556: Recognition Starts with You: Building Inner Drive
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Are you ready to take control of your motivation and redefine success in your pet care business? In this episode, we explore the importance of recognizing your hard work and celebrating wins, even when no one else is watching. We dive into how building trust with clients and staying aligned with your mission can fuel your drive. From reflecting on your values to embracing the challenges of serving others, we share practical tips to keep your momentum strong throughout the year. Tune in to discover how self-recognition can empower you to build a business you’re truly proud of.
Main topics:
Finding self-motivation in business
Celebrating wins to stay driven
Building trust through quality service
Aligning actions with business values
Reframing challenges as opportunities
Main takeaway: You are the one who defines success in your business—recognize your efforts, celebrate your wins, and build the drive to keep going.
In the hustle of running a pet care business, it’s easy to wait for others—clients, team members, or even family—to validate your hard work. But the truth is, you are the one who defines success in your business. 🌟
Celebrate your wins, no matter how small. Did you create a flawless route plan? Handle a tough pet care situation with grace? Deliver peace of mind to a client? Those moments are worth recognizing.
When you take time to reflect on your efforts and celebrate what you’ve accomplished, you build the inner drive to keep going. 💪 Let this year be about owning your journey, honoring your growth, and setting the pace for an even better tomorrow.
What’s one win you’re proud of today? Share it in the comments—let’s celebrate together!” 🐾✨
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitter confessional, new year motivation, client appreciation, self-sufficiency, internal motivation, client retention, job well done, service industry, mission vision values, celebrating wins, goal setting, self-assessment, business growth, team management, client trust
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Megan. 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 to episode 556, if you've learned something from any of the episodes we've done and want to help the keep the show going, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support to learn more. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our Patreon people for helping to support the show.
Collin 00:22
And I have a head cold, so I may sound kind of terrible this entire show.
Meghan 00:28
As we head into a new year, it can be exhilarating. We think about all the possibilities of what's to come. We've learned the lessons from last year. We want to bring them into this year, but somewhere along the way, probably mid January or February, you may start to lose that motivation. People typically have all these hopes and dreams at the beginning of the year of, Oh, I'm gonna lose weight this year, so I'm gonna get a gym membership, and then by the February I'm actually no longer going but we want to keep the habits going. We want to keep that motivation up, that drive, so that we aren't staring in the mirror a year from now, going, ugh, I did not do the thing I really wanted to do, or I did not accomplish a goal because I gave up, or I lost what I thought was my purpose in the middle of the year, well, and
Collin 01:09
even right now, we're coming off the Christmas holiday, going into New Year's, you may have experienced a lot of accolades from your clients. You may have gotten tons of tips. You may have gotten tons of gifts and bottles of wine and a trip to Belize. Or I don't know what people get these days but, but we see a lot of it on Facebook groups and people posting about that. Or you might not have, you might not have received even a single thank you from a client for all of the hard work that you did. Or maybe you're running a business and you have a bunch of team members doing work, and you're doing all the admin work, and you're doing all the route planning, and you don't get a thank you for that. No, no. Client calls you up and says, I really appreciate you for effectively route planning. 300 visits this week. I know how hard that was. Nobody's going to do that. So do we do a lot of work in our business? Sometimes it comes without any recognition. Nobody says thank you. You don't get a parade for it. You don't get an award for it. You do the work. You do it well, and nothing comes from it on the other end. And so we want to talk about, how do we in those moments and keeping forward, with the momentum, with the goals, with the drive that you have right now? How do we continually motivate ourselves? How do we stay self sufficient, instead of needing to or or wanting to rely on others to motivate ourselves in those moments? I think
Meghan 02:31
one of the things is reminding ourselves of the clients. Are still booking us. We still have a business to run. We still have routes to plan, right? We still have employees to manage, or maybe we're just solo and we but we still have a business at the end of the day, and clients want to use us. They enjoy our services. They feel peace of mind, so remembering that in the tough moments of Yeah, you don't get a parade, but you can internalize this and go, I am proud of myself for accomplishing that task or checking that box off my list?
