552: Real vs. Artificial: Building a Meaningful Pet Care Business
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Are you spending time on what truly matters in your business, or are you distracted by quick fixes and flashy promises? We dive into how to differentiate between what’s real and what’s artificial, from client relationships to business opportunities. Learn how to ask the right questions, avoid common distractions, and focus on strategies that bring long-term value. Discover why patience, intentionality, and meaningful connections are essential for building a lasting, impactful business. Tune in to uncover practical tips for staying focused and creating a business you’re proud of.
Main topics:
Identifying Real vs. Artificial Value
Avoiding Quick Fix Distractions
Building Long-Term Client Relationships
Asking Probing, Intentional Questions
Investing in Business Fundamentals
Main takeaway: We must give our time and attention to the things that are real, that have true value, and that are worthwhile—because the artificial will always fade, but the meaningful lasts.
In a world full of distractions, it’s easy to get caught up chasing the artificial—quick fixes, flashy promises, and fleeting opportunities. But the truth? These things don’t last.
The meaningful parts of your business—the relationships you nurture, the systems you refine, and the long-term goals you work toward—are where your energy should go. The artificial will fade, but what’s real will stand the test of time.
✨ Stop chasing the shiny distractions. Start investing in what truly matters. Your clients, your values, your vision—these are the stars that light the way to building a business you’re proud of. ✨
What’s one thing you’re doing today to focus on the meaningful? Let us know! 💬👇
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitter confessional, sponsor support, end-of-year rush, self-care importance, family celebration, Christmas lights, power outage, stargazing, artificial distractions, quick fixes, client management, business focus, asking questions, flexible schedule, networking
SPEAKERS
Collin
Collin 00:00
Collin, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. I'm Collin, and we want to thank today's sponsors, pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon supporters. These are listeners who have found value in the show. Maybe they had a question answered. Maybe they felt connected to a bigger community. Maybe they were able to implement something in their business that they learned from an interview or one of our Monday episodes. Regardless of what value they got, they found value and they wanted to give back to the show. They wanted to keep the show going. So they visited pet sitter, confessional.com/support, and learned all of the ways that they could support the show, because we are on a mission to provide a supportive and enriching community for pet care providers by sharing knowledge, experiences and resources to ensure the highest standards of care for pets and their owners and the best lives lived by you. It is that time of year where everything is absolutely topsy turvy and crazy. If you are doing pet sitting visits, you know that the end of the year rush can be absolutely brutal with the schedule, with the demand, with the need, on top of that, different weather conditions and the scheduling headaches and new clients and returning clients and everything can just be going a mile a minute, we hope that you are able to take a little bit of time this season for yourself. Remember, it's not selfish to invest in you. It's actually one of the most important things that you could ever do is to make sure that you are okay and that you're ready for tomorrow. So whether your schedule is slammed, or you have taken a break and you've said no to visits over the holidays, whatever it is, make sure that you're doing something that feeds you and make sure that you are okay. You know, recently, we got together for my family, where we come together for Thanksgiving, the Christmas time, and we just have a big celebration, and it's a lot of fun. And one of the things that we started to do recently is actually go to a nearby Christmas lights display. And the thing of the thing about this is that it over. It's been about a decade of this family putting this together. Every year they buy a few more Christmas decorations, they buy a few more inflatables, and by, you know, a couple more yards of Christmas lights to hang up so that now, after a year of intentional growth, it's really impressive. I don't know exactly how many inflatables they have out there and decorations and lights, but maybe 1000s. I don't know. It's a lot, mildly overwhelming. Well, we all decided we wanted to go together and go out there as our family. So we loaded into the car, and all went out, my brothers, their spouses, and, you know, our family with our kids, we all went out to see these lights. And we got there, we saw all of them, and then we went around the corner into the main section, and all of the lights went out completely. I mean, it was pitch black. It was only like six or seven in the evening, but here in the Midwest, in the winter time, it might as well be midnight. With this video, it was as dark as it was quickly, you know, we got our flashlights on and made sure that everybody was okay and safe and staying together. We saw a guy run by and reflective vest with a flashlight, and it was a transformer at the power pole itself, and was going to be hours before they could actually get this thing fixed. So, you know, we kind of shrugged it off and said, Well, that was a unique experience, to say the least. And we made our way back to the car. Well, we made it back single file, and we saw that my younger brother was actually standing by the car looking up, and one by one, we came along beside him and actually looked up next to him. And above us, we saw that the sky was completely filled with millions and millions and millions of stars. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and yet, above us, we could see stars for as far as the eye could see. I mean, it was an absolute beautiful evening to be stargazing. So we slowly got in the car, you know, we drove, made the long drive back home, stared out the windows, you know, had a great discussion about the camping under the stars, or times that we'd spent, you know, identifying constellations. And I got out my phone, was able to identify things and satellites and planets. There was a beautiful way to wrap up the evening, and it was all because the artificial lights went out. Only then did we see what was actually above us and around us. And it reminded me of how easily we get distracted, how easily the artificial of the world distracts us from the natural, from the real things of value, especially in business, right? How artificial promises, quick fixes, scams, half truths will keep us distracted. It was amazing how excited all of us were to show up to see these little chintzy, cheap. Of old lights, and yet above us the entire time, unbeknownst to us at that time, until all the artificial stuff went out, there was this beautiful night sky hanging right above us. I mean, it's it's the fact that we tend to give our attention to things that aren't really worth it. They're not really valuable, right? Like that, like the one squeaky wheel of a client that we should probably just go ahead and get rid of, or maybe, I don't know if you've had this in your business, there's that person on Facebook that just kind of follows around your posts and never has anything nice to say. It's pretty negative, but they're never going to be a client, and they just kind of antagonize you. We focus all of our attention on that kind of stuff, instead of other things that could either be bringing us more emotional value, spiritual value, or true financial value, right to our lives, we don't dedicate enough time to that, because all this other stuff is just distracting us and keeping us pulled away we need. We must be giving our time, our attention to the things that are real, that have real value and that are worthwhile. So I want to walk through basically two things. I want to talk about, how do we tell the artificial from the real? And then, how do we stay focused in the midst of our busy, crazy world? So how do we tell the artificial from the real? Well, the first thing we want to look at is, how is it made? Artificial? Things tend to be cheap, right? They are very poorly made and not well put together. It could be the email that you get from somebody that just structurally doesn't make any sense, so you could tell it was a slap dash generic, kind of to attempted to be adapted to you specifically with your name misspelled. It just doesn't come off as as as worth it, as somebody who really cared about this artificial also seems too good to be true. So you can think about these promises, these over promising and under delivering. Kind of people, where it's the coach, it's the marketer, it's the other person on the end of the line, or maybe it's even the client, right? It's, we get this all the time where a potential client will call, it's going to be last minute for a trip that they're taking. But what do they do? Right? They promise that they're going to be a good client. Oh, they travel all the time. They're going to make it worth our time, because, you know, they travel multiple times a month, and, you know, they tip really well, so we should definitely take them on for this one trip. Sounds too good to be true. It's not real. And unfortunately, what we do is we tend to get hooked on that, drop everything around us and go after that one thing for the potential. But it's not real that that never was real. It's just a tactic to get our attention, that we pay attention to and it and it works more often than not, because we're thinking about, ooh, the shiny lights. Look, they're right here in front of me. But the things that last, those longer term relationships with our clients or your family or other things that you have that are more important, those are going to be more important where that's where we need to be spending our time, not chasing down those elusive artificial and cheap things. Additionally, the artificial tends to be more convenient. Way too convenient. Going to see these Christmas lights. Was, I said earlier, long drive home. It was, it was, it was seven minutes back, right? Okay, so it was seven minutes away, and we could see all the light that we wanted to. We could walk around 1000s of these inflatable things. And it was free, right? It was free to do that. It was easy to get to there, the lights above us. I can't get there. I can't go and see a star up close like we could with these lights. It's not convenient for me to stay up late, to look at the night sky, to wait for the weather to clear, to make sure that it's warm enough for us all to be outside it. You know, it's the marketer that calls us in our business and guarantees that all we have to do is spend $100 and we're going to get so much ROI back from that, from their methods that they do. You don't even have to lift a finger. You don't have to do much. Just give us this money and we'll we'll SEO your website, and it'll be perfect. Don't worry about it'll be great. It's way too convenient. We should have red flags starting to tick up a little bit, starting to figure out, going, Okay, this doesn't seem real. Here. You'll know the artificial from the real. When you when you test it. How does it do under pressure? Specifically, how does it do when you start asking questions, when you start trying to poke holes. And this makes people uncomfortable, especially in the business world, when you get a phone call, when you get a client, when you get it, when you start reading about a coach or somebody online, when you ask hard questions, and that person gets squeamish, you know, it's fall fake. You know it's not real. It's not going to last. And people do get offended when you start saying, Tell me, you know five other examples of when this has worked for you, or how much more money am I going to have to do in part on top of this? And what's your cut out of this, and what's your incentives here to make sure that I buy this today? These are all genuine