543: Trust is the Ultimate Asset in Pet Care with Dan Reitman
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Ever wondered what it takes to build unwavering trust with clients in the pet care industry? 🤝On this episode, Dan Reitman, owner of Dan’s Pet Care, discusses his journey of building a trusted pet care brand.
Dan shares his evolution from a solo dog walker to managing a large-scale business that includes daycare and kennel-free boarding, emphasizing the importance of maintaining client trust throughout.
We explore his challenges in deciding when to keep things in-house versus partnering, as well as his commitment to ensuring high standards of care in an increasingly competitive industry.
Dan also opens up about overcoming personal and business-related fears, pushing himself to learn and grow continuously. This conversation is a deep dive into why trust remains the ultimate asset in pet services and how it can drive sustainable success.
Main topics:
Transition to daycare facilities
Control and partnership challenges
Building trust with clients
Industry competition and standards
Overcoming business-related fears
Main takeaway: The only asset that can be kept safe from every threat and made to appreciate in value year after year is the relationship you have with your customers.
About our guest:
Daniel Reitman is the founder and CEO of Dan’s Pet Care, a top pet care service provider in New York. His entrepreneurial journey began early, eventually leading him to launch his pet care company in 2009 after recognizing a need for quality pet services while working as a veterinary technician. Today, Dan’s Pet Care serves over 4,000 clients across multiple regions, with plans for national expansion.
A graduate of Hofstra University with a degree in entrepreneurship and biology, Daniel’s business acumen has helped him grow Dan’s Pet Care into a multi-million-dollar company. His commitment to excellent pet care earned him the 2021 Pet Sitter of the Year™ Award from Pet Sitters International.
Beyond pet care, Daniel has founded multiple ventures, including SmartLine, a waitlist management platform sold to PaidEasy, and Hope for Hope, a non-profit aiding children in need worldwide. He also mentors other pet businesses and advocates for animal welfare as an ambassador for Paway.
Daniel’s mission is to ensure pets are treated as family members, and his passion for animals and business continues to drive his success in both the pet care industry and beyond.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet care, dog walking, daycare facility, boarding service, business expansion, client trust, team hiring, industry standards, safety protocols, competitive landscape, business challenges, customer service, industry evolution, business growth, entrepreneurial journey
SPEAKERS
Dan, Collin
Collin 00:01
Dan, welcome to pet sitter confessional. We're brought to you by time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters or naps. Today, we are really excited to have Dan Reitman, owner of Dan's pet care, on the show to talk about his journey into opening a facility and what it's like balancing the obligations and duties from running a dog walking and pet sitting service as well as a doggy daycare and boarding facility, and kind of how he's made that his own spin, to make it unique and make it a different approach. But Dan, I'm super excited to have you on the show. It's been a hot minute since you've been on. So really excited to get caught up with all the exciting stuff that you've been doing and how busy that you've been. But for those who aren't familiar with you your work or haven't listened to previous episodes, can you please tell us a little bit more about all that you do, absolutely.
Dan 00:50
So first of all, thank you, Collin, for having me back. I always enjoy our conversations, and I always enjoy sharing with the pet care community. All right, a little bit of a background about me, so I started Dan's pet care. November. It'll be 15 years ago. I was working as a vet assistant at a local animal hospital. I had dropped out of college, no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and it was originally called Dan's dog walking and pet sitting. So I started a small dog walking company. Worked as a solo dog walker for about a year, and I started to grow a team. Fast forward to today. We've got about 5000 clients. I have a team of about 90 employees. We service a large majority of Long Island and queens, and recently we have moved into the daycare and cage reporting industry. So that is what we are here to talk about today.
Collin 01:40
Yeah, we are. And there's this, it's so interesting because you know your story. There's so much built up with the with the with the with the dog walking, with the pet care side that you know the shift into the facility side, the brick and mortar side. I really curious about what your thinking was, what your decision process was, for moving in that direction, and obviously you're still keeping the dog walking and all that stuff still running, so you branched off into this. What was that decision
Dan 02:07
like? This is something that has been on my radar for, I'd say, almost the entire time I've been in business. It's always been something I've wanted to do. I've been approached in the past by, you know, people want to partner with me. I've explored many different opportunities, and, you know, just was never the right time. And I've always, I've always been kind of like the solo entrepreneur. Never loved partnerships. I have had other companies where I've had some fantastic partners, just never in this industry, because I'm very, very particular about how everything is done, but yeah, so pre pandemic, there was a doggy daycare that was in our service area that they were looking to have somebody come in and take over. And so I was like, This sounds like a great opportunity. You know, I sat down with them. We got pretty far into the talks and to the point where we were negotiating our lease and everything, and it just wasn't a good fit. So I was like, All right, well, we're not doing this, but we're doing this. We are going to open a facility. So during the pandemic, we were we looked at, I can't even tell you how many properties, but we finally landed on this massive warehouse over in Glen Cove, and I was like, the space is perfect. The landlord was great. And yeah, so it's always been something I've wanted to do my long term goal, and this is a large step in that direction. Is I again not to compare myself to Jeff Bezos by any means, but my goal is I want to create the Amazon of pet care. I want to be that one stop shop, because I know how hard it is for pet parents when it comes to finding people you trust, to train your dog, to walk your dog, to board your dog, to, you know, take care of your pets, veterinary perspective, our goal is eventually to cover all of those services under one umbrella. And now we've added a few more to our repertoire of everything that we offer to our clients, and now all that's left is the veterinary side of things, but that'll be a podcast about five or six years from now. But yeah, so this has always been something that's been on the radar, it's been an immense learning experience for me. I've never had any personal experience working in doggy daycares, but, you know, I had very specific ideas on how I wanted it done, and I was able to put together a team of people who were passionate and had tons of immense years of incredible experience doing this. So it was, it was, it's been years in the making, but it's something that we're very, very excited to be having live now. Well, a
Collin 04:53
part of that discussion, you know, the story that you had there was, there was a part where you were approached with partnerships, with. Working with other people. But you know, for you, you said you liked keeping it in house, and I think that that is a really important decision that we as business owners, we've got to make at a lot of different stages. We get approached with opportunities, with options to work with people. For you, why is it important to keep that more in house? Approach with your business.
Dan 05:21
Short answer, Collin, I have control issues. No But joking aside,
Collin 05:28
I I believe that the
Dan 05:34
more of the the the industry that's existed in the daycare and cage tree in the boarding space is a little bit dated, and that is places where dogs are sitting in kind of dingy kennels. They're sitting in a crate most of the day. And I personally never loved the idea of that. So, you know, all the people that wanted to partner with me, they wanted to do these kennels and runs. And I'm not knocking anyone who doesn't, because I know everyone in our industry, for the most part, is incredibly passionate about what they do, and they really want to make sure that the dogs have a fantastic experience. But for me, the biggest thing was I wanted to create something different. I wanted to create a new experience for pet parents, and I think I have operated, as you know, as a solo entrepreneur, as a business owner, without any conflicting pushback from a equal, for a very long time that I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I really wanted to make sure I could see that through. Now I'm not sitting here saying I've done this on my own by any means. I've had an incredible team of people. My management team has been immensely helpful in executing this. But I think the company as a whole, we're very aligned on a very specific vision, on really focusing on our core values and making sure that we as a company continue to perpetuate those core values through the work that we're doing. But, yeah, it's we get approached constantly. I get, I'm sure many of you get those emails from private equity firms talking, you know, we want to buy into your business, or this or that. And man, the day that I come on here and say that I've sold to a private equity firm, I will probably be on a boat somewhere, and I will have sold it for an obscene amount of money. But the big thing for me is I will lose money for years to fulfill and push forward a goal that we have on service execution and making sure things are done the way we believe it should be done. When it comes to the quality of care and the experience for dogs, that's the biggest thing for me, is they're not just numbers on a spreadsheet. These are living things, and it's so important to me that we do it the right way and not try to find the fastest way, only to profitability. I think there is a way to balance both, and that's incredibly, incredibly important to me and my
Collin 07:57
team well, and anytime you bring on a partner, whatever that is defined for you, whether it is an investment, whether it's another business that you're working with something on you know that that you said that phrase there of of having that align on specific visions, and that's hard to do. The more outside people that you bring in, and that's hard to do, the more you know sometimes it can make you stronger, make you think in different ways, but if you're not looking for that, there's really no reason to bring that in. If you go, No, this is how we want to do. The rest of management. The rest of the team is so in alignment with this, it doesn't make sense to bring somebody in. We've got to get caught up, who's going to sidetrack us down this road and just being kind of, you know, just steadfast, dedicated and devoted to that, to that pathway that you're walking down. And a lot of times as businesses, we don't have that vision. So it's hard to know how we can be dedicated to something if we don't, we don't have that vision, don't know the road we're walking down. So to go, well, we need to keep this in house so that we can stay focused. And that's really, you know what it sounds like you were working on, of going, No, we know what direction we're headed. It doesn't make sense for us to bring in partners when we can just, you know, keep moving forward little by little.
