554: Strategies for a Stronger and More Focused Business
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Are you ready to make 2025 your strongest year yet? This episode dives into the power of introspection and proactive planning to drive business growth while reducing stress. We share some strategies for balancing challenges and celebrating wins, emphasizing the importance of setting clear goals and staying focused. We discuss how niching down and refining your services can align your business with your personal vision. Tune in to learn how to create a stronger, more intentional path for your pet care business.
Main topics:
Importance of Introspection and Planning
Balancing Challenges and Achievements
Niching Down to Reduce Stress
Setting Goals for Growth
Building Stronger Client Relationships
Main takeaway: To be proactive, not reactive, is the key to achieving more good things in your business with less stress.
In business, it's easy to get caught up in putting out fires and reacting to challenges as they come. But what if you flipped the script? Being proactive means setting clear goals, creating actionable plans, and preparing for opportunities before they arise.
Instead of saying, "I just don’t want my business to fail," shift your focus to, "I want my business to thrive by achieving X, Y, and Z this year."
This mindset empowers you to chase after the good things—revenue milestones, happier clients, and personal growth—without the constant stress of scrambling to fix problems.
💡 Pro tip: Start your year strong by identifying the positive outcomes you want and building a roadmap to get there. Less stress, more success!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Meghan, I'm Collin, and we are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We appreciate you listening today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our Patreon people for supporting today's show. We have done well over 500 podcasts now, and our Patreon supporters helped to keep the show going. They have found value in the episodes and learn some things from other pet sitters around the world. If that sounds like you, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can help out. It's anything from giving a few dollars every month to just sharing the episode with a friend or leaving a review. We appreciate it all. We are recording this right before Christmas. It's the end of the year. We have all this hustle and bustle, but we are also looking back over the year and thinking about what lessons we've learned, what has actually happened. We talked a couple weeks ago about the recency bias, and I can really only think about what's happened in the past week. But as Collin and I have been talking more and more about what January and February of this year looked like, we've been talking about the struggles we've overcome and the takeaways from those. Yeah,
Collin 01:00
we know many people are doing that as well, but this level of we have to take some time to be introspective, and this is really important as being a business owner, because if we're not in retrospective or introspective about what's happened to us and try and pull lessons out of our own experiences, we're never going to grow. We're always just going to be right where we were, and we'll just keep experiencing the same things and having the same troubles, and we never can actually get out of that rut. And I know we throw that word introspection out there, but what does it actually mean? It's a process. It's an intentional process of extracting lessons and having takeaways from things that we have experienced. I think the first part about being effective at introspection is having time and space in our day, but finding some quiet time, finding some quiet moments where we can just be at peace, where we can set aside everything else on our plate. And I like to start these moments by just doing a big brain dump of dumping everything that I have, that I'm thinking about, that I'm worried about, that I'm stressed about that I'm planning for put it all on paper, because that way I'm externalizing these thoughts, and then I'm kind of left, I don't know, just a little bit empty and a little bit vulnerable to thinking and to experiencing, reliving some of the things that I have gone through this past year. And then what I like to do is start going through my phone calendar, month by month, and intentionally looking at dates and writing down what was that month, about what happened that month? What did I experience? Well?
Meghan 02:27
And for the new year, it's actually easier if you do this in real time, because a lot of times, you know, with our recency bias that I just mentioned, or the we only remember the bad things that happened, of, oh man, yeah, May was that medical crisis I had, and August was when I lost a bunch of employees, and we only remember, typically, the bad stuff, but when you implement on a more frequent basis, to write things down, and it just could be a simple note, it doesn't have to, you don't have to journal all the time, but just a simple note of, okay, this I passed this revenue goal, or I hit this milestone, you can remember the good things too,
Collin 02:58
yeah, and that way, as your process now, we're going back and processing Those. I've got them written down, or maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm writing them down for the first time, but make that first sweep of I'm collecting all of these experiences that I want to go back and process. I need to go back and reinvestigate these because I didn't do it in that moment. That's what we're doing. Then once you have them, you go one by one, and you can ask questions like, how did it make me feel when, Hey, maybe I lost a bunch of employees in August. What did that make me feel? How did I feel during that process? What did I experience? What did I like? What did I not like about that? Asking these questions will help you to start digging into this and looking at it a little bit objectively. It's a little bit easier to do this when we are a little bit removed from the actual experience and in the moment, because then we're not all the emotions aren't hot and heavy, and we're not kind of blinded by those. We're able to look at them a little bit more remote, a little bit more detached, and look at analytically and go, Okay, I need to learn something about this. So pick your experiences, pick the things that you had happened to you, or you did this year, and ask the questions, how did I feel? What did this make me do? What was I experiencing? What do I and then what this really gets into is, what do I need to do to make sure that never happens again? Or if