questions. They're going to help you understand what's motivating that person on the other end, I'm. Give you more clarity on how to move forward with this kind of decision. The next way to tell the artificial from the real is can be really tricky, and it can take a trained eye, but it is really worth it. Artificial things will have signs of manipulation, inconsistencies or unnatural elements. I think the biggest example that I can give for this is when that marketer or that coach reaches out to you and is pitching their system, pitching their program, pitching the investment. I love to look at the graphs and see, do these graphs have labels? Can I tell the timeline that it took to go from this revenue to this revenue. What even are these revenues? Are these just generic graphs that don't mean anything because they just either made them up or picked out the, you know, the image off of the internet from some other business to make this work for them. That is always a big red flag to go this information that you're telling me isn't real, and it's just meant to get me to focus on an emotion instead of the facts, instead of reality, instead of the true things of this world. You're trying to get me to focus on something else, to distract me from what I actually should be doing. Because when somebody puts down that graph in front of you, or makes that promise and shows you some information, but it's kind of vague, or there are things deleted or missing. It doesn't quite make sense, but they're saying really good things. They're trying to and usually winning at taking your attention, your focus off of the other things that would actually be worthwhile, like going and networking with other business owners, and not just in the pet care industry, other insurance agents, other groomers, other trainers, you know, go talk to realtors, all those people or home service businesses. They need to know who you are and that you're there that is something worth investing in, or maybe it's redesigning your your business card or your flyers, or your road signs or whatever that's going to be. There are real, tangible things that we need to, must be, should be working on, that are going to be way more valuable in the long run. And yet, we get distracted by these things, these things that just aren't that. They're artificial, they're fake, and ultimately, they're they're lies to us. You really have to look at the situation from all sides to determine if it's real and ask good questions. And the biggest thing about this is just wait right time will ultimately reveal if something is too good to be true. It just will. If you're patient, if you ask those good questions, and if you just if you don't fully understand something if it doesn't make intuitive sense, sleep on it a couple days, go talk to other people, get good counsel, surround yourself with that good advice. It will allow you to help see through that, and that's what it takes. Is time. Ultimately, it's time. And as business owners, we can feel like we don't have that we've got to rush because we don't want to waste time. I don't want to waste my time either way making a rush decision or making a long decision. They could both waste my time, but time is something we will never get back. So while we don't want to waste our time while just sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, thinking through and hoping that we're going to get some revelation here about this, we do have to realize that sometimes it's just better to wait it out. It's just better to say, You know what, no, thank you to that. I don't fully understand it, so I'm it's not for me right now. Check back with me later. Or do you just say no, thank you. It's not for me. You know, something that isn't artificial. Our friends at pet sitters associates as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. Pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years, pet sitters Associates has provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or want to make your passion for pets into a profession, 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 today at Pet sit llc.com you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership, then Pet Sitter confessional, and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance. Once again, at petsit llc.com we have to do this kind of thing when we are trying to decide if we're going to hire somebody, we have to look at the totality of what this person is telling us. That's why we have a multi stage process of hiring with the same questions worded slightly differently, because we really want to know, is this person telling us this truth, or are they not telling us the truth and trying to make themselves look better than they actually are? So asking them multiple times, when are you available, and what days Are you available, and can you confirm your scheduling and available, and how busy you want to be with us, because it'll happen. Right? Some potential hire is going to promise that they have 24/7, availability, and you can just schedule them whenever and however, and they're going to be there for you. Well, that needs to be ground tested. That needs to be truth. We need to look into that kind of promise and really ascertain if that's going to to have any fruit, or if that really is just artificial, and we're wasting our time on that person again, maybe it's that marketer, maybe it's that coach, or somebody else promising you amazing growth of revenue or new clients with minimal input. All you have to do is follow steps 123, all you have to do is invest $100 or give us access to your website, and we'll make it perfect, and you'll just be blown away with these kind of results. Always ask that question, is this just a quick hit? Is this just a promise? Is this just a you know, am I trying to shortcut this? Because we do have to check our motives. It's easy for us as business owners to get really focused on that. Man, I've just got to grow. Or if I could grow 15% more here, if I could grow this, or if I could do that, it'd be my life would be so much easier. And we get distracted by those quick fixes and those