Dan 09:09
Yeah, absolutely. I think that the partnership I and I'm not knocking partnerships either. I think, yeah, depending on where you're at in your business and in your journey of, you know, creating whatever it is your vision, you got to know what's right for you. I know for me personally, you know, I haven't had a quote, unquote job since I was 20 years old. I've been doing this since I was 22 and for me, it's been, this is my this is my life. My wife likes to joke that she is my mistress and the business is my wife. You know, partnerships are like a marriage. You know when, when you're getting into a business partnership with somebody, this is somebody who is, they're in the bank account, they're in the meetings, they are they have, they whatever equity they have in the company, they have that much of an influence on decision making. And so whoever. It is if you do partnership, you know, if you do open to a partnership with somebody, you got to be super sure that you are aligned in the things that matter. You're going to argue with people for sure. I mean, like, I argue with my managers about things, but you know, you obviously don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of yes men. You want to be surrounded by people who will challenge you, but you always got to make sure at the end of the day, it's those, those core values, those key elements of whatever your vision is, those have to align. So for me, personally, I knew at this point in building the business, bringing on a partner, just wasn't what I was looking for. And again, just knowing you got to know what you want, and sometimes it is difficult to figure that out. It's, again, I've been obsessing over this for 15 years. I eat sleep and breed this company. And it's, you know, it's something that I'm incredibly passionate about, and making sure that we just create fantastic experiences for dogs, and that pet parents are happy and they feel safe with us. And you know, because I always like to say, you know, we're not in the pet care business, we're in the peace of mind business. You could have your dog go anywhere. You could drop your dog off at this facility. You could have your dog go to this dog walker. But with us, our guarantee is peace of mind, no matter what your dog is getting the level of care that you pay for and you expect with us, because at the end of the day, worst case scenario, I'm showing up at your house myself to walk your dog, or I'm going to stay at the facility overnight, like nobody in this company is bigger than any job. I remember the first two years when we launched our Cooper scooper services without doing it every day, because I wanted to understand the ins and outs of what we did. And it was the same thing with the daycare. You know, I spent, think I did the first almost three months of overnight shifts. So I would sleep maybe three hours at some point in the morning. I'd be at the facility overnight. I'd work all afternoon. So I was working about 1819, hours a day for the first three months that we were doing it. But again, I wanted to understand every single aspect of what we were doing. So that was very, very important to me. Well. And you
Collin 12:01
mentioned, you know, you didn't have a background or experience in the facility side, in the doggy daycare, in the boarding, yeah, but what you did do is you went out and you hired people with that experience. And I think that's really crucial. Where, when we talk about bringing things, keeping things in house, we have to be humble enough and honest enough with ourselves to admit when we don't know everything. So we have to find the people that do and then bring them into the company. We do that first as a business with a lot of CPAs and tax accountants, or whatever that is, or administrative assistants. We bring that in in various aspects of our business. But when we look to the power of hiring, this is where that gets so important in our businesses. The power of hiring is that I no longer have to be the expert in everything. I need to guide, I need to give the vision. I need to help people and manage them, but the expertise I can bring in house, the expertise and wisdom and experience I can bring in to make our company better. And many times we get so hung up with people are going to do it as good as me. They're not going to make this important. Make this important enough, or whatever going well in this case, I don't know a single thing about this this, so let me go learn and just know enough so I can recognize when somebody is an expert in this. Yeah, absolutely. I
Dan 13:16
mean, for me, you give I'll walk into any house with any breed of dog, any animal, if aggressive, not aggressive. Worst case, I get bit. You know what I mean? Like, I'm comfortable with that. I'm very comfortable with the idea of having 3040, 50 dogs in a room was something that was very, very foreign to me, and it was something that I had to be like, Okay, we got to bring in the right people. So I was very fortunate enough to in building up towards opening this place, bringing in some people with incredible experience. So I had somebody, Joe, who's one of my most senior managers. We hired him. He ran a facility called Best in Show for years, and he helped grow them to a really, really large facility. And we have Amanda, who we brought in, who she ran, actually a dog topia before she used to work with Joe. And then we have our behaviorist, we have our lead trainer. So we have a lot of people with great experience. And then when we were first hiring all of our handlers, they we weren't we weren't hiring anybody who didn't have experience, everybody who joined our team. You had to come from a dog in daycare before you couldn't have because, you know, I, I've been doing a lot of the interviews recently, and, you know, more power to them. They're all lovely people. But if I hear one more person talk about their level experience, be well, I love dogs, I am going to lose my mind. Because a lot of dogs, it's, it's, it's not, it's not what you need, like it's, it's the, one of the most important things for this job. But a love of dogs isn't going to sustain you when you need to be aware of specific body language in a play field, knowing the difference between healthy play and a dog that's being reactive, knowing the difference between, you know, recognizing resource guarding, all these little things. Is that you need to know, and not from like, oh, I grew up with dogs. Like, that's great. We could train you. And we've gotten to a point now where we can train team members. But like, man, hiring for that expertise is so important. Alex or mosey was talking about this, how when you're in that one to $3 million range as a company, it is, it is one of the toughest places in a business, because when you're below that, you know, you don't have this massive, massive, you know, infrastructure where you have all these people and you're dealing with all these things. But when you're in that one to $3 million range, which we are so close to getting out of, you don't have the resources, the higher the level of expertise you need for every single element of your company. Now that being said, I was lucky enough to find some people who did have that expertise, who saw what my vision was, who want to be a part of that. So where we're at right now as a company is we are trying to bring, you know, we have been building that team and making sure that, like, you know, these aren't people who are here just for a job. They want to be a part of building this company. Like, my goal is to open 100 locations. I want to open this nationally. I want to be in as many places as we can. And so I want people who align with me on that vision and want to be a part of creating that. And so, you know, yes, I have to wear so many hats right now. Like before, with the dog walking business, we got to a level of maturity where I was able to focus on more sorts of large partnership, biz dev stuff. So partnering with large apartment buildings, focusing on media, working with, you know, farmer's dog and all these other great brands, and so I was able to focus on that, and then, boom, we opened this place, and I'm back to square one, of like, I am doing all these things, and I'm running around and I'm mopping floors and I'm doing all this stuff, and, you know, it's, it's kind of nice to be a novice again. It's nice to be at a place where I am, I'm learning, and I'm forced to grow, and, you know, I'm able to kind of build this team, but not be starting from square, you know, square one, where I with the dog walking, where I when I was 22 I had no idea what I was doing, whereas now I know, you know, like before we opened, we had written up every single possible scenario you could run into to the point where there was a, I'm using this term loosely, an earthquake in New York earlier this year. So it was, like a 4.3 or something like that. But, like, we had an actual SOP for what to do in an earthquake. And so the earthquake happened, my team knew exactly what to do. They checked the structure around the building. They made sure to check all the boxes. So, you know, having the experience of building the dog walking business made it much easier for me to roll that into the opening and scaling of this current business, yeah, but being a
Collin 17:53
