581: Driving Success Through Core Values with Amy Munns
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How do you build a pet care business that stands the test of time while staying rooted in your core values? Amy Munns, owner of Leash 4 Lease, shares how she has successfully grown her company over 24 years by focusing on honesty, reliability, and professionalism. Through the challenges of balancing a team, client relationships, and evolving industry standards, Amy stayed true to her mission: providing high-quality pet care with a personal touch. She leveraged her values to guide decisions during difficult times, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and even turned those moments into opportunities to serve her community through initiatives like a pet food drive. By embracing open-mindedness, trusting her instincts, and empowering her team to shine, Amy has built a business defined by passion and purpose. Her story reminds us that staying authentic, even in the face of challenges, is the key to building a business you truly love.
Main topics:
Developing and implementing core values in personal and business life.
Balancing professionalism and fun in pet care services.
Empowering team members to bring their personalities to client interactions.
Trusting your instincts in decision-making and staying authentic to your vision.
Challenges and triumphs in adapting a business during COVID-19.
Main takeaway: “Fun doesn’t mean casual or lazy—it’s about embracing the joy in what we do, while staying true to our professional standards”
Success in pet care begins with staying true to your core values, even as the industry evolves. Amy Munns shares how she built a thriving business over 24 years by focusing on honesty, reliability, and professionalism. From weathering challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic to empowering her team and embracing new opportunities, Amy shows us the importance of aligning every decision with a clear mission. Her passion for pets and dedication to delivering exceptional care has created a legacy her clients and community trust.
This week on Pet Sitter Confessional, Amy reminds us why authenticity and commitment to values are the foundation of a successful pet care business. Her story is one you don’t want to miss.
🌟 How do you ensure your business reflects your values every day? 🎧🐾
About our guest:
Amy Munns is the founder and owner of Leash 4 Lease, a professional pet care company proudly serving Northwest Washington for nearly 25 years. Passionate about honesty, reliability, and personalized care, Amy has built her business on a foundation of core values that guide her team to deliver exceptional dog walking and vacation pet care services. Known for her dedication to professionalism, Amy is committed to creating meaningful relationships with her clients and their pets while empowering her team to bring their unique personalities to their work. As an advocate for ongoing learning and professional growth, Amy regularly attends conferences and embraces advancements in pet care to provide the best service possible. Outside of work, Amy enjoys gardening, spending time with her family and pets, and finding joy in the little moments life offers.
Links:
Website: Leash 4 Lease
Email: leash4lease@gmail.com
Instagram: @leash4lease
Facebook: Leash 4 Lease Professional Pet Care
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet care, core values, professionalism, client relationships, business challenges, team empowerment, honesty, reliability, open-mindedness, passion, fun, COVID impact, employee training, client communication, business growth.
SPEAKERS
Collin, Amy Munns
Collin 00:00
Music. Welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter today. We're brought to you by our friends at tying to pet and pet perennials. How do we design core values that are more than just things on our website or in a training manual, how do we make them mean something to our employees and to our clients? And how do we live those out? Well, we're really excited to have Amy Munns, owner of leash for lease. I practiced that name about four times so I didn't get tongue tied to do this, but Amy's Amy's on the show to talk about her journey in pet care and how she's developed this and overcome challenges in her business. Amy, it's my immense pleasure to have you on the show. For those who aren't familiar with your business and everything that you're doing, please tell us a little bit more about who you are and
Amy Munns 00:50
what you do. Sure. Thank you so much. Collin, it's so great to be here today. Yeah. So like you said, my name is Amy Munns, and I own and operate lease for lease. Yeah, it is a bit of a tongue twister. My husband came up with the name and professional pet care. We offer daily dog walking and vacation pet care. So we, like many of your listeners, go into people's homes to take care of animals while they're away for long days or, you know, way of business or travel, like a totally away from the house we've been and we started right in 2001 about a month before 911 which was kind of a like, oh, started our business, and so exciting. And then 911 hit, and we were kind of like, Oh, what have we done? But, um, but, you know, it started off, and it's, it's been great. We've been, we've had so much fun through the years, the people and the animals that we've met, just, you know, who's either been on my team or our clients, they've just been so wonderful. It's just such a it's just been a great opportunity and experience.