Collin 03:03
Yeah, so there is that outward evidence that we can look to, right? I said, we don't need external things to help motivate us, but you can look to the evidence of the world around you, and that one that you hit on there, Megan, of the clients continue to book you that is an amazing testament to your hard work and dedication is when existing clients continue to come back more there's there's fewer things that speak more to the value of your work than when clients come back to you when they need help and when they have needs. I do. I run through this in my head when we get a client and I'm putting together a visit by visit SOP and putting all this detail in it, and getting questions and pulling photos and going, you know, trying to make sure that everything's all lined out. And it's like, is this really worth it? Is this really going to make this go well, but, but when it does, and when the client doesn't say thank you, and they book again, it's like, okay, that that's great. They, they really, they, they felt peace of mind because we sweated the details. They were able to do what they needed to do, because we cared about everything behind the scenes, and they didn't have to, rightfully so. That's our job, and it's that word job, that's what we have to define for ourselves. What is a job well done. I once heard a quote, Nobody grades the scaffolding. And I love this. Nobody grades it because nobody sees it. Nobody should see it. They just want to know, did the job get done? We, as the business owners, we see the scaffolding. We know everything behind the works, and we know what it takes to get that job taken care
Meghan 04:34
of well. And I think that's why that we want the recognition. We want the affirmation that, yes, we did a good job. It
Collin 04:42
is, it is because we know, look at everything that I built. I stayed up for hours doing this. I went over the 17 times I asked for help, I messed up. I had to do this again, and blah, blah. We know what it took to make that scaffolding exist, but we are the ones. We are the ones who assess the scaffolding and its worthiness. And so when. You realize, Oh no, it's actually not the clients to judge my work. It's it's me to judge my work. It's me that at the end of the night to lay my head down and go, What did I pour into this? What did I accomplish? Did I do? Did I build this scaffolding? Did I put the notes in? Did I do the route planning to the best that I was able to? That's my job. That's my job that I got to have done, or when I'm in the visits, whenever I'm scooping the cat litter, whenever I'm doing the things that nobody's going to see. Is that worth it? And we have to be satisfied with that. In the moments where nobody sees what we do, we talk about how we're on camera. 24/7 I know we tell our staff this, and we tell ourselves this, somebody's going to see you, but honestly, no, a lot of houses still don't have cameras. You are being you are you are working in people's homes with no supervision. How are you acting? Are you proud of that? If you are that is enough, that should be enough to keep you coming back and proud of that and work next time.
Meghan 05:57
Another reminder that we have to give ourselves is that we get to do this. There's that quote, we quit our nine to five so we can work 24/7, and wow. Well, it is true sometimes, especially during the holidays, we get to do this. Now, there are times where it's not super fun. You You're the dog has diarrhea all over or the cat is not being super friendly to you that day when it typically is or you can't get the dog to take the insulin shot. There are times where this job is hard, but we get to say yes to clients and no as well. We get to go where we want, do what we want, form our business and our services to what we want to offer. You don't have to answer to anybody, and that's the beauty of this. We get to, it's that word. We don't have to do this. We don't have to say, okay, yes, I will travel five miles outside of my service radius, or take on a client that we don't want to. We get to enjoy this business. Yeah,
Collin 06:53
it's kind of that trial by choice that a lot of training and challenges go through. Of you get to pick the challenges that you sign up for. Nobody's forcing you to do this. So when we show up, we have to realize and remind ourselves, I'm in the moment. Why am I here? Somebody needed me here, and I knew they were a good fit. So I'm here. Somebody needs my help. This cat needs its litter scoop. There are needs that have to be taken care of, and I'm the one that gets to be here, because the person, a person trusted me enough to come here, and if that person's trust, if we, if we lose sight of that, if we devalue that, because we're so focused on everything else, of all the other details, we lose sight of somebody called you with needs, wants, concerns, a backstory and worries, and said, No, you, I want you to come that is such a wonderful, wonderful gift that that person has given us is what's that gift? It's their trust. It's they have trusted us to step into their home, and when they ask us to do that again and again and again and again, we should really pull from that and allow ourselves to be proud of that fact that this person's trust is being placed in me time and time again. You can
Meghan 08:15
have more peace of mind when you choose pet sitters associates as pet care professionals. Your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at pets@llc.com you can get a discount when you join by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and use the discount code, confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance. Once again, at pets@llc.com we say all the time that we are a service based industry, and we kind of use that term flippantly, but break that down, what is that we are serving people? Yes, we're taking care of animals, but we are serving people and their needs to serve means to be selfless, to put the needs of somebody else before your own. That doesn't mean that you they clients can walk all over you and they run your business. That's not what we're saying, but we get to serve them. But when we reframe our mind to think that we are serving others, it does help to motivate us. I am making a difference in my community, I am impacting others. This job is more than just me scooping the poop out of the cat litter box for the fifth time today, I am helping people. I am making an impact in the world and making the world a happier and kinder place.