novice again, as you were talking, that's what I was, you know, I was just about to jump in and talk about that, because we can become so complacent in our businesses, where we think we know everything, and all of a sudden we become really comfortable in running our business, and it becomes, quote, unquote easy, and we miss we begin to miss things, don't we? We can to kind of get lackadaisical. We start kind of being more relaxed about things, because, oh, I've been here, done that. It's been a it's been 10 years. This is super easy, but from a personal development perspective, like, that's the business, but personally being placed back in that position almost, almost, you know, very intentionally on your part, going, No, I've got to dive in. I've got to learn all these aspects. What that does when we do that is, is it reminds ourselves, and it keeps our brain fluid right, keeps our brain open to new things, but we're not, as you said, starting brand, brand spanking new. We're bringing all of our past experiences, but we're applying them in a different way. We're beginning to think outside the box. We're taking everything and putting it together, but we are starting from zero, and that just allows us to continue to learn and grow and make sure that we are engaged and active and and focused on what we're business, our business is actually doing, instead of just kind of letting it ride off into the sunset. Have you heard of time to pet? Chris Ann from raining cats and dogs, has this to say,
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Collin 19:35
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Dan 19:47
Absolutely. I you know when you said complacency, that like that word complacency is, is death in business. I think the second you are like, I got this, everything is all. All good prepare for stuff to catch on fire, because I think that level of arrogance, like you said, is going to lead to things slipping. You are not going to be constant. You have to constantly be sharpening your tools. What we did in this industry 10 years ago to get business is completely different now than it was 20 years ago. 30 years you know, 30 years ago, I'm 15 years ago, when I opened, I was running ads in the Yellow Pages for, you know, those of you who are new, that is a book that used to have phone numbers in it that we would have to look at, um, but, yeah, I was doing that. Whereas now, you know, we're focused on, you know, obviously it's content marketing and this and that there are so many things that you constantly have to do and challenge yourself with and so the one I just my birthday passed in August, and the one of the things I do every year is I set birthday goal, as cheesy as that sounds, so couple days before my birthday, I will create a list of things that I have to I want to accomplish within the year every year, is Lose 30 pounds every single year, get back into shape. But it's it's usually a combination of personal goals, business goals, relationship goals, and things like that. And so one of the things that I add, the list gets longer and longer every year, but one of the big things I added this year was to do something that scared me and so, and I was, like, thinking about it as I wrote, I'm like, well, everything scares me, because this is terrifying. And, you know, I I take, I took on a large loan to do this. So it was I took on, I essentially burned the boats. Like, I didn't have an option to, like, Oh, if this doesn't work out like, No, I personally guaranteed a loan for a large amount of money. I have to make this work. There is nothing else. So, like, I've gotten used to the fear and that challenge. So actually, this past August, I went and I did ayahuasca for the first time. So for those of you who are unfamiliar, Ayahuasca is a start. It originates in the Amazon. These tribes discovered it's a combination of these two plants, and you drink it, and it causes very intense psychedelic experiences, but it works through a lot of emotional things. Now I've been talking about doing this, basically, as long as I've done it, as long as I've known about it. So I've tried BMT before, but the Ayahuasca was a very, very different experience. But I was terrified. I mean, like, absolutely terrified. So I was away on a family vacation, and I was going to be going away for a weekend, so I'm driving to upstate New York to do it. And I remember in the call, I'm like, I am on the verge of tears. I'm so scared because there is some dark stuff in my head, and I don't know if I want to dive into the point where I was thinking, stay in a hotel for all weekend, tell my wife I did it, and then everything will be fine and nobody will be the wiser. And so, you know, in preparation for this, there's a diet you have to follow. You have to do a lot of meditation. There's a lot of things you have to do to kind of prepare your mind and your body for it. So it's very strict diet. There's a lot of limitations that you have to put on yourself in terms of like adhering to this. And so I went into it, I tried to go into it with an open mind, and the shaman explains to you that Ayahuasca, or they refer to it as the medicine, or they refer to her as grandmother, so she's Ayahuasca is like this, the grandmother of all of the psychedelic plant medicine. And so he says that Ayahuasca is the it's a river, right? And your body is the canoe, and your breath is your or so after, you know, I've done meditation and things like that for years, I could be better with it, but I remember him saying, you can't fight the river. You have to breathe. You have to breathe through it. And so in the experience, there are times where it gets a little bit intense. I remember I stopped. I'm seeing this beautiful vision, right? There were so many animals. Everything, almost everything I experienced was animals. But in one of the visions that I saw, it was this explosion of the tree of life. So I'm seeing every animal that's ever existed, does exist, will exist. I'm watching evolution on a cellular level, like it's, it's an absolutely insane experience. And I started getting overwhelmed, and I'm holding my breath. And as I'm doing this, the tree, I'm watching this, the life, all of it starts to die and decay. And I'm like, this is getting scary. This is getting dark. This is what I was afraid of. And I remembered, you got to breathe. You gotta breathe. And I took one big and then this explosion of life, the tree burns back into life and all this amazing stuff. And it kind of it goes back to like whenever you are challenging yourself, whenever you are in these positions of taking on these things that scare you, whether it's. You know, a new service to your business, or expanding or taking on a partner, whatever it is, you have to have a control over your mind and being able to let go of the things that you can't control and go with things in a way that you need to be able to allow things to just happen. There's things we can control, you know, control the controllables and breathe through the rest of it. So it showed me that a lot of the things that talked to me about was because so like she talks to you through it. I'm an incredibly impatient person. Anyone who's ever worked with me knows I'm impatient and I'm very intense. And I kept seeing these visions of clocks, clocks, clocks, clocks. And, you know, it was basically telling me, like, you need to be patient, you need to trust the process, you need to go through this, and you need to not fight this so much because, like, I'm sure many of the listeners out there experience depression and anxiety, and that anxiety can consume you, that anxiety is something that can eventually destroy you. If you let that anxiety control your life, you're not going to make good decisions. You're not going to experience the world the way you need to. It's also going to ruin a lot of good experiences. I
Collin 26:13
can tell you like
Dan 26:15
you've made it this far, right? I remember, you know, in terms of, for those of you who are out there dealing with money stress, I run a multi, multi, multi million dollar business, and trust me, these great gray hairs that you can't see didn't come from nowhere, and the money stress is there, but it's it's important to remind yourself that you successfully made it through every single day, every single day, that you are still here and your business is still going you have figured it out. And that's one of the things I have to remind myself when I'm faced with a new challenge or when I'm faced with a new problem, it's I figured it out every other time in the path, and I have figured out a way to make this work over and over and over again. And you got to trust that. You have to trust yourself like you've built the business most businesses in this country. I think it's like, I apologize that this number is completely wrong, but I think it's like 80% of businesses fail before five years. I think it's something along the lines of that. And it's like, you made it to that point. You've beaten most people getting to a million dollars. I think less than 10% of businesses in the country do that get to 234, $5 million you're you're in rarefied air, and when you're able to accomplish that, it's important, when you're met with these challenges, or you're met with these situations, that you're like, Man, I don't, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can get through this. Yeah, you've gotten through every single challenge has gotten you to that point, and all those things have developed those experiences and that made you into the business owner that you are today. So one of the that was one of the big things I got from that experience, but another fun thing that I experienced with it, anyone who's interested, I actually took, I did a voice transcription of my so I took notes while I was on it, because you're able, you're cognizant of what's going on, like you're able to take