01:57
Well, 24
Collin 01:58
years ago, what got you started in this and started down this journey? Oh, sure.
Amy Munns 02:04
So where we live? We live in Northwest Washington, outside of Seattle. But if you're familiar with Seattle or the Washington State has like a peninsula off to the northwest side. So we're actually like a ferry right away, a 35 minute ferry ride away from Seattle. And I used to, I went to school at the University of Washington, and then I got a job downtown Seattle, which is really common people commute. They'll take a they live all over and they'll commute into the city. So we'll, you know, it was about an hour and a half commute one way, just to get to the to the to my office. So quite a long day. And at the time, my husband was also in the Navy, which is this area where we live, as a big Navy community. He was a submariner out of Bangor, Washington Naval base out here. And we so when he would be on deployments, and I was commuting into Seattle for my job, I I was hiring my neighbors or friends or different people to come over and let my dogs out. At the time, I had two dogs let them out during the day because there, there was just no way to get that day under 12 and a half hours. It was just, it was just a really long day. Yeah, it was a long, long commute. I got a lot of reading done. That's when Oprah had her, you know, her book club was super popular. I think I read everything on Oprah's list those years. But, and at the time, I was working as a in recruiting and kind of at a temporary services place where we would put temporary employees on jobs, you know, at companies whenever they might need a temporary employee, admin, support, type stuff, and the job just kind of got old and boring, and then the commute got old and boring, and it wasn't as fun. So, you know, I talked to my husband, and I said, Hey, I can't be the only one who has dogs and needs midday walks or midday visits. And I said, I think that there's something here we could do. I'm not saying I invented pet sitting, but it wasn't popular at the time. You know, 2001 just, I mean, were you even born yet? Collin,
Collin 04:11
I was born. Check. Thank you.
Amy Munns 04:17
You know, just think back like the internet was still new. Not everybody had self not. I mean, cell phones were still new. We definitely didn't have smartphones. We
Collin 04:27
I'm trying to think like
Amy Munns 04:30
email wasn't popular. Everything was done on the phone and everything was done by paper. So so we just didn't know that kind of thing. So, yeah, I talked to my husband about getting started and how we were going to do this, and I remember him telling me, remember him telling me, okay, but this is not some high school gig where you're just taking care of dogs. And I said, No, this is, you know this? No, my vision was, and always has been, professional. This is for we're not cutesy. We're not. We're not. I don't know what other. To use except cutesy, like that's such a you can get pets. Can get kind of cutesy in your marketing or what have you. No, we wanted it to look tailored. We wanted to look professional. Back then there wasn't software yet. There wasn't any of those kinds of things. But we always try to make our our, you know, our paperwork and our forums and everything look as professional as possible. And then as you know, as time's gone on, we've evolved into all, I mean, it's amazing where the pet sitting field has evolved and developed into it just, it's exciting and amazing, right? Yeah,
Collin 05:33
first, I've got a comment that I always forget, that the Northwest ferry system is the largest ferry system in the United States, and I'm always blown away by that, because it's just, you know, landlocked here in Missouri. I never remember that that kind of stuff goes on. So it's always, it's neat to hear that. And I've long dreamed of, you know, going and riding on one of those ferries. But to hear that, you know, you really started from a point of of empathizing with the clients, right? Of you were experiencing this problem, you felt these pain points like that really does change how it sounds like your approach to what you would want to offer and how also have offered to you, right?
Amy Munns 06:15
Yeah, that's exactly, and that's exactly where I say that all the time, and where we started like, I couldn't, I knew I wasn't the only person who had the situation right, like on the ferries. And if you ever do get to come out and ride one of the ferries or come in the area, and that is one of the highlights, it is that is that made the commute not so bad, because we're not sitting in a car where, you know, we were able to you could get a beer, you could have a snack. You could you met friends. People had friends that we make, lifelong friends. They're just commuting every day. So anyway, so if you ever do get a chance to experience one of our fairies out here, they are pretty fun. They're a tourist attraction, for sure. But back to that. I mean, just talking with people that I was commuting with or working with, yeah, they had animals too. And what do you do with your animal all day long? Oh, they're just, they're lonely at home, or they're, you know, sitting cross legged waiting for me to come home, kind of thing. So or they would have their neighbors and friends come over and let their dogs out, kind of thing.
