538: 5 Things to Check in Your Business This Week
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
What are you working on in your business? In this episode, we dive into why refining the little things can make a big difference. From updating information to strengthening communication, it’s about creating a seamless experience for clients. Consistent improvements lead to better trust, smoother operations, and a stronger reputation. Focusing on these details helps your business not just keep up, but truly stand out.
Main topics:
Online/Offline Presence Updates
Improved Client Communication
Google Profile Optimization
Updated Safety Protocols
Client Testimonials & Feedback
Main takeaway: The little details really do add up—they can help you run a smoother business and stand out from the crowd.
Links:
Episode 336: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/336
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitter confessional, business details, client needs, online presence, offline presence, communication systems, client forms, Google business profile, safety protocols, client testimonials, email newsletters, prioritizing tasks, delegating tasks, client feedback, business optimization
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin, and we are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We appreciate you listening today. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our Patreon people for keeping the show going and supporting today's podcast. If you enjoy listening to the show, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support to see all of the ways that you can give back. We know that running a business is hectic. It's hard to stay on top of things, but the truth is, the little details really do add up. They matter. It can help you run a smoother business and really stand out from the crowd compared to 10 or 15 years ago, pet owners are way more discerning and critical, partially because of the internet, things are more easily able to be found out, but also because they want more they have more needs, more desires, they can be picky because there are a lot more dog walkers and pet sitters out there. So we can't simply wave it away by saying, Oh, we're a small business or we're really busy. We shouldn't use those excuses because they aren't as professional. Everybody's busy. Pet owners are busy. Pet sitters are busy, especially business owners. Sometimes we're like chickens running around with our heads cut off. We do have so many things that are accessible to us and have come to be expected by our potential clients. So we wanted to go over five things that we can do in our businesses this week that are pretty simple, but most of us overlook them and say we don't have time for them. And
Collin 01:18
the first one that we want to talk about is to refresh our online and offline presence, right? So we want to look at our website and our social media here make sure that all of your services, all of your pricing, all of your contact details, are up to date. Maybe you've done a price increase over the last quarter, last couple months, but you haven't gotten around to putting that on your website, or maybe your services have changed based off of where you're doing them, or you've changed a little bit about what days you're offering them, or things like that. Make sure that that language is explicitly on your website, or that you have social media posts about that and that are pinned to make sure that people know exactly where to find them.
Meghan 01:56
That also goes along with updating your physical marketing material. So if you dropped off business cards to vets offices, but you did that nine months ago or a year ago or longer than that, and you've since updated your tagline or your logo. Revisit those places and see if they need a restock,
Collin 02:13
and even if they don't give them those new brochures, business cards, flyers, anyways, if you, especially if you have new logo, new pricing, new information, or you want to use a new QR code to track those things, ask for all of your old stuff back and give them that new fresh stuff so that you can start seeing if that's going to make an impact as well.
Meghan 02:31
Something that we do when we visit places is making a spreadsheet of the date, the location that we went to, if they were friendly, if we dropped off cards or whatever it was, and then any other notes. This really helps us track, over time, exactly who we visited, make sure that we're doubling back every six or 12 months, and to know to not go back to the not friendly ones. The
Collin 02:51
second thing we want to look at is strengthening our communication systems. If you have not done this, now is a great time to do this, and we don't have to do all of the communication, that's where we get really overwhelmed, and that's why a lot of these things get pushed to the side. Is when we go, oh, I have to do everything all the time, all at once. No. So when we talk about doing things like creating or updating client forms or templates, choose one, whether that's a new service agreement or new pet information or emergency contacts, or maybe you want to work on templates for appointment confirmations reminders or thank you notes. And if you're making these in Canva, pick one of them to really dial in to make sure it's having the impact that you're wanting to have in your business it's actually going to be beneficial to you. It's a great time to look through these and make sure that you're not collecting any information that you don't actually need to and then, along with this, doing things like improving your phone or in person communication. Make sure, if you haven't done this, go back and check your voicemail message. Is it professional? Is it up to date? Is it directing people to where they can go from more information? I think
Meghan 03:55
one of the big things that we run into when we go to email people is that a message will shoot back saying they're out of the office from this date to this date, and that date has already passed. So if you do have an away message in either your emails or your software, make sure it's up to date. One thing that as businesses, we love to set it and forget it is our contract. If you are not updating your contract on a yearly basis and having your clients re sign it, you need to do that. Make sure that the language that is in there is what you're actually doing. I know we ran into this last year of having to update our contract and going, well, we don't actually abide by this, or we don't do this anymore, and really having to strip out that language that isn't applicable anymore, or adding things in, of going, Oh, we actually added this new policy this year. Of we had a bad thing happen, and we had to implement this. So now it's going to go in our contract, and when
Collin 04:45
we are going through our communication systems, when are we talking to our clients? Is it all beforehand? Are we just concerned about the updates during their visits, or are we having follow up and personalized notes to our clients about their services or handwritten. Thank You cards if you are interested in doing that going into the new year or moving forward. Have you designed those yet? Take some time this week to work on that.