notes and stuff like that. But what I did was I recorded my experience afterwards on my drive home, and I took those descriptions, and I plugged it into chat GPT to create the actual visions that I saw. And it was pretty incredible how accurate it was. So anyone who is interested, you can go check out my Instagram. There's a picture of a giant neon blue coy pond, if you swipe through there's a bunch of the things that I did experience, but one of the things for me that was the most incredible, and I've talked about this plenty of times in the podcast, is, you know, I still have that desire to go to vet school. I still like for me, the full circle completion of this is getting that DVM, and I remember, I'm sitting there, and I'm seeing, you know, this galactic visions and all these crazy things. And all of a sudden I'm seeing this, this slithering snake going up and down around something. And it became clear and clear to me, and it was this big V with a scepter in the middle, with a snake around it. And for those of you who are familiar, that's the symbol for veterinary medicine. And so for me, it was kind of like, alright, this is something that's been in the back of my mind. And you know, the more I've been thinking about it, the more I know that having this as part of my business is something that it's part of who I am. It's part of what has driven it's how I got here. I worked at an animal hospital. It's how I built this business. I've just taken a long roundabout way to get there. And so, you know, the the Ayahuasca kind of showed me that I I still want to do this. So this is something that I am planning on doing. But, yeah, the challenge stuff and really pushing yourself to do things that force you out of complacency, force you out of that comfort zone. Are so important. And again, I was terrified to try the Ayahuasca. I again on the verge of tears, like I was so scared of doing it. I would do Ayahuasca every day for the rest of my life, if I could. It was the most incredible experience of my life. So anyone who isn't just. And it is thinking about doing it. You can DM me. I'm happy to have a conversation. But the big takeaway from this is do things that challenge yourself. You're going to grow your business is going to challenge you. You can do this. You can push through this. You've made it this far. You just got to figure out
Collin 30:17
a way through it well. And sometimes those, those those challenges that come along, they're they're external, right? A lot of times they're external to what we're doing. They were just operating. A lot of time. Our businesses don't exist in a vacuum, but other times they're intentional by us to try and get some new information. And I think you're going back to that word complacency, doing things that scare you, whether that's Ayahuasca or not, right? We have to discuss what that's gonna be but going, if I'm feeling a little unsure about where things are, if I'm feeling like things aren't progressing, sometimes we've got to kick the Hornet's Nest just to see what comes out. Sometimes, absolutely make something happen. And, you know, adding a new service like this, you know, a completely different side of pet care. You know, I'm sure you know you're going like, it's something that you've always wanted to do, but you have that overall grand vision of being the one stop shop with with this, you know, how do you, how do you communicate that, though, of going, who? Who are we as a company? Because there is that, that difference in you hear people go, Oh, you need to niche down as specific as possible in your business. Niche get as specific as possible if you could do it with just a single breed of dog with specific health behavior issues. That's better for your business versus the do everything be everything business. And you know, you've really leaned into that, and are continuing to lean into that side of things. So why is that the vision that you see as important to you and your company,
Dan 31:45
not to make it about money, but Amazon is a trillion dollar company, so you know, there is a reason that I know. But jokes about money aside,
Collin 31:57
I think that
Dan 31:59
we as a company, one my my team and I are very close. You know, I've always been very lucky to have good relationships with my team members. So I'm very open about not this, like, secretive CEO working in like, I mean, I am working on an off site location where I am working on things, and we have projects that we're working on, but
Collin 32:19
it's not an underground bunker, right? We would be clear about that. Collin, if
Dan 32:23
I had the cash for an underground bunker, I would absolutely one day, you might be, we might be doing a podcast from underground bunker. But that aside, I've I've always been very I've always believed that your team, in order for them to believe in the vision, they need to understand your vision, and that's through really, really good communication. So I've always done my best. My best is not always good enough, but I've always done my best to make sure that they understand that so they we've always talked about what our long term goal is. And so, you know, it takes some special people to be patient, because these, you know, we're not taking on, you know, $100 million in funding yet to build this thing out, because I want to make sure that every step that we take, we are creating a well oiled machine. Because you know when you if you don't fix your problems, when your business grows, your problems grow with your business. So you got to make sure you've got everything dialed in. And that's what we're really focused on, is doing that, and really being able to make sure that as a company grows and does that, it's important that you are fixing the issues as you grow. And so like I've spent a lot of time on the sidelines and on the daycare and boarding side watching, and I've watched companies in New York City scale up to 20 locations, and then, boom, they're bankrupt. And then I watch companies scale up their dog walking. They buy up a bunch of dog walking companies, but everything's so fragmented, and then a dog gets injured, or this happens, or that happens. And like, you know, even with wag and rover, I know, you know, everyone has their thoughts and feelings about wag and rover, and you know, it started with a great idea. They wanted to make dog walking and pet sitting accessible for pet parents. And they wanted to create a way where people who were passionate about working with dogs could could do that. And so I think, you know, I'm friendly with the guys who started WAG, and I remember having a conversation with him, and, you know, asking him about it being like, you know, is this what you envision? He was like, no, not originally, but at the same time, when you're walking a million dogs a year, it's statistics, almost statistically impossible for something to go not go wrong, like things are going to happen. But the big thing for me and watching that, and, you know, yes, there are times when I pick myself for not being first to market with something like that, but at the same time, you know, there's a reason pets.com doesn't exist, and people go to chewy and Amazon, you learn from the mistakes of, you know, the people who came before you. So for me, it's about creating systems that are built with integrity and ethics in mind, and making sure that, because at the end of the day, I always use this. Analogy, you know, if I'm running the Best Buy and my employee screws up and they knock over a $3,000 TV, we have insurance. The TV will get replaced as long as nobody got hit by the TV. Everyone's fine with what we do for a living. If you screw up and something goes wrong, you're impacting a living thing. You're impact, impacting the life of an animal that people genuinely care about. This is a part of someone's family, and so that's something that we take it so so seriously. This is something where, you know, we take that trust. That's something that is not to be taken lightly. People are trusting you with part of your family. And it's, it's something that, you know, in scaling this business, I think about every day like I, I like to say that my job is to be anxious about everything that can go wrong in this business. And boy, am I good at it. Um, it's, it's so important to keep those things in mind when you're scaling and when you're sharing and building that vision, that it always comes back to safety. Everything we do comes back to safety, and it's something that you know is beyond important to me, is because, like, one My name's on the business, so it's not like Joe Schmo, who is a manager who made a mistake, is going to be in the news. But, like, it's me, it's my company. Just I need to be able to sleep, not sleep at night. I can't go to sleep knowing that we're not doing everything to make sure that everybody is safe and all the dogs are safe. And look, the end of the day, we have team members who do get injured. It does happen. You're dealing with animals. It's part of what we do, and it's important that people, you know, it's important to manage those expectations. But everything that does happen, we make sure we learn from it. We do debriefs and stuff like that. So as we grow, we continue to learn. And those growing pains are how companies get better. And man, it is frustrating, though, from time to time when I see the ads about, you know, another rover thing or another way thing, and it's just like when you're, you know, Weg, a rover got acquired for what was it? It was $2.7 billion Yeah, that part of that money, and, you know, got out to Blackrock for buying everything.