Collin 07:11
Well, I know you're really big about your core values, and I know that's something that you've worked, worked hard on. When did you start developing those in your business?
Amy Munns 07:21
Well, I think I started more with my personal core values, and I don't know if I called them back that back then, I kind of just said I have some rules for myself. And then I just developed. And then I worked with the coach during COVID, and then she and I worked on some company or defining core values. I think I think I always kind of had them, but I didn't actually write them down and really define them
Collin 07:43
what they were, yeah, so
Amy Munns 07:47
I could share my personal core values.
Collin 07:51
I love the rules for myself, and I think, I think that kind of viewpoint really helps, you know, at least me go, No, these are these are rules. These aren't just guidelines. These aren't just nice principles, like when I say, these are rules for me, of how I act, how I respond, how I do things that really does change. I think the seriousness of it kind of adds a little bit more gravity to it. So I love that phrase is what I wanted to jump in. I feel the same here. How you Yeah, starting with those, you know, kind of how those came about and then transitioned into your business.
Amy Munns 08:25
I think just kind of working like as you grow and mature and have different experiences in your life, that's where you kind of come up with your rules, or your core values, whatever you would like to call them. I I don't think that anything on my list are finite. I feel like it's an organic list that can use tweaking or additions or even if it's like, oh, I don't, that's not as important to me anymore. I don't, I don't see that though, but maybe just adding to it. But my very first one, my, my personal rule is keep it one of my, I have three, and I just try to keep it simple. That would be my first one. So keep it simple, right? Like, just Don't over complicate things. And that even goes to, like, setting your rules and your boundaries. Like, like, you don't have to have 12 rules or 12 commandments or whatever you want to call them, right? Like, they're, in my opinion, this is all me personally, too, right? Everybody, this all works for everybody individually, how, how they make it work? But one of my things is, yeah, definitely keep it simple. Just don't if it takes, if a recipe takes six ingredients, don't add two more, right? Like, if it's good enough, or if it's good at that basic level, or that simple level, sometimes just less is more kind of thing. Yeah, that, I guess that's yeah. And then if I roll that, that's not one of my named or what have you company values. But. Just I, if I were to just kind of adopt that into it, keeping it simple, just for my company, just things like I don't. We offer, we offer two services. We offer dog walking and pet care, and not pet care like vacation. Pet Care is what I mean. The distinctions there, we don't, I think we'd prefer to go deep, further than wide, if that makes sense, like really do the simple things and the few things that we do really well, instead of doing a whole bunch of a lot of stuff that we can't really focus on. I
Collin 10:33
love how that, even that principle of keep it simple, can really be taken in those two ways, right? You said one, I'm going to do things that limit my amount of attention and things that call on me, right? I'm going to I'm going to keep my life simple. I'm going to keep my priorities simple. I'm going to keep my list of simple things simple and also but when you do that, like
10:53
for the business,
Collin 10:53
you are able to go deep. You are able to really dig into every aspect. And it is kind of, I know some people get, I think can feel constricted by that, because they can go, What do you mean? Like, I've done dog walking for 10 years now. I know everything about it and and I really think what it just takes is that, well, let's just look one more layer deeper. Let's look at this corner. I haven't focused on this yet. Let me learn about this. It really allows you a lot of of depth of knowledge, experience that you and professionalism that you can then bring to your clients to go, No, literally, I've studied every aspect of this, right, right? And it's great to have, right? Yeah, and yeah,
Amy Munns 11:38
I think so. And I know like I've met other people, and their focus is more, might be on nutrition or educating about other things, about pet care or pet things. I just feel like you're saying, I just want to go deep into it and just do what we do really, really well. And it doesn't have to, we don't have to be the end all be all for everybody. We provide really good, reliable pet care and dog walking services, and that's what we do, and that's what we're known for, and
Collin 12:12
that's that is hard, I will say, from a business owner perspective, when, like, when clients don't use me for the service that I offer. Because, you know, like, well, it can be disheartening. Let's say, let's say you only offer dog walking, and then you get that client who contacts you and says, Well, I need pet sitting. It's really tempting to go, Well, okay, well, I'll do pet saying this one time, because I don't want to lose you as a client. And then maybe we'll do the dog walking. Like that really is a boundary that you have to set up and go, No, my, my area of expertise, my, my excellence is over here, and it's okay if people don't want to use me for that service, that's okay. We do have to, at some point be fine with that, right?