Collin 09:34
And as your business grows and changes, if you do choose to bring on a team of employees to work with you, you your job is going to change, and sometimes the value of our work, we have a hard time seeing it as valuable to the company. We have a hard time of actually seeing the value in what we do, because, oh, well, what do you mean? What difference Am I making? I'm just route planning. I'm just doing invoicing. I'm just, you know, kind of futzing around on the web. Site using some HTML coding. What do you mean? I'm not really doing anything for anybody. We have to remember everything that we do as the business owner is in service of something. And if at the in service of if there's not pets and people at the end of that, we've lost our way. If there's not a person who's needing our help at the end of what we're doing, we we're not doing the right stuff. We're not working on the right things in our business. So yes, you sitting down to do Invoicing is in service of helping people. Why? Because it means that people's pets are being served by your business. Yes, you sitting down and doing route planning, you are serving those clients directly because you are making sure that your team members get there in an orderly and timely, organized manner without you there. That doesn't happen.
Meghan 10:52
The third point for finding self motivation is remaining true to your mission, vision and values. You created those for a reason. You have those words in there? They have meaning. You spent time crafting them. They're probably on your website and your social media and your email newsletters somewhere. So if you lose steam you think you can't keep going remember those words and why you put them in there?
Collin 11:15
Yeah, it's about you defining what is worthy of celebration, what is worthy of you to demon success. You get to define it. You have to define that. You cannot wait for anybody else to come alongside you and say, Good job and throw you that parade. That's not going to happen. It may never happen, but you have to go into this write down, you know, for this new year. Write down, what does success look like to you in both the little and the big things. Sure, everyone writes down how success will be if I break, you know, X figures in my business this year in sales, or if I can grow my team to X number of people, but from you, you the day to day operations, write down your KRAS or your key performance indicators. Write down for you in what you do in your business. If you had a boss, what would they want to know? What would they want to see? What would they give a gold star to? And then, heck, get on Amazon and buy yourself a gold star chart so that when you do something awesome, you can put it up there. You need to celebrate your wins, because when you are proud of yourself, when you recognize your good work, you're more likely to do it again. You are going to find that you do amazing things every single day that go completely unnoticed, even by yourself. It takes us being intentional in those moments to go, dang. That is the best looking route I've ever made, and that's ever been done in the history of pet sitting. Go ahead and brag about it. Draw yourself a parade. Have some balloons next to your desk that you can pop, blow off if you need to, or whatever. Again, gold star chart on your desk or in your wall if you need but have those ways of celebrating and recognizing when you are proud of your work. We should
Meghan 12:58
definitely celebrate our wins, no matter how small they are. Also think about when something doesn't go right, when you didn't hit the mark, or when you messed something up, or when an employee didn't do something exactly how you wanted them. To find meaning in that as well and a purpose to keep going. Keep trying to get better. Have a goal to get 1% better at something every day. It will help you stay on track. It will help you to keep going when things aren't looking as great as you want them to. Because when you have your ideals set out before you you have something to work towards. You can think about that goal. You can marinate on it. You can say, I am chasing this. I know I want this. I may not be there yet, but I can get a plan together to get there, and
Collin 13:41
that really is the difference between defining a goal and defining what success looks like. The goal is where you're headed, right? That's your vision. Moving forward, you have a finish line that you're trying to get to, but we know we have to have in our brains that at some point I'm not going to hit that. And how am I going to feel about that? How am I going to reconcile with myself that I set an audacious goal, or I set out just an audacious vision for my business in this new year, and it didn't happen, or even in the little things of I thought I could get all the route planning done tonight, and I just didn't. Well, is that? Is that failure? No, you learned something. You something came of that you got 80% of it done, and so tomorrow you're that much further along than you would have been otherwise. You have to again, define what success looks like, whether you reach a goal or not. Have something, have a higher purpose to what you're doing, to allow yourself to embrace to know I'm working towards something, and I know I'm not always going to hit the mark, but I can come away better for trying,
Meghan 14:43
because when we are self motivated, we can get out of bed in the morning going, Ah, okay, I'm ready to tackle the day. It doesn't matter if a client leaves me $1,000 tip, which would be awesome, yes please, or if nobody says anything to me at all today, or a thank you or anything, I know that my. Work is excellent. I do excellent work. I do hard things when you can set up these reminders for yourself and this purpose to keep going, it's not only going to help you get through the hard times, but it's going to allow you to enjoy the good times even more. We would love to know how you find self motivation and what you want your 2025 to look like. You can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional, we want to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode, and thank you very much for listening. It's been a great year, and we are so excited for what's to come. We'll talk with you next year. Bye. You