Collin 37:11
But, you know, they could do better. And so our goal with what we're doing is, I
Dan 37:17
don't want to compete on price. I don't want to compete on, oh, we have this special magic service. I want to compete on people trust us. We have created something where people trust our company. I have people who come to me be like, 15 of my neighbors say, You guys are amazing. Like, I don't have any questions, Sign me up. I want to build on that. I want to build on trust. And I want to compete on quality of service. I want to raise the bar in what everybody does. I want to have it so that, you know, welcome competition. I I'm happy to do it, but I want people to compete on the right thing. Because if I hear of one more dog daycare, I mean, one more boarding place where they don't have staff there overnight, I'm going to lose my mind. It is. It is infuriating, because I know how much you make. I know how much these places are able to make, and the fact that they think it's remotely okay to not have an employee overnight when there are dogs in the building is it's important. It's a disgusting money grab. You're not even saving that much money. You figure a 10 hour shift, and even if you're paying someone 20 bucks an hour or 30 bucks an hour, it's not that much money. And to me, it's it's selfish, it's not centered around the well being of animals. And again, I hope that when we are able to scale, and when the larger doggy daycare and boarding companies see that we are taking a larger portion of the market share, they do better. And you know, I'm not looking to put anybody out of business. Like, that's not how I operate. Like, you know, I want a big piece of the pie for sure, and I'm coming for it, but I hope that eventually what happens is, I mean, like, look, children used to work in factories and lose their limbs. Now there are labor laws. Things happen. Things change. People evolve, societies evolve. And I think it's time for the industry to evolve as well. And I think that there's a lot that can change. There's a lot that can be improved upon. And I'm arrogant, not arrogant enough, but maybe arrogant enough, to hope that we can be the catalyst for that change. I hope that we can force other companies through competition and maybe temporary loss of business. Where they do have to step it up, where they do have to do a better job, where they do have to make sure their team members are trained in a way that they can handle emergencies, so that they're, you know, they're lead people. I mean, I can't tell you how many times if we had, we've had an emergency. I'm at the day at the facility, at two o'clock in the morning, I brought dogs to the ER for all sorts of things over medical issues that the client didn't even know the dog had. It's that level of care, that level of passion, that commitment to doing better, is what we're all about. And I think it's so important that the industry does continue to evolve. Because, I mean, it's changed. Everything's changed. I mean, we used to feed our everyone used to feed. Their dog scraps, and then we invented dog food, and now you've got amazing things like the farmer's dog, where it's all this healthy whole foods that you're giving your pet, and it continues to evolve. And you know, I look forward to seeing where the industry is in 20 years. And 30 years, there's not going to be an industry, because the robots will have taken over, and all of our jobs will be gone. So we've got about 25 years to really grow this and get this right before the robots come in.
Collin 40:24
No, no, you hire the robots. Remember, that's the goal. Is that you become a robot management company that anyway, that's, that's, that's the
40:31
plan. Okay?
Collin 40:36
We often wonder, how do I make a difference in something, right? How do I actually be different? And we think, Oh, well, I'll just get another certification, I'll just go and compete on price, or I'll just go rebrand, or I'll just go change my marketing message, and that's actually what's going to make me different than everybody else. But you said that we want to compete on trust. We want to compete on that level of trust that people have for us now. That's all those back end systems, that's all of that planning, that's all of that design, that's all of the research, that's all of the when something does happen, doing a debrief on what went wrong, and how do we do something different and better? And so when we look to go, how do i Man, there's so many competitors out there, competitors. There's so many new people in the market that's already awash with so much. We go, well, we can look at what they're doing. You talked about how you watch people rise and fall, people come and go. You were doing all this research about what is the standard? What is the standard of what people expect? Now, how do I change that standard to make it better. And you're right, when other companies start to look at what we're doing and go, Man, they're offering this exceptionally high level of service, with all of this stuff built in, they're still making money. And importantly, from a, from a from an economic perspective, people are willing to pay for that. I wonder if there's a niche here, if there's something that we can start doing better, and if they're doing it, we can do it as well. And so you can actually sometimes drag the industry kicking and screaming along while you're making people happy and have it, making sure their pets have a great experience. 100%
Dan 42:17
I think that's the biggest thing. So one thing you said, one thing, stop competing on price. It's a race to the bottom. You're gonna lose. Stop trying to undercut each other. You're not doing anybody any favors. I can tell you, our prices are leaps and bounds beyond the competition. I it's it's interesting to watch, because I have plenty of former employees who've started their own like dog walking companies and stuff like that. And so, like, I watch them, and I see what they're doing, and, you know, they try to undercut price wise, but at the end of the day, I've, I've got something that you can't just change a number on your website, and that's I have people's trust people trust me. People trust my name. People trust my brand. You know, there's a reason why i What kind of shoes do I have? Basics, I think I've worn the same pair of ASICs for like, 10 years. I literally buy them three at a time. I trust them. I know them. It's the same thing under I wear the exact same shorts, the exact same T shirt. I wear the same pair of Under Armor, shorts and underwear every day. I know what it is. I trust it. It's reliable. When you establish that it doesn't matter what you're charging. And yes, there's going to be people who say you're expensive. I mean, in terms of our boarding prices, we're we're expensive, we're not, you know, we're 150 a night for cage free boarding. But with that, you're getting 24 hour care. Your dog is never alone. You know, it's, there's, there's a lot of people who are like, Oh, I can go here and get this by all means. You know, if it's if that's you need for your budget, I totally understand, and my goal is to scale it up to the point where we can offer a more cost effective business model. But right now, it's, it's similar to what Tesla did when they first launched their products. They started with a very, very, very expensive car, and then as they scale, they were able to create more affordable vehicles. I mean, they're not, they're not super cheap, but it's still, you know, you're able to do that when you charge more money. So I think competing on prices is one thing that you got to get out of, because it's just a terrible space to be in. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's the way you can compete best is through like Collin, you were saying all of those plan all those plans you put into place, all the time you spend with training your team, making sure that you got all the right things in place, checks and balances, making sure you have an on call veterinarian that you work with. Do you know where the local you know, emergency clinic is? Is your team trained to recognize symptoms for things like bloat or kennel cough or all these other things. There's so many iterations of this that have to happen for you to get to a point where it's like, all right, this happened. Follow protocol. This happened, follow the protocol like it removes you as the leader of your company from having to be that decision bottleneck and become that. Bottleneck again, because we're new, and I'm making those decisions. But as we document, a year from now, we'll be in a different spot, and once we have that book of business that's done, then we open the second location, and then that's easy. So it makes it, it makes it so you can scale your company. It makes it so you could do things and grow in a safe way. And even if you're not planning on scaling, if you want to be able to sleep at night, making sure you invest in all this infrastructure and all this stuff so that your team does know what to do when you're not there. You need to train them so they can think like you and operate like you. That's the most important thing you could do for your company's success. Our
Collin 45:33
friends at naps want you to know that their 2025 conference will take place February 28 through March 2, 2025 in Tempe, Arizona. The conference theme this year is enrich and elevate. And their goal is to bring together industry leaders with session topics that are idea focused and on a wide range of subjects to foster both learning and inspiration for your mind, body and business. And guess what? You are invited Register today at pet sitters.org well, and then talking about it to other people, right again, you get that to going, Okay, I've got my certification, I've got all these training, I've got all these protocols, I've got my SOPs in line. I've got to tell people kind of about what that gets them right of going just, you know, you don't want to really just walk around into going into meet and greets or meeting new clients and plopping down 300 pages and going, Look, let's start at page one. So yeah, start to trust me. We do have to then go, I need to be able to communicate this through marketing messaging, through my social media, through a quick video about why all of this is important. And pet parents do see that. They do see that, and they go, oh, I want that. I want that. Yes, sure. Sometimes all they care about is price. And that point, we can do nothing for them with if the prices are high, but we are trying to just at least say this option is out there. This option is out there. So why? Well, so that maybe when they go talk to somebody else and that person doesn't have those plans, they start thinking in their mind of going, Oh, well, these other people do. Maybe I need to go back and talk to them and learn more about this so that I can, I can have that peace of mind, and then as a business, going, Okay, I'm offering more. I'm doing more. I need to be communicating and having clear lines of, well, what each of these services are, what it gets you, because now that you're offering boarding and daycare, a lot of people in the pet care industry and dog walking and pet sitting view that as competition, and so you Dan have kind of created your own competition, internal competition, so to speak. How are you finding balancing? Or do you have to shuffle one potential client from one service to another, or what's it like, you know, guiding everything there.
