518: Pulling Your Punches
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
What does it mean to pull your punches in business? In this episode, we explore the concept of strategically holding back to ensure sustainable growth and long-term success. We discuss how pacing your expansion, marketing, and client onboarding can help maintain high service quality and prevent burnout. Learn how to set realistic client expectations, manage your resources wisely, and avoid the race to the bottom on pricing. Join us as we dive into strategies for balancing ambition with caution, adapting to challenges, and positioning your business for lasting success.
Main topics:
Strategic business growth planning
Balancing marketing and expansion
Avoiding overpromising client expectations
Managing fear in business
Adapting to personal limitations
Main takeaway: Understand your goals, operate strategically, and punch hard when you’re ready.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, punch, business, pull, pet sitter, service, opponent, sitters, boxing, quality, boxer, operate, focus, pet, hold, expanded, offering, expectations, hard, strategically
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Megan, I'm Collin, and we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so glad you are here. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters, like Scott Henning, who just became our newest patron. Thank you so much for supporting us at the Great Dane level. We appreciate you and all of your support. If you'd like to know how to contribute to the show as well, you can go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can help out. There's
Collin 00:34
this term that I'm sure you've heard of. It's called pulling your punch. This comes from the world of boxing, and it means to deliberately not hit as hard as you know that you can. There's actually several reasons that a boxer might do this. The first one, they may not have liked the angle or the timing of their punch. They may also have been saving their strength for more powerful or tactical hit down the line. They could also be conserving their energy to outlast their opponent. But sometimes, a boxer may pull their punch to gage their opponent's reactions or defenses without fully committing to something so that they're actually kind of testing out their opponent. They may also hesitate or pull back because they're unsure of their ability to land the punch effectively. So they're coming in really hard, and they realize that the opponent has just moved out of the way slightly, so they need to pull back. The boxer may be dealing with an injury and so they pull their punch to avoid aggravating it further. Or they could be trying to mentally disarm their opponent by lulling them into a false sense of security, trying to say, Oh, I'm not as good as I actually am. In some cases, the boxer may hold back if they feel they've already done enough damage and are and they don't want to cause excessive harm. So it's out of compassion. They could also be trying to throw the match, so actually trying to lose. They may even be worried about the next fight if they win this one. They're unsure that they can face their next opponent at full strength. A few examples of this from the boxing world come to mind. Now neither of these two fighters would ever say they ever pulled a punch in the negative sense, but they certainly knew how to and when to punch hard. And a great example of this is Muhammad Ali. Ali was known for his tactical approach to boxing, particularly with his famous rope a dope strategy. In his fighting against George Foreman, he would often hold back his punches to conserve energy and allowed his opponent to tire themselves out. So while he wasn't exactly pulling his punches here again, his approach to involve pacing and using strategy over sheer brute force. And then there's Floyd Mayweather, Jr, who often gets criticized for his defensive style, which involved landing enough punches to win rounds, but he avoided risky, powerful strikes so he could preserve himself. He prioritized maintaining his undefeated record over delivering powerful knockout blows, often opting to pull back from full force hits to protect himself.
Meghan 02:53
And while I don't know much about boxing, other than what you just said, we do this in business all the time. We pull our punches, maybe instead of launching an aggressive marketing campaign to attract as many clients as possible, you may choose to hold back, focusing on gradual growth instead, which ensures your current employees can handle the workload. It can also prevent overwhelming your employees and yourself, and help maintain that quality of service that our clients have come to expect there are so
Collin 03:22
many ways to market your business that you can get into 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of eyeballs and ears, but that's just going to be too fast. And so instead of blanketing the airwaves or sitting out 10,000 direct flyers to a particular neighborhood, focus on those slow that five rule where you have a client in a neighborhood, you get the person on either side of them and the three across the street, meaning that you are tactfully and strategically growing your business in places where you are already operating, which helps you in your operations as well.
Meghan 03:51
Because it is true, if 100,000 eyeballs are seen on your stuff every week, you can't take on that load, even if 1% of them contact you. You could hold back and not spend all of your marketing budget all at once. You spread it out across different avenues, or you save for a few tactical ones. If you know that there's a big spend coming up that you want to sponsor an event and it's $1,000 well, maybe you won't be printing off flyers right now because you are saving for that.
Collin 04:19
This is why the last quarter of every year, we should be looking ahead to the next one, seeking out ideas and opportunities to be advertising so we can direct our ad dollars and our ad spend in the appropriate ways, whether that is printing out 1000s of flyers or maybe it's sponsoring one or two events in your neighborhood and in your city, whatever that looks like. Look at all of the opportunities so that, you know, look, I'm not gonna be able to do all of these. I may want to, but I might not be able to, financially, or with my time budget, be able to do all of these. So I need to strategically think through which one of these is going to be the biggest bang for the buck.