half truths just really kind of dazzle us in our eyes, and we end up going down those paths that sure we may hit some of our metrics, but everything else just crumbles because we didn't do the things of value. We didn't invest deeply into our systems, into our processes, into our pipelines. We didn't we didn't do that work. We went the other route because we're short on time, we're busy, and we didn't handle it. Man, it can be so appealing. So how do we stay focused? How do we in our busy, crazy world as business owners, with so many things going on and so many things flashing before us, so many artificial things demanding our attention or trying to pull us away get us to stop investing in the valuable things, how do we actually stay focused in this? I think there are three things that we have to do in order to stay focused. The first one always ask questions. When we are asking questions, it means, and these are, these are intentional questions too. These aren't just the simple of, oh, how much is it? And, you know, how awesome Are you? No
17:15
ask good probing questions
Collin 17:19
because you that means that you are processing the information. You're being intentional, you're being focused. You are trying to figure out what is going on here. That's what we have to do that keeps us focused on our actual work, because with good questions, you will quickly realize whether something is worth your time or it is a waste of time. Secondly, stay connected to others. Have a group of people that you can bounce ideas off of. Have a group of people that you can send a quick text message to to say, Hey, I've got this or look at this opportunity. What do you think about this? What's going on here? I need some input. This will allow you to get outside of yourself, to have other eyes and ears and opinions here, and you don't have to take them for exactly what they are, right? People are going to have opinions about things, but it allows you to externalize this just a little bit. And when somebody else may say the exact same thing that you were thinking, but when you hear them say it, you can suddenly realize, Oh no, actually, no, I don't agree with that now that I hear it in a different light and I can process it. Man, that's really helpful to us when we can externalize those things. So if you don't have a core group of people that you can take these kind of things to get connected in our Facebook group, reach out to other local sitters in your area. You only need one or two people you really do. You only need one or two people in your close group where you can talk about these kind of things. When we talk about networking, we have to decide, why are we doing this? Am I networking just for referrals? Well, that's a completely different mindset and purpose versus this kind of network of I need a core group of people that are close, that understand that I can bounce these kind of ideas off. You can't do that in a large networking group. That's not the setting. Additionally, it's not the setting to try and get referrals from these kind of core group of people. Now you will and it will just happen naturally. But if the purpose is to invest in one another, develop deep, lasting friendships that can have these kind of conversations, that is something completely and fundamentally different, and you have to make sure that everybody's on the same page with that. And the last thing here of how we stay focused as business owners, to keep our eyes off of the artificial and onto the things of value is actually to keep our schedule flexible and open, because when we are stressed, when we are pushing ourselves to the max, we can't do these other two things that I just mentioned, of asking good questions and staying connected with others. Fundamental. Ly, your ability to process information and to be do so in a relaxed, stress free environment by asking good questions, listening intently to those questions and asking good questions and then going to people for help is dictated by your time and your schedule when we are not well rested, when we are rushed, when we are panicked, when we are stressed out, when we are burned out and maxed out, these things fall by the wayside, and it's harder for us to intentionally pick through and process the things that come across our plate. It's harder for us to take the time to stand outside of the car and look up at the night sky and relish and value those stars from millions of miles away, ancient light hitting our eyes, standing out in the cold, but realizing that those things are way more beautiful than those artificial lights. The artificial lights are fun, right there, cool for a time, for a moment, but those, those fade, those weather, those have to be replaced. Those wear down over time, and they're not the same. The stars above last, those stars above are going to be there. They just take some time to work at and to realize that that's where the value is in our business is. It's the same thing, the quick hits, the fixes, the scams, the half truths, those things, man, they're right here. They're easy to access, they're cheap, they're too good to be true, and they're right here. I can just reach over and touch them. I just do the instant messenger on Facebook. They're right there. But those aren't going to last. Those are only going to take you so far. It's the other work. It's the friendships, it's the fundamentals of our business, the basics, understanding finances and numbers, the core of our business, that is where we should be spending and investing our time if we want to see real and lasting and legacy building results with what we do, and that's a decision that we have to make, and how we run our business and what we want. We'd love to hear your take on this and how you've been distracted by stuff, or how you've kept yourself from being distracted by the artificial and also what you find valuable to keep you going, we'd like to thank our sponsor today, Pat Sutter's Associates, and our wonderful Patreon supporters, for making today's show possible. And we want to thank you again, so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye. Bye.