Meghan 05:09
If you don't have a Google Business Listing yet, you should. It's free, and you will pop up on Google anytime somebody searches for the keywords that you put in there. So the
Collin 05:18
number three thing that we want to work on this week is optimizing our Google business profiles. It is something that a lot of us will set up one time and then never go back and touch again or update. But that can really be the difference between being found on a Google search and not so. If you don't have one of these, make sure and claim your listing. Ensure that your business is listed on Google by claiming your Google business profile, which was formerly known as Google My Business, they changed that name a little while ago, but that same language still pops up every now and then. It can be kind of confusing, and one of the big things about this is to make sure that you have accurate information, verify that your phone number and your hours of operation are correct. Google has been cracking down on these hours of operation a lot more, where they may try and have a bot contact you through their systems, and if you say you're open 24/7, and you don't respond back to them, this can ding your profile. So making sure that this actually when you're operating or when your office hours are already reflected on your website, to make sure that your information is accurate,
Meghan 06:19
look at the services that Google says that you offer, they may not match up with what you actually do. So remove those, add the ones that are actually applicable, and add photos and updates when you upload high quality photos of your services. You on dog walks or your employees with cats smiling, petting them, loving on them, administering medication, Google uses those images and the metadata inside there to surface you more when people search for a dog walker or a pet sitter, and
Collin 06:47
these don't have to be bespoke posts made specifically for your Google business profile. If you're posting something to Facebook or to Instagram, put it on your profile to at least show that it is active and engaged and you are updating that information regularly, about
Meghan 07:01
once a week is recommended here in the United States, we just had a rush of hurricanes. So update your safety protocols. If natural disasters occur in your community, how are you going to alert clients? What are you going to do? How are you going to ensure the safety of the animals, even when their owners are away? Do you have specific safety checklists for pet care and home security, is everyone's emergency contact information up to date? Do they have a local contact that they are not traveling with?
Collin 07:29
I know this is something that can easily slip by, especially for long term clients who have been with us for years and years where they travel and we just never question whether they've updated emergency contacts before. So reach out this week to your long term clients and ask them, is their emergency contact still up to date? Or maybe you make it a good practice of each time a client books you, that's one of the questions you send back to them, saying, Thank you so much for your recent request of our services coming up over the holidays, we'd like to make sure that your emergency contact is up to date before you leave, and that you also have the veterinary information that is easily accessible for those people. Move vets all the time and then forget to update that information when it comes to our safety protocols, we as the business owners, we as the professionals, have to be proactive. We always have to be proactive in getting this information and getting the clients to tell us this, because they may have made that switch six months ago and moved on with the rest of their life and never thought to update us. We're the ones who have to step in and go, no, let's make sure this is all correct, and go through those checklists of our pet care and the home security, making sure that we're thinking of those natural disasters and making sure that we are thinking through all those possibilities that could come up again. We don't have to go down all of the rabbit holes, but spend a little bit of time this week. Take one day where you're gonna just gonna focus on safety and emergency information for your clients and for your business. Before
Meghan 08:50
we talk about the fifth thing, we're gonna talk 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 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 at petsit llc.com so we've talked about refreshing your online and offline presence. We've talked about client communication and making sure that that's streamlined and strengthened your Google business profile should be awesome, and then enhanced safety protocols. The last thing we want to talk about is gather and showcase your client testimonials. This is super important. The Facebook reviews, the Google reviews that you receive. Don't just leave them there, put them into little images and Canva and put them on Instagram as well. And your website, you don't necessarily need to have an entire page dedicated to reviews, but have them at the bottom of each page. Of your website, potential clients really want to vet you and make sure that you are real, that you are legitimate, that you are actually going to show up when you say you are