Dan 47:44
So initially, we were worried a little bit about the cannibalization of one aspect of the business to the other, and we found that it's actually opposite. Whereas they used to go to another facility, it's oh no, you could board your dog with us. Or if, like, you know, if your dog is sick and can't come to our facility, we can come walk your dog. Or if you need your dog picked up or dropped off, it's it's again, goes back to Amazon. If I can't buy it on Amazon, I have to really want it to go get my credit card and put that information in you. Want to make it as easy as possible for your clients to be able to utilize your service, and the best way to do that is to add value across the board. So for us, being able to have it where we know that our clients don't have to worry about if they don't want to, dropping their dog off in the morning, we can come to the house. We'll get the dog, we'll, we'll feed them breakfast. We'll bring them to the daycare. We'll, we'll groom them. We'll train them. We'll whatever you need. We've got you covered. And so, you know,
Collin 48:42
I definitely it's a different avatar,
Dan 48:45
the people who want In Home Pet Sitting versus the people who want boarding, versus the people who want dog walking versus people who want daycare. Some of it is their dog doesn't do well with other dogs. Some of it is, I just want my dog to be at home. Other people are like, I want my dog to socialize. By adding different services by expanding your business, you open it up to, you know, being able to assist those additional client avatars, and that, in turn, helps you grow your bottom line, helps you grow the business, and grows your reach. And then from there, you know, you're able to grow your referral system, which is immense. We're actually, we just built out a pretty big referral program that we're doing, and we're launching that in the next couple weeks. So we've got one built out for dog walking, for pet sitting, for training, for daycare, for boarding, and clients and staff all get rewarded through it. And you know, it's, it's having all these different things and not worrying about, again, I've never worried about competition. I've always been cognizant of other companies and stuff like that, but it's like you spend time worrying about what somebody else is doing. That's time you're not spending on your business, and that's a waste time. You know, be aware of what your competition's doing. Be aware of what the competitive landscape looks like. Be aware of what the prices are, and you know, make sure you price yourself accordingly. But again. Are doing competing on price is a race to the bottom. Nobody ever wins that. And you know, in terms of, like, looking at it as competition, for those of you out there who are doing dog walking and pet sitting, partner with the daycare. Hey, we can do pickups and drop off for you. Hey, we can do this for you. This for you. There's ways you can work symbiotically with these companies without looking at it as though they're taking away from us. And if you're thinking about coming in this direction, do it? It's, it's, it's a lot of work. It's a lot it's, I will tell you this, it is a lot more money to get started opening a facility than it took me it. I think I spent maybe 50 bucks starting my business on the dog walking side, and that was on neon pig paper and staples. And that was basically how I started, where the number that it cost me to open this business had a bunch more zeros behind it. So it's, you know, it's something that the money's out there. You can get a bank loan, you can get an SBA loan. You could take on investors, as long as you know who you're getting in bed with. It's definitely something doable. But if you're somebody who does not have the experience and you are interested in doing it, make sure you have the funds to hire the right people. Because I can tell you, if you don't know what you're doing and you try to cut corners, people and animals are going to get hurt, and that shouldn't happen. So if you are somebody who is thinking about it, make sure you think long and hard about it, because the reason I think the majority of us got into this business is for the love of animals, and so make sure that, if you are going to be doing this, make sure that you have the right team in place. You take, you know, make sure you're doing temperament tests. Make sure you've got the right checks and balances in place to make sure that your team knows how to safely navigate, you know, a scuffle. They say, know how to safely navigate a reactive dog. Make sure everybody knows the right things to do, because at the end of the day, you know, remember, we're dealing with living things. We're not dealing with a product that, if it falls over and breaks, we got to just replace it. You can't replace somebody's pet. That's just not how it works. And it's so important that that is the cornerstone of everything that we do in this industry. Well,
Collin 52:03
so you'd mentioned a little bit about finding the property, hiring some staff, and this took you a whole heck of a lot longer and a lot more money to get off the ground than you originally anticipated. Can you walk us through just a little bit about what that was like, putting everything together? Because you had a vision for also doing kennel free boarding and daycare facility, right? So what's what was it like? You kind of getting your mind around what that would look like, you know, how you did that research, and then kind of doing the build out and everything you know absolutely. So
Dan 52:35
before talk about being a novice, before doing this, I don't think I'd ever looked at construction plans, let alone understood them, like knowing what's a pipe, what's a wall, what's a door, and all these things. So I was very fortunate to have some really, really good advisors from the construction side. I've got some great people that I was able to work with that were able to help me through it. I also had some terrible people. I had an absolutely horrific relationship with my architect, and he was an absolute nightmare to deal with, and dropped the ball basically every chance he could, and definitely cost me about a year of time. So who you pick is incredibly important, and then so we were very we were very fortunate. Um, through the pandemic, we got our eidl loan, um, which I'm sure many people were able to receive that. So we use part of the eidl loan. And then we got the ER TC, which is the employee retention tax credit. For those of you who I'm sure everyone's getting constant calls about it from people trying to sell you sign up. It is legitimate. Just make sure you go with a legitimate person who was doing it. So we got that and that money, and then I also took some private funding. So I pieced the money together. I had a great team. I went and I looked at a ton of locations. I did a lot of research online, and I had an idea. I also the idea that I started with was we were going to build an entire second floor in our building. So we were going to have suites upstairs for the dogs that couldn't be cage free, and then we were going to have our play fields downstairs when we did the cage free in the daycare. Unfortunately, we were unable. We would have needed an additional million dollars to do that, and because New York is obscenely expensive and but we weren't able to obtain the funds for that. So I had to pivot and switch over to our we're just doing the cage free model. We're just doing cage free boarding. We're just doing doggy daycare. So, you know, we had to deal with the town. We had to get, you know, different permits we had to get. So I had to brought lawyers in. I dealt with architects, contractors and all that kind of stuff, and then figuring out what's the flow of traffic going to look like. I never thought I'd have so many conversations about parking spot the amount of conversations I had about how many parking spots were outside was more than I ever thought I would in my. Entire life, making sure you know bathrooms are ADA compliant, making sure that you have the right flooring, the fencing. How are you going to manage the smell in the building? How are you going to be able to clean things effectively? How are you going to ensure safety like our facility? My biggest thing is dogs escaping. That is my nightmare. My nightmare is that phone call the dog gotta knock on wood Not gonna happen. For us, a dog in a play field has to go through eight doors to get out of our building. I made it is Fort knocked in there. I made sure it is, it is next to impossible. Now, if there's an emergency, our team is able to quickly get out of the building without there being an issue. But for dogs, you know, I've made the fences are six feet high, all the different ways that we did this. You have to think about every single detail, and you have to obsess over it. You know, my old office was covered in blueprints and notes and this and that the whiteboards are full of designs and layouts and all this stuff. And you've really got to think about as many things as you can. And I think part of that was because we were doing something relatively new, blanking on his name. He runs a couple of facilities in Chicago. He was actually the guy that I originally got the cage free boarding idea from. This isn't like some original idea that I came up with. And I remember him talking about it, and I was like, that's amazing. That's an incredible idea. I love this. I love the idea. For us, the dogs are only created three times a day. That's breakfast, lunch and dinner, and that's to ensure you know, you produce the risk of bloat, no resource guarding. Give them time to digest and give them a little little bit of a break. But I love the idea of these dogs being able to be in a play field. We feel the play field, the beds and stuff overnight, and so, so appealing to me. And then I was like, I have no idea how to do this. And so I had to talk to a lot of people who have done things like this, and because this wasn't as common of a model, I had to figure a lot of it out on my own, and a lot of it was trial and error. But again, it's, you know, from end to end. It was finding the right architect, finding the right contractor, finding the right building. You need a real estate attorney, then you need an attorney for dealing with the town, getting the proper permits. And then you need the proper funding. You need a good accountant to help you manage all the money, you name it. I made a mistake at every step of the way. You know, I had a difficult time with my contractor, because we originally were going to be this big, multi, multi million dollar job, and it went down to not as big of a job, and all of a sudden I saw that I was no longer a priority, and I had to become a version of myself that I don't like, and I had to be a bit of an angrier person, and I had to get a little bit more forceful with people. But I learned that in some of this work you have to kind of be a bit of a monster. But, yeah, no, it was. It was a great learning experience. And anyone who's interested in doing it, don't
Collin 57:46
it's a nightmare.