Meghan 04:56
Another way we pull our punches when we decide not to ON. Forward too many new clients very quickly, if it's around a holiday, we know that there's going to be an onslaught of new clients, but you may hold back on that, knowing that your business might not be ready to scale up in terms of hiring more walkers or sitters, This approach allows you to focus on providing that excellent service to your existing clients, and thus avoiding burnout. Because we all know that getting a lot of new clients at a rapid pace is very exhausting. You're having to do a lot of education for your systems and your processes. Just
Collin 05:28
from our own experience, we've seen that the more new clients you throw at your new employees, the faster they are to burn out. So it's better to pace them as you grow and expand at a slower pace, so that you can build their confidence and security in what you do. It's
Meghan 05:43
important to do the physical marketing and the boots on the ground of going into businesses, but you may hold back from jumping into partnerships with every local business or organization that approaches you, because you are choosing instead to focus on the ones that align with your long term goals and can bring the most value to your business here, you'll
Collin 06:02
find that you'll be pulled in 1000 different directions, with everybody demanding more of your time, more of your attention, more of your energy and focus, meaning that as people are approaching you or as you approach other businesses, make sure that they do align exactly with your mission, your vision, your values, so that you're in this for the long haul, Notch these short term gains, that you can actually have a fruitful, beneficial, mutually beneficial partnership between both of you.
Meghan 06:29
If you offer a new service like nail trimming or dog training, you may start small, offering it to only a select few clients before rolling it out to everyone. This allows you to test the logistics, get the client feedback and really refine the service before going all in.
Collin 06:44
You may have a great idea for how to implement those nail trims, but instead of dropping all the rest of your business and diving 100% in and then learning about it, take the time to grow slowly, feel out where those pain points are going to be, understand what that market actually means and what it looks like to tell people about that service and how you're going to do it. Is there a need do that market research test that again, strategically going about finding the weak points in this and where you need to improve before you take it full time.
Meghan 07:12
We did talk all about marketing a new service back on Episode 362 when you see a decrease in clients or have a lot of competition in your area, you might be tempted to lower your prices, but if you pull your punch, you may resist the urge to lower those significantly to compete with the hobby sitters or the people that are just doing this on the side, you recognize that your premium pricing reflects the quality and the professionalism of your service and all the certifications and everything that you continue to do by pulling your punch here, you maintain your brand's integrity and focus on attracting the clients who actually value that quality and want the professional someplace you never want to pull your punch is in quality pet business insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years, they 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 petsit 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@petitllc.com
Collin 08:27
because if you don't do this, what you end up doing is being in a race to the bottom, meaning that the only thing you are trying to differentiate on is price, which only leads to $0 and there are plenty of People out there in the world offering pet sitting, offering dog walking for $0 we don't need to be competing with them, because there's enough competition there. Instead pull your punch and this, resist the urge to do this by maintaining those prices so that you can find other ways to differentiate and add value to your clients lives, so that you become invaluable to them.
Meghan 09:01
A few years ago, Collin and I expanded into a brand new service area. Sure did, and we did a lot of market research before that, but ultimately we didn't know what all of what we were walking into. But you may choose to pull back instead of expanding into a new area, focus on solidifying your reputation in your current area, making sure that your brand is on point that people understand what you do, that you've done the education so that clients know how professional you are. This will allow you for more sustainable growth and ensure that your business doesn't become overextended. We've definitely felt that a few times where we live two hours away from our second service area, and sometimes that can feel a little bit much, a little overwhelming, but really, again, thinking about that quality over quantity, this really can be expanded into many facets of the pet care industry, the quality updates that you send clients with the clear pictures, or your quality hiring practices.
