeling pain of people not understanding exactly what you do or how you're connecting well with the right clients. So having something like a branded professional website can really be beneficial here, and these websites can include features like interactive booking systems. So if you have a CRM, if you have a digital booking system, integrate that into your website, make it accessible there. Have the personalized content where you're using the photos that you are actually taking, not just stock photography. Have a client portal, have educational resources, whether that's blogs or that's downloadables or that's a PDF, and then even maybe have community engagement sections where people can leave comments. I know in our conversation with Ann lease, the pet detective, she talked about having a part of your website where people could post lost pets, or you would post lost pets, getting community engagement there again, where they see you in a very beneficial light. Now, this is a massive investment. We're not gonna we're not gonna sugar coat that. Having a professional brand, having a professional website done by somebody else, these are massive investments, but they do pay off again in long term. As people begin to look to you, these give you it gives you lots of data about your business, about web traffic. People see a consistency. They get to know who you are, and they can connect with you because of that consistency. Another pain point may be that you are concerned that you, the clients, aren't fully understanding exactly what is going on in your business. So when you're sending those updates, make sure that they are well written. Make sure you have good, high quality photos, making sure you have videos. Consider doing more customized experience reports. This is where, if you have a software, you utilize all of the toggles, all of the switches, all of the GPS tracking, all of the features of that to really showcase exactly what's going on. It's not just about doing a big data dump on the client about the experience that you had there. It's highlighting and elevating elements of that time where you're in the visit. One of we have ours organized such that it's, you know, the very first information that they really see is, did the pet poop? Did they pee and did they eat? Right? That's the basics of what clients want to know. But we need to surface that so it's easy for them to find adequate glance.
Meghan 18:50
So of the things that we have talked about differentiating your business of technology and customized care plans, certifications, community engagement, enrichment activities like puzzles, for having a branded website, and then experience reports. A lot of these take skill, money and really understanding what you want, and ultimately what the client wants. On their end, these differentiators exist because not everyone can or wants to do them again. If you're running your business, living your best life and everything is peachy, keep rocking it, but if you're trying to figure out ways to do more or try new things, or to grow your business and scale it, we hope that some of these ideas have been helpful. Sometimes it is hard to know if something is a true differentiator or not. Just because you say that you are now fear free certified, are clients going to find value in that? Are you going to be able to have the time to do enough education to say, Hey, this is what I have done. This is where my business is going. Because of this certification that I now have to
Collin 19:47
identify if something is worth investing your money, your time in, consider the following a business basic, again, something that we think everybody should have consider if it's a common practice, something that's widely adopted or expected by clients. They. Like client updates, or maybe it's low effort, it requires minimum effort, investment or specialization in also, whether it's a basic necessity, maybe it's fundamental to the service, but it doesn't add any special or unique value something like insurance. It's a basic necessity to running your business, but it doesn't add a lot value to you the actual dog walk. Contrast these with something that would be a true differentiator. This is a unique offering. It's something that competitors other businesses do not offer. That's your adventure hikes, that's the chilled water on your walks. That's the kitty cam that they get, that you put, put it in their house whenever you're doing your cat visits. Maybe it's also high effort, where it requires a significant amount of investment training or expertise. You're going after certification programs, you're going after specialty programs. You're getting trained. You're becoming a certified professional pet sitter. You're getting fear free. You're getting these. This is all extra effort above and beyond what would be expected. And then the last thing here is there's actually a true value add where enhances a client experience. It solves specific problems uniquely you have. Maybe it put in a booking system you have, whether that is a booking software or a robust pen and paper system with your calendar, either way, you have a system. This adds to the client experience. When they request you, they know they're going to get you, because you have a system in place. So whether you're happy where you are or you whether we're looking to grow, it's all about making informed decisions that align with our goals, both at the personal level and as a business owner. We want to thank today's sponsors, pet sitters, associates, and our Patreon people, for supporting the show. If you want to learn more about that, go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, and thank you all so much for listening and taking your most valuable asset that you have your time for listening to us today, we'll talk to you next time. Bye,