Meghan 04:10
it was a revenue goal that you hit and surpassed, how do I make that happen again? I want that I have a new higher goal this coming year. What do I need to do to hit that and
Collin 04:19
you make a good point. Megan, of many times when we talk about being introspective and taking away lessons, we do automatically think about the bad things. Okay, I broke my foot. How to make sure that doesn't happen, or I lost 30% of my business. How do I make sure? How do I keep my employees? Well, what about the positive things? And so really take a sweep, and then do a second sweep and go, did I actually? Did I write down all the bad things that happened to me. Did nothing good happen to me? Did I complete no courses? Did I make no new contacts? Did I surpass no revenue goals? That way you can go, Okay, I'm not just running away from something. And that's where we get really dangerous in our lives and in running our business, is when we go, I'm only acting because I'm running away from the pain. I'm only reacting because I'm running away. Away from the bad things. That certainly is a great thing to do, because we don't want to experience that again. But we are so much more motivated when we are running towards a positive, towards something that we want to do again, like that's where I want to be moving. I need to move in that revenue goal. So what was my marketing like? How did I feel during that moment? Was like, because maybe it some negatives come along with that, but, you know, it's okay. I hit my revenue goal, but, man, it took me a lot to get there, and I was pretty tired by the time I got there. Well, how do I do that again without being tired? That's what the process of introspection allows us to do, is really look at situations and start breaking them out in constituent components so that we can process them and then do something about it. And that's why
Meghan 05:44
it's important to be proactive instead of reactive. When we can be proactive into the new year of I want these. I want more good things to happen to my business. I can have a plan. I can have a goal. I can have markers that I need to hit throughout the year in order to reach that and yeah, hopefully at a less stressed level.
Collin 06:00
Yeah, if our only goal, I mean, it is a goal, right? If our only goal for the new year is I just don't want my business to die. But that doesn't give us a whole lot of positive, actionable items. That really makes you feel like you are just kind of scrambling and throwing stuff at the wall to see what fits. But having a specific thing that you're moving towards allows you to make sure that everything else is in alignment. And so when we look at what we are taking away from 2024 it really is, what am I applying moving forward? It's not just, Oh, yep, I learned that. You know, I can't put my hand on a hot stove. What are you going to do about that? What are you going to change about your life? What are you going to change about your business to actually make something positive come from that just having lessons is certainly good, and it allows you to go, Yeah, I learned that I have more knowledge than I have before, but I have to turn this into an action to make sure that I can make a change. One of the best
Meghan 06:53
things you can do for your business is have insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you, and get a free quote at petsit llc.com you can get a discount when you join by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional, and use the discount code confessional when you go to check out check out the benefits of membership and insurance, once again, at pets@llc.com so we actually asked on our Facebook page, what was the biggest lesson your business taught you in 2024 and we want to share some of those amazing responses. Susan Morin said, taking care of you first is always the priority, and having a little faith that all your efforts and hard work will pay off. Can go a long way for your business, as long as you put the work in. And that's true. A lot of times, people will get into this business and think just a light switch is going to happen. I'm going to start my business. I'm going to have full books automatically, all my bills are going to be paid, and I'm just going to go full steam ahead. Well, that can be true, but you have to put in a lot of marketing, advertising, a lot of effort, word of mouth is really only going to get you so far. And in today's day and age, if you're wanting to really grow and scale, you need to do other things. You need to pursue other opportunities into in order to get your name out there. And
Collin 08:14
the faith part comes in is that they will work, or something will take place in them. Because the thing is, is that most marketing practices don't instantaneously turn your business around. There's not an instant switch, like you said, Megan, that goes, Oh, I did this, and now I'm fully booked. No, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes trial and error, and the faith part comes in, going, I'm gonna work on this, and I know something's gonna come out on the other end.
Meghan 08:34
That's definitely true for SEO and blogs. That's also true for hanging flyers at coffee shops. Just because someone sees it one day doesn't mean that that's the person that needs you. We hope that that's going to work out. We have faith that it is going to turn around quickly. But some of these, you're right. Some of these marketing efforts do take longer than others. Connie Ellen said some of my original clients were no longer a good fit for my business transition to cats only, and I have a limit on the number of indoor pets. I am less stressed now. We are starting to see a lot of niching down now, where people are just wanting cats only, or exotics only, or dog walking only. I feel like this is good for businesses and it's good for the industry, because it shows that there's room for specialization, that people can do the business that they want. They are no longer have to be in this box of providing all the services, but they can go out and just specialize in what they want.