Amy Munns 12:55
Exactly. I agree. Yeah, yeah. We get a lot of it's hard to for my team sometimes, because they'll be like, Oh, can we do this too, or what have you? And like, nope. Like, especially overnights, I'll just say we don't. We used to do overnights. We don't anymore. It's just, it's hard, it burns on my team, and you can't pay people appropriately. I mean, the way the structure is set up anymore, but sometimes we'll still get requests for that, and it's heartbreaking. And like, yes, we want to yes, we want to be there for you, but unfortunately, we don't. We can't offer that, like, legally, or, you know, financially, we can't offer it. But also we don't have the people on my team that, you know, but we're still torn. So it is kind of hard, like, you have to, and that's where you have to kind of stay focused. Like, Nope, we will definitely come in. We have great success coming in multiple times a day and visiting your animals. We have 24 years of doing that, and they do great. They're still in their home, they're still safe, they know their routine, they know their surroundings. And we come in and do everything we can during our time there. Unfortunately, we just can't spend the night,
Collin 14:02
right? Yeah, and then that, you know, what that leads into is like, as you've just mentioned, of the messaging all has to be around. Why this is a benefit? What does this get to people? We when you say, keep it simple, that can mean that can kind of come across as a like demeaning and a little condescending. And first we have to break from that, but also we can present it to clients. Of going we are solely focused on exactly this one or maybe two things, which means you get the absolute best. You don't want a generalist for these things. You want somebody with this experience and focus. And that does take a little bit of client education to understand. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. I see why that is, you know, and that's just that just takes a little bit of time, too.
Amy Munns 14:47
Yeah, yeah. I like that the general, yeah, I know on a generalist, that's awesome. I like, I mean, I like that term, good, yeah, right. We're niche. We're, yeah, we're a little boutique thing here. Like, we, we offer these, and we're really good at it.
Collin 14:59
Yeah? Yeah, well, so, so your first one was, keep it simple. What was number two? Okay,
Amy Munns 15:04
these are still personal, right? So, yeah, trust my gut and we How many times do we say that, just in our business world, we hear that a lot, trust your gut, but and this can go both ways. I think that, like when I saw, like, I'll just personally, when I saw the house that we bought, we bought a new house about five years ago, I knew it was minute I saw it. I We weren't even in the house. We were just driving up in the driveway, and I was like, I want this house. Like, this is it? This is the house. I don't know what's inside, you know? And I just knew in my gut I was just I knew, like, intrinsically, like, this, is it like? And that's kind of how I feel about all kinds of things like, so in my business stuff, sometimes I, like, I said, it goes both ways. Sometimes you can't be interviewing a new client or a new employee, let's say, or potential employee, and you just know, like, you just, you just, it just hits right? Like, oh, I just think this person's going to be great. I just, I have a really good feeling about this person. Um, on the flip side, sometimes you're talking to somebody and they're answering all the answers correctly, and they're saying all the right words. This is for, like, employees, and they're saying all the right things. But there's something in you that's like, I just, I just, it's not it's just not there. Trust that. And how many times do we act on it and say, Oh, I felt something. I wish I had acted on that feeling. So, so it's really hard, and it's hard yet to remind yourself, and that's one thing that that's probably of all of my, of all of my core values, not I did quote marks, but they're not really. They are my core values. Um, this is probably the one that I probably try to remind myself of the most, like, don't forget to trust your gut, to really, yeah, trust that feeling. And
Collin 16:59
that does take again that does take time to develop that instinct and that trust in ourselves, because especially when we're starting off in a new venture, of maybe it's my first time hiring somebody, or maybe it's I'm just starting out in business, and I don't know how to read clients, or I don't know this, or I don't know that it's your I think what's important to know is You're gonna miss sometimes you're going to misinterpret the gut instinct, and that's going to be okay, because you need to be building confidence in yourself to make that decision. Otherwise you never will. And then you will look up and go, I knew I should have said no to that client. Now here I am, a year into this, and this is i This is terrible, right? You do have to build that confidence,
Amy Munns 17:42
yeah, for sure. And I think it's easy for me to say, like, it's my birthday on Thursday, I'm a 53 Oh, and I've been doing this, and I'll be doing this for almost 25 years, so it's easy for me to say, Oh, I've got all this experience. I just trust my gut all the time. I know, you know, I know that feeling, yeah, when you're brand new, but there's still something in us, right? There's still that nature in us that's just like, I don't, I don't know. And even if you don't act on that and you learn from it later, like, dang it, I wish I had just listened to my feelings, that's when you learn, and that's when you apply it for next time. Like, you know what? Something was telling me, this is just a little bit off, or there's just something not quite right? I'm gonna just, I'm gonna go with that feeling Yeah. And then yeah, well, it does Yeah. It takes time. It takes experience, for sure, yeah.