Collin 10:07
but also make sure you're reaching out for the direct feedback from your clients. If you know you have satisfied clients, or if you have clients who rave about you online already, or let you know that in person, ask them to leave you a review in specific places, request that short testimonial, that review from them, and say, Please direct that to Google or Facebook or wherever you. Does the business owner want that information, and if they have some not so good feedback for you, ask for that too, but maybe in a phone call so that you can resolve that issue, instead of them leaving that negative or that bad review anytime as business owners, where we reach out for feedback, it's just more information. It's just more data into our business that allows us to know whether we're on the right track, whether we need to make some big changes or other things that we need to do in our business to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our clients. A great
Meghan 10:56
way to prompt for feedback is to send an email to everybody. If you have your client's email addresses, put them on an email list. You don't necessarily have to send out an email every single week, but maybe a monthly or a quarterly newsletter, just with updates about your business, what's going on. Have you hired people? Are there specific pet birthdays you want to highlight or favorite clients, or maybe there are pet tips that you want to give them and showcase? Maybe the dog trainer in you that's coming out. A lot of times, we think of email newsletters as big and scary, and I don't know what to include, but just start small. It's just updates about your business and maybe a pet tip or two that you know your clients struggle with. If a lot of your clients are getting cat robot litter boxes, maybe talk about some ways to troubleshoot them, or why you are still needed even as a pet sitter, we
Collin 11:39
talked all about the effective use of an email list back on Episode 336 and you can check out that link in the show notes at
Meghan 11:45
the end of the day. We are business owners and are tasked with so many things, admin, field work, it basically never ends. But the joy is that we get to do it. So while we may not like filing taxes or we may not like writing an email, it will strengthen you and it will make your business better and more robust.
Collin 12:04
And the purpose of this episode is not to overwhelm us. It's not to just add and heap more things onto our plate. You may have listened to all five of these and gone, oh no, I'm actually doing pretty well with them. That's fantastic. The point of this episode is just to prompt us to go back and look at these things. Is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? And when we look at all this and try and fit it into our busy week, we have to use our time wisely. So it comes down to prioritizing our task. We have to tackle the most important things. First of the things we talked about, and given what's already on your plate, rank those in a list of what has to get done for the benefit of everything and the functioning of my business, and then go all the way down to if it never gets done, it's not the end of the world. And then set those daily goals for yourself. So going, I need to allocate specific days and times to focus on specific tasks. That way I'm not burdened by thinking about this. I'm not going to be burdened every day. Going, what am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing tomorrow? Well, tomorrow is the email day, and then the next day is working on Google, my business, and then the next day is whatever it allows you to push off the thoughts and worry to a different day when we have priorities and daily goals,
Meghan 13:13
because you eat an elephant one bite at a time, if you know that your busy days are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday are a little bit lighter, set aside one hour on the Tuesday and Thursday to work on some of these things, and maybe that's even outside of your admin time. If you've already built in admin time of where you're scheduling and route planning and invoicing and figuring out all of those things, maybe it's a different task that you do with your extra hour this week. And
Collin 13:37
then if you're still looking for ways to maximize your week, Delegate when possible. It's not always that we have a team member to pass something on to. Maybe we're going to delegate by going on to social media and asking for help from somebody in a pet sitter group. Maybe we're going to delegate by going and buying a Canva template or an email template from an online marketplace, or we're going to Fiverr or something like that. That allows us to go, I can't spend my time on this, but I can spend a few dollars to help this problem get resolved so I can be better in my business.
Meghan 14:06
We would love to know what you are working on this week. You can either email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com, or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. We hope this has been helpful to you, and if it has, please share it with a friend. If there are ever topics you would like us to cover, or specific people you would like us to interview. Just let us know. Thank you to pet sitters, associates, and we will talk with you next time bye. You.