Collin 09:21
Well, in this lesson that she started off by saying was that her original clients are no longer a good fit for my business. How often do our businesses change? Because we change. We have a different vision, we have a different need. We've learned the lessons of you know what? I don't want to be an all inclusive pet sitter or pet care business, because that's too much. The six AMS to 10pm seven days a week, 365, days a year, the constant overnights, or the boarding in my home, or whatever this is, or or the houses with 1212, pets, that's too much for me. I don't like that. Turning that into a positive changes. I have to recognize that my business, my needs, have changed, my goals and vision for what I. Want to do has changed, which means I have to say no to particular clients. I have to turn away clients that maybe started with me when I started my business five, six years ago, or maybe a one year ago, and I've already learned the hard lessons that I don't want any more of that I often ask myself, anytime we start something new, do I want 10 more times of this? If I if this is successful, do I want 10x whatever I get back from this? And many times we start thinking, yeah, actually, I do. I would love to have 10x this. But then we experience it, we go, You know what? Actually, that was bad. I don't need that anymore. I don't like going months without breaks, or months without being in my own bed,
Meghan 10:38
which is actually the lesson that, for the love of a pause, pet sitters said, they said that nobody's guest room bed is ever going to be as good as my own bed. And boy, is that true. For the first few years that we pet sat, we were in people's other people's beds all of the time, and a lot of times we would be in different people's houses and not seeing each other a lot. Yeah,
Collin 10:56
it really is a heavy burden to do that, to do live in care for people's pets in their homes. And I know it is in demand, and a lot of people want this service. And I think first thing here is make sure that you are charging an appropriate amount. There's no right or wrong way to charge here. You have to charge what you need and what you can get in your market, but make sure you know what that number is and you're communicating that value. But this lesson really goes beyond just the bed, right? It really is saying my business, that I was operating, wasn't fitting me anymore, and I needed to make another change. I needed to do something about this. And I thought I'd be okay going from people's house to house, and they're really nice, and they've got a Jacuzzi or a hot tub, and they've got all unlimited TV and they let me eat what's in the fridge. I thought I might enjoy doing that kind of thing, but I actually don't. I actually like a much more, much more simple way of living my life. It actually helps me unwind and make sure that I'm not on the clock 24/7, and gives me the space and time that I need to disconnect from this so that I show up more refreshed the next
Meghan 11:57
day. The biggest lesson that our business taught me this year was something I actually already knew. It was that our business is not for everyone. We cannot, nor should we serve everyone. Our marketing efforts don't speak to everyone and everyone's pain points. We are specifically targeting a certain sector of people who we want as clients and who we want to form a relationship with. For us, specifically, we do not offer overnights, so all of our advertising, all of our messaging, is not going to speak to those people. We are not for everyone. So the services we offer are not for all clients. And that is okay. I've had I've come to terms with that this year. It can be hard for me to not want to talk to everyone, to not make a broad brushstroke and say, Do you have a pet? We serve you. We want to be there for you whenever, whatever you need. We are here. That can be very tempting, but that's why there is the saying, if you are for everybody, then ultimately you are for no one. Because when you muddy the waters with just general messaging, general pain points, you aren't actually talking to the specific person that you want. As we've changed our messaging, it's been important to keep that in mind, who are we talking to? Why are we talking to them? What are their pain points? Not everybody's pain points. How can we best serve them, and why should they choose us?
Collin 13:15
It takes having a strong opinion, being very opinionated about who you're for and being having holding to that. Instead of being wishy washy, you're putting yourself out there. It is really making yourself vulnerable, saying no, not not 100 points, but this one exact point, that's who I'm for. And to know that there are people who aren't going to like that, who aren't going to be okay, who are going to call you and be angry that you can't serve them, to know that there are people who are going to keep scrolling past you all of that's in the back of your head. It doesn't feel that great, but you know that on the other side, what you are doing is cultivating a list of clients, a group of clients that you're serving who love you, and
Meghan 13:52
ultimately, more clarity, more clarity in your messaging, in your business, because to be clear is to be kind.
Collin 13:58
My biggest lesson that our business taught us this year was just the importance of sleep. Our business operates 6am to 10pm seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's really never not doing something. There's always been these decisions that Megan and I, we've got to talk about. We've got to decide, we've got to move forward on. We've got to plan, we've got to strategize and make sure that we fully understand and have these deep, in depth conversations. Those are really hard to do when I'm sleep deprived, and it means that I tend to make more rash, more quick decisions, more quick judgments, or I just get angry and more frustrated with how things are going when I'm well rested. Turns out, thinking is a whole lot easier for me, and I can carry a conversation and it's easier to process new things, and as more gets added to the pile of lists to do, it's actually easier to take those on when I'm better rested and I can understand what's going on and know how to process them. It also helps cut down on my headaches and things like that. So sleep this year has been a big lesson for me personally.
Meghan 14:59
Maybe that's. Not learn in the new year. I'm not there yet, but everybody's on their own journey, right? And we'd love to know what your journey is, the lessons that you've learned from this year, the takeaways, what you're going to do better or the same next year. You can let us know by email at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at pet sitter. Confessional, thank you for listening today, we hope you have ended the year strong that you are going into this new year revived, refreshed, ready to take on the new challenges. Have new goals and new things you want to learn this year. Thank you also to our sponsor, pet sitters associates. We will talk with you next time bye. You