Collin 18:35
And it develops trust in ourselves. But I think importantly, it helps, it helps us empower ourselves. Many times, we can feel like we have no agency, we have no ability to change things or make a better decision. But what this is reminding you and us, if we don't choose to do this, is like, No, you trust your gut. That's your job right now. You trust your gut, and yeah, you may miss sometimes, but you're also going to not miss and you're going to save yourself a lot of headache later on, and it helps kind of regain some agency in our life too. Have you heard of time to pet? Doug from bad to the bone, pet care has this to
Speaker 1 19:12
say? Time to pet has made managing my team and clients so much easier. Our clients love the easy to use app and scheduling features, and our sitters love being able to have all of their information organized and easily accessible. My favorite feature is the instant messaging. By keeping conversations on time to pet, we are able to monitor our team and ensure nothing ever falls through the cracks. If you're looking for new
Collin 19:33
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Amy Munns 19:44
for sure. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to, like, if you were to say, like, why didn't you act on that? Like, I don't know. I just didn't feel it. And then, you know, and then it's like, it just and then you just have to trust that. Like, okay and go with it. Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Okay. So
Collin 20:01
what about number three? What's on your personal list there personal
Amy Munns 20:04
so I am a big fan of, have you ever heard of Gretchen Rubin? She's an author. She writes. She did about 10 or 15 years ago. She wrote, and this is what launched her it was called The Happiness Project. Yeah? She
Collin 20:17
heard that? Yeah, yeah. She did like
Amy Munns 20:21
12 different things throughout the year to just, she just wanted to find and define happiness in her life, not that she was unhappy, but I think she just wanted to really discover if she was happy, um, or how to share that, or what have you anyway. One of her things in it was that she came up, she did come up with 12 commandments, which is kind of the same thing, or 10 commandments. I don't remember what she did. Remember what she did, but one of her things was be Gretchen. And so I kind of stole that from her. And so now it's be Amy Right, Just be true to myself, be who I am, and not try to be somebody I'm not, which I think now, you know, if I think back like we didn't have social media, I didn't have social media my 30s, I didn't have, you know, that was, or it's just kind of coming around, I guess, um, now we live it. I mean, it's everywhere, and it's and we see what everyone else is doing, and we see and we compare ourselves so much more than we used to, and it's sometimes kind of hard to remember just who I am and what's important to me, and my values and my family, and what I want out of life, and what I want out of my company, you know, going on, you know, Facebook, if within within the pet sitter world, there's tons of little, not tons, but there's a few good, really good groups. You have a really good Facebook group, a lot of conversations and a lot of things to really can listen and hear what other companies are doing, and it could get kind of overwhelming or intimidating, like, oh, I only have 12 part time employees, and This company has 25 or this company has 45 or should I be doing more? Should I be should I be offering more services? Should I be offering, you know, what kind of, what kind of am I just the competition of it all. But the reality is, I'm really happy with my Well, I have 11 employees. I'm really happy with the size of our team, I can manage that. I can stay in touch with everybody. Personally, I the number of clients that I have, I could, I could, I don't mean this bad, but I could probably grow big in our area, if I were to just hit it hard. But I really like the size of the company that I am, that I like that I have a personal connection, that I talk with our clients, that I know that they're going to their son's wedding, or their granddaughter was just born, or maybe it was a funeral they're going away for. I mean, we we see, we see, um, Home Improvement. That's like, one of my favorite thing is when you walk into a house and you just see what they've done, like, oh my gosh, look what you've done in this place. It's like a whole new place, like, wow, um, but you get to really like, it's personal, and it's and it's connection, and that's what I like. So I just try to try to remember to be myself, be Amy. Don't, don't try to be somebody you're not just be and be true in yourself. Again, I'm almost, I'm in my 50s. I can, I can say with confidence who I am now. Like, you know, when you're young and you're and you're getting started and you're learning and you're experiencing all the different new experiences, it can get really overwhelming. So it kind of having some grounding and knowing who you are, I think, is really important,