Collin 09:51
I recently attended an economic outlook presentation in our service area, and they were talking about, again, we live kind of in a rural part where they said. The surrounding 10 counties of where we live, there was almost half a million people, and this was very like, oh my goodness, if we serviced all 10 counties, wouldn't it be amazing if we but no, the complexity there. We don't have the systems ready for that. We don't have the ability to service half a million people, nor do we genuinely have the desire. What we want is a brand based in professionalism. Is a brand based in quality? Is it a brand that people can know what to expect and that it is excellence? And we need to do that in our small service area and keep it small so that we maintain that that strict adherence to those things by expanding too fast, we blow all that out of the water, and are instead just chasing numbers and people and number of services and dollars instead of the quality care that we know that we can provide. One area we think it's really important to pull your punch is in setting expectations too often. As business owners, we stand in that meet and greet. We stand in that new client consultation, and we need that business. We're desperate to have this new client because of where they live or who they are, the service that they're requesting for, and it's the one we want. And so we promise the moon to them, don't we? We set unrealistic, unmanageable expectations with them, promising that we'll always be there exactly at 11, 100% of the time, no ifs ands or buts, we promise them 100% of the time that their dog will always look happy in all of the photos, and nothing will ever go wrong. And then everything that we do to execute on that is under delivering, because the real world exists. And so what we have done, we've overpromised and under delivered. By pulling our punch here, we're actually building trust with our clients, we're ensuring long term client satisfaction, because then, when we say we're going to do something, when you when you tell your clients that what you're doing is you're promising them, you're promising them that time window. That's something we can commit to, a time window plus or minus an hour from whenever they originally scheduled. It. When we nail that, the client goes, Oh no, okay, well, this person actually is doing what they say they're going to do. I begin to trust this person. That's really important in the kind of businesses that we operate, it
Meghan 12:10
can be tempting to over promise. It can also be tempting to under promise and over deliver. But you really need to set the realistic expectations of your policies what's going to happen, and realize and let them know that things are going to happen. There may be a storm one day and you're going to have to move the walk, but when you tell them exactly how it's going to be, you can manage those expectations, and they know, in general what's going to happen. You may also hold back in your business because you are afraid. There are so many fears as a business owner out there, we talked about most of them on Episode 358, we pull our punch when we're afraid because of many different reasons. Maybe we fear the work that will result from our success. Yeah, you win
Collin 12:51
one time. Well, there's just going to make more work for me. So so my marketing campaign was successful. Now I've got to hire more people to accommodate that, or maybe now I need to learn about technology so I can get a better scheduling system in place for this. We've we sometimes can go, Well, I know this may work, but, or if I'm afraid that it's going to work, because if it does work, I just have more work to do, yeah.
Meghan 13:12
Or we don't want the outcome that of that success, we we have to find new goals or new purposes. Or, you know, we've checked that one off. Okay, what's the next step? And maybe we don't have that one yet. So we fear of trying to come up with something else, a new goal, or we fear we end up running a business that we're not emotionally ready for. If you have employees, you are then the manager of them and all of their junk that they come into the business with.
Collin 13:37
Or maybe you're working on changing into a different kind of service, and you yourself haven't let go of the fact that you're not going to be able to provide the service that you provided for the past 15 or 20 years, but you're trying to grow and you're trying to adapt to new client demands, but that means marketing in a different way and offering new services, but you aren't as passionate about those services, but you know you have to do them in order to survive as a Business.
Meghan 14:00
So when we have these fears, we don't try as hard, we don't put in as much effort, because we don't want to actually succeed. We don't actually want to do more work. We just want to kind of sit in where we are and be stagnant and not move forward. But just as in boxing, pulling your punch can be a strategic move to set you up for a better opportunity next time, it's important to face the challenges head on and to adapt to client expectations and industry trends and to be adaptable and moldable. Not saying that we have to go with every whim that people other people tell us, because we can choose to operate how we want, but it's about knowing ourselves and knowing our businesses enough to know when to push and pull
Collin 14:43
right, because you may not push as hard because you yourself are injured. I mean, just like with our boxing example, they don't punch as hard because they're nursing an injury. You may be going through a lot of stuff in your personal life. You may be struggling with your mental health, with your emotional well being, where you can't push as hard. Punches hard in marketing your business or getting out there and networking, and that's okay. We do what we can to get by and sustain. We're in this for the long haul. We're not trying to do a one knockout punch in our business. That's not how any of this works. We are trying to sustain, to outlast, to test, to be strategic about everything that we do while protecting ourselves when we're injured, we can't punch as hard, and that's okay. We need to take that time to rest and recover, but the business does need to operate, so we still need to do a little bit of things, but just enough to push through. And it's all about understanding. As Megan said yourself, what are your goals? What are your objectives? How do you want to operate? And really, how are you able to operate currently, when you're able to punch hard, punch hard when you're not, that's okay. We'll try again tomorrow. Go with those ebbs and flows. Listen to your body. Listen to yourself, so that you are operating in a place where you are most comfortable, where you can excel in everything that you do.
Meghan 16:02
Yeah, because that's most likely when you're going to succeed is when you are in alignment with your business. We would love to hear your perspective on this, if you agree with us, or even if you don't, you can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or you can give us a phone call and leave us a voicemail at 636-364-8260. We appreciate you listening and taking your most valuable asset your time today. We hope this has been helpful to you. We would also like to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode, and we will talk with you next time bye.