Dan 57:49
No, I'm very happy I did it.
Collin 57:51
But that being said
Dan 57:55
again, to go back to Alex for mosey, when he talks about when things are really hard, you know, we're in it, and it's like, oh, my god, I can't believe how difficult this is. Remember that when it's this hard for you, it's hard for somebody else. Whereas, you know, over the years, I can't tell you how many employees that I've fired due to them not being good employees, and I see them go out and start a dog walking company. I'm like, I'm not the kind of person who's gonna publicly, like, bash a company. I'm not naming names here, but I'm not going to go into a Facebook group and be like, oh, this person got fired for this reason, or they got fired because they did this. That's just not how I am. But with this, I know that the majority of my staff, if they get fired for not doing their job correctly, I'm going to pop up a Facebook page next week and a website and start a daycare. Because I know it takes years to do. It takes hundreds of 1000s, if not millions, of dollars, to do so. It does give you a little bit of a barrier protection for your business, and it does give you a little bit more security. But again, it's terribly expensive. It's draining. It's, you know, I took us three years to get this place open. You know, it cost me a lot of money. Every penny I have is in this business. And you know, my wife and I even relocated out to Long Island. We were living in Brooklyn at the time we moved out here, so My commute is 90 seconds. I'm right around the corner facility. I eat, breathe and sleep that place, and it's for anyone who is interested in doing it. I'm joking when I say, don't do it. It's it's something. You better you better love it. You better love what you do. Because on the days when you are ready to set your hair on fire, because you just don't think you can handle it anymore, that passion is going to be there to sustain you. Because if you don't have that passion, you don't have that love for it, you're not going to push through. You're going to give up. And you know when, when you're doing something like this, you have to care. You have to care so much. And it can't just be about the money. It's something that, you know, again, it's, it's why I'm vehemently against selling to private equity. I mean, I hope one day I'm not coming in here be like, well, Colin. I got $100 million and I'm out, you know, but it's, it's something that you got to care. You have to care a lot. It's, you know, I literally poured my blood, sweat and tears in this business over the years. I have more scars than I could imagine on me. I've lost relationships, I've lost friendships, I've missed birthdays. I have, you know, I've missed a lot of things in my life in building this business. And, you know, people talk about balance. This is fine. That's, you know, balances for some people. But if you want to create something immensely great, if you want to change an industry, if you want to really be a part of creating something that moves something in a different direction, you're going to sacrifice. And, you know, the last 15 years have been a sacrifice, for sure, but I love it. It's given me incredible opportunities. I get to talk to amazing people like you Collin, and I get through, you know, I'm lucky enough where my business has survived all these years, and I'm able to, you know, share the wisdom of my mistakes, and so people can hopefully learn from the things that I did wrong.
Collin 1:01:02
And then, you know,
Dan 1:01:03
I'm happy to be able to share, because I definitely, you know, again, I say this to you every time I wish you existed when I first started because, man, there was, there was like Kristen Morrison and her books and a few other people. Other than that, there weren't many resources. And you know, I'm happy to be able to, you know, help people in any way I can, through sharing my experiences.
Collin 1:01:26
Well, I really appreciate you when you do come on and sharing and that we can learn from your mistakes. No, I'm actually to share. No, but I think it is, it is important in that when we look to go, you know, what? What can I do in my business? What can I do differently? It does start with just talking to people. And I think too often we get so caught up in our own head of going, well, I don't want to, I don't want to talk to them, because what if they do this or this or that, or that, or I don't, you know, they they're too big, they're too important, to spend time on me, asking questions. Just having a few moments to contribute something and to get that feedback is really, was it what it takes? Because otherwise, then, yeah, we do just exist in our own little bubble, and that's we can take the in house method to the extreme, where we never share with anybody, never talks with anybody, we never get any feedback. Instead, I do need to go a little bit outside of this, and I do need to get some experience. You need to talk to a bunch of people. And when you do that, right, when you do go through this experience, like, like you've done, Dan of going, Man, I had to learn about parking spaces and traffic flow. Well, you know what that does? That means that when you open that second location, you have, you already have a few questions, and you have some thoughts
1:02:36
about what happened. Oh, I know exactly what I want now.
Collin 1:02:40
I guess I just, I want to see the notebook that's just filled with your sketches and ideas of traffic flow. I know. I bet that exists. Oh,
Dan 1:02:46
man, so many, so many whiteboard sessions of arguing with my project manager, of like, No, we've got to go this way.
Collin 1:02:54
But that's what happens when we become a novice again in our business, is all of a sudden we've learned better for next time. And then when we look about opportunity costs, well, I just went through a bunch of crap in order to get here, of learning and stress and anxiety, I don't have to go through as much the second time or the third time for the fourth time. Yes, and that's where we can start speeding up a little bit, and we can start to move forward a bit faster in our visions and our goals that we have.
Dan 1:03:20
Yeah, it definitely makes a big difference. And it's the same thing. I remember, like, you know, my first angry client to now, like, if there's an angry client that my managers are stuck with, get me on the phone with them. I can talk to people all day long. I know exactly what to say. I know how to do it because I know, I know how to, you know, approach the situation from years and years of customer service experience. And it's the same thing with doing this. You know, I'm confident that I'm ready to go to our next location now, before we build our next location, we're finally building our software platform that's we are going to be doing an investment round for that, for the software side of things, early next year. But don't tell anybody. I anybody. But yeah, so you know, our goal is to again, continue to improve, continue to streamline, learn from those mistakes. And yeah, I was worried about, I'll tell a quick little story. So I had a tech company in the restaurant space, and we had this amazing piece of IP, and it was so we were a wait list management platform for restaurants, and we were one of the first companies to do it. It was us buzz table and no weight. And at the time, all the companies have since been acquired. But at the time, what we wanted to do was, I wanted to put a charitable spin on it. So we had this idea, we inserted a ghost spot every 10 spots in line so you could jump to the front of the line without any of the perceived skipping by making a donation to a charity. Now, instead of talking to everybody about it, me and my partner were so paranoid about the idea getting stolen and utilized that we had to protect we had to protect it. We ended up missing out on a ton of great. Opportunities. And we finally did come out with it. We got International Press, ABC News, The Guardian, like CNN, NBC, it was everywhere. We seated a couple million people through the platform. We ended up selling the company eventually, but to this day, I still know that if we had talked about it to more people, we would have been able to turn it into something bigger and at the end of the day as a pet care business, unless you are literally holding a new leash or creating something that has never been seen before, we're all doing the same stuff. It's just different levels of support and different levels of training. That's it. We're, we're walking dogs, we're bathing dogs. We're we're doing sleepovers at their house. There's not anything proprietary that anyone is really doing differently. It's maybe we train people differently. We do this differently that. But the end of the day, you gotta stop looking at your competition like, you know, they're here to destroy your business. I'm friendly with most of my competitors. I know most of the people in this space, and you know, it's something where it's like, I had that, you know, it's mere that mentality for so long that was me being immature and just kind of a jackass. But two, it's like, you know, it doesn't operate like that. Not everyone is going, first of all, we're not in a country where there's one company serving for Amazon, one company, serving everybody. You know what I mean, like, there's always going to be competition. Competitions. How you get better competition? Chances are you're probably not that good. If there's nobody who's coming in and competing with you, you're not striving to improve. I love competition. I love seeing, Oh, look at this person's doing like I've seen since we launched our membership program at our facility a couple of the other local facilities, all of a sudden, the membership programs that they're advertising, all of a sudden, they're doing this that we're doing. And it's what happens when new people come in and shape stuff up. There's going to be, oh, well, we have to, let's get better. Let's improve. And it's the same thing, you know, I welcome competition. I welcome conversations that anybody who's listening. I am DM me. I can't tell you how many times people have DM me. I'm like, if I have a long drive, I'm like, shoot me your number. Get on a call. I struggle with the consultant. With consulting, just in general, there's now big shout out to Doug. I love Doug. Doug's amazing. If you're interested in consulting, go to Doug. Michelle's great too. Doug's fantastic. People out there who do consulting, who if you're if you're a novice and you're just starting out, there's plenty of people out there who can help you, but I can tell you from experience, if you're going to hire a consultant, make sure they've been where you want to go, and they're not in the exact same state as you, and they're just good at sales, because there's a lot of people out there can do a lot of Yap, yap, yap and and they're great talkers, but the end of the day, they can't deliver, um, that's not Doug. I can tell you that I love Doug. Doug's fantastic. Michelle's wonderful also, um, but anyone who is so I'm not trying to knock those guys, but from a consulting standpoint, I do consulting. Also happy to just hop on a call with somebody. So if you are somebody out there, shoot me a DM. We'll go over my contact info, and I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. But like, I'm happy to always help somebody out, because at the end of the day, what I'm looking for my long term thing. And this is, again, I go back to Alex for mosey all the time. I love his model. This is what my actual my long term plan is. Once I get about five of these facilities up and running, I am going to be launching a massive not consulting but program where people can access a lot of our material in terms of how we build the business, how we scale the businesses. Because I want to start training people. I want to start training people on how to build a pet care business, the way I want to do it, on how to find clients, the way I want to do it. Because if I'm opening 100 locations, I'm going to need you to come join my team, and I want you to learn how to do that, and if you are good at it, and your business as well, and we can acquire your business. Helped you grow. I taught you how I want you to be a part of that, because I am. My long term goal is, I don't like franchising, but I am a big remove any political or religious or other affiliations from it, but I do like Chick Fil A's model. I like the way they operate because I think they make it accessible. It's only $10,000 to buy in. Now, it is harder to get a Chick fil A franchise than it is to get into Stanford University, but you have to be a active owner. You cannot be an absentee owner. You have to have work in the business for, I think, a minimum of three years. And Chick fil A does the build up. They take care of all the expenses. I like that idea. I don't not knocking people who have money, but I think the people who do this business best are the people who have been in the business. And I want to give those people a chance to be able to be a part of having a little piece of the pie. And so that that is my long term goal, is I want to build this out in a way I. Where people who work for me can eventually be owner operators, where they can be have some semblance of ownership in a property, and can have that and they don't need $1.2 million to open it up like they do at McDonald's. So that's, that is my long term goal. I do want to have this where it's an accessible thing, but it's an accessible thing for people to be a part of this through being a part of the business and really believing in what we do, and that is providing just exceptional levels of pet care for all the animals that we come in contact with. So that's, that's my 20 year goal. We'll call it 20 years my 20 year goal. So that is what I am thinking about again. I want to share everything that I have learned and that will be coming in the next four or five years. But, you know, I think I've seen way too many Fly By Night coaches. I complain about it pretty constantly, actually, how much I can't stand people talking about things that they haven't done. I find it offensive. I find it irresponsible, and I don't think they should be doing what they're doing. Because if you are not able to build and scale a massive business, you should not be teaching someone how to build and scale a massive business. If you haven't done it, why are you talking about it? That is the end of my rant there. Sorry.
Collin 1:11:18
I think it is important when we look to get education like you said, is that, has that person been, or is going, or has done where I want to go as well? Can they help and and how are they going to teach me? Right? There are a lot of programs out there that are very like, here's a cookie cutter, here's the five step program that you do. Is it a more like one on one, consulting grow, individualized to your plan? Like, there's definitely a lot that goes into that, and we have to go, is that what I want? Is this person doing what I want to do and and really digging into that to make sure that we know exactly what, eyes wide open, what we're getting into. But that's important in everything that we do in our business, eyes wide open, what am I getting into? Am I going? I need to learn what I so that I because a lot of times we don't even know what we don't know. We don't even know the right or wrong questions to ask. So we just have to get started, right? We just have to get going and doing something. And I think you know that idea of going, need, need good access to information and education is always important as a business, and making sure that we get it from good resources, right? That's that's critical, so that we know that what we're doing is is appropriate, and not just the the musings of some random person on the internet
Dan 1:12:30
or anybody who just plugs something into chat, GPT and then spewed out a course, right?
Collin 1:12:40
Well, so Dan, I know you mentioned people can send you a message and get in touch with you. I really want to thank you for your time today and for sharing this and really the mindset behind the why and some of the intricacies of making it work and even the problems that you faced along the way. But again, this is a massive topic, and you've got a lot to say on this and so many other things about dog walking and pet care and whatever, and growing fantastic beards. So if people are interested in getting in touch with you and seeing all the cool work that you guys are doing over there, how best can they do that?
Dan 1:13:14
So we're at Dan's pet care on pretty much all the social platforms. So Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok. I'm still struggling with we're on there, but can't seem to crack that code. But yes, a dance pack here. If you're interested in what we're doing, check out the website. Just Dance pack. Care.com. If you have any questions for me personally, you feel free to DM me on Instagram. That's the best way to do that, and that's just my full name. Daniel Reitman, run me on Facebook. There's a chance I'm friends with you on Facebook. I try to friend every single person in the the industry. When I see, like, oh, CEO at dog something, I'm like, done friend. So if you ever do get a random Facebook request for me, it is actually me, and I'm always just looking to build my network. But yeah, DM me on on Instagram. You could message me on Facebook and go to my website. Just Daniel rightman.com. Is wildly outdated, but there is a contact page there. But yeah, for I mean it, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to chat. And Collin, as always, I appreciate you having me on to let me rant and rave about all things, and I enjoy these conversations. And again, seriously, you do? You guys do such a massive service for this industry. Again, I say it every time. I wish you guys existed when I started, but I'm happy to be able to contribute to the work that you guys are doing. So keep what you've got, keep doing what you're doing, because it's amazing. You're helping a lot of people. And you know, I'm happy to be here and always, always enjoy our chat.
Collin 1:14:37
Well, thank you very much, Dan. That means an awful lot. It really does. I really appreciate you coming on and always sharing. And so we'll, we'll have to schedule another one for next time and get caught up and see how everything is going by then. So Dan, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Collin, when Dan said that they don't want to compete on prize that they want to compete on trust, I really have to sit. At that for a little bit, because often we think what differentiates us from somebody else? Is it our certifications? Is it our price? Is it how long we've been in business? Is it our branding? Is it our colors? Is it our services? Is it this? Is it that? But at the end of it, it really is. Who does the client trust more to meet their specific needs. Everything else should be focused on them, getting the client's trust and maintaining that through our excellent service. So yes, we do need to take into account our branding, our colors, our photos, our language, the name the services, how those are described. Because at each step, what we're doing is we have another building block, another brick in the trust that that client has for us, and then we get to step back and see if it's stable enough for the client to move forward, or if we missed the mark. Trust in this industry is absolutely everything we'd like to thank today's sponsors, time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters for making today's show possible, and we really want to thank you for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon. You