Collin 23:38
absolutely. And I know you went right to social media. And I think that is, it's both a real it's a blessing to be able to have that connection with others. But man, that can turn into a curse. It's a just super quick, just one too many scrolls, and all of a sudden, you I find myself, and I I've been struggling with that, I think this year more than ever, of that comparison game, that thinking game of, wow, look at what they're doing. They're doing all of that stuff. I don't even do half of that. Oh my gosh. They did, what? What event did they put on? You're kidding me, what? Yeah. And then, personally, you know, it's looking at people and going there, how far in their career they took, what vacation to Aruba, they did, what this then, you know, What car did they just buy with us? That comparison game just ruins every day, if you let it. And to sit back and and I think you know this going be Amy, be Collin going, where am I now? And it's reminder too, to be to be present, to be thankful, content and happy with what I have right now, because that if, if I can't be happy here, right? Like, no amount of anything extra is going to add to that. And I have to just be very it's a constant, daily, hourly, minute, my reminder sometimes, yeah, just Yeah, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay,
Amy Munns 24:55
yeah, right. Or take a look at it and like, do I really like this part of this? You know, do I really. Like this, maybe I maybe I need to make some changes here. Maybe I need to make some adjustments. Maybe this isn't really who I want to be or who I what I want to do. And then it's important to evaluate that too, and see where I'm at, kind of in my life and my goals and my focus kind of thing.
Collin 25:16
No, I really love those. So how did you so you start, you said you started with the the personal side, and then you slowly trans, translated those into the business. Is that, right? You know, a couple years ago, yeah,
Amy Munns 25:28
during COVID, you know, when COVID hit, we were all dead and nothing. And I was, I wanted to, anyway, I would, you know, 2000 Well, that was 2020, so I was about 19 years old. Not me. The company was about 19 years old or so. I was just kind of looking to clean up my company. Kind of look at so I hired a coach to come in and just kind of take a look at my systems, kind of take a look at my just how things are set up and things like that. At that point, I think I was, I used time to pet that software, and I think I was two or three years in, so I kind of wanted to go through that process. Like, what does it look like when I onboard a new client? How does that look to somebody who's never done it before? And so she was a stranger. We went through the whole process, kind of thing, and then we looked at, kind of our employee side, and she helped me write an employee manual or a handbook, and in the beginning of it, she said, Oh, you need to put some core values down. So I just kind of defined some things that were really important to me that I think we've been already practicing and living but then just putting them down on paper to make sure that they're shared with everybody that was that kind of process or that practice that came into so now they're in my employee handbook. So every all my new employees see them, I'm going to share this with my employees, this broadcast, and I'm going to and they're all going to say, yeah, all my employees are like, Yes, I remember reading all that. Amy, thank you.
Collin 26:57
The quiz is coming. Heads up, you guys. But you know it does. And you mentioned of how the was kind of stuff that you were already doing. And I think truthfully, when we sit down to write these core values, if we've never written them down before, I think it doing a few exercise to kind of comb through how you make decisions, the outcomes that you want, how you want people to be treated, you do quickly find that you're already operating in these we're just clearly defining them, right? I think very rarely do we go, No, this is a brand new never before lived, conceived or thought of value in my company, and that's just because it's us too, right? It's us and how we want things to take place,
Amy Munns 27:45
right? Right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I was talking this kind of practicing with our conversation with my husband last night, and that came up. He was like, Well, how do you, how do you define this, or have you shared this with your team? And I think it's just that we just do right? This is how we live. These are, these are just our basics kind of thing, that this is just how we operate. But I do think having them written down and and maybe I need to be better about reminding myself and our team, like, hey, don't forget. This is what's important to us, and we already live in it, and this is, and this is why we've defined it this way,
Collin 28:22
and just to kind of keep, you know, keep on that, that track. Well, especially as as new things come up, I think that's what Megan and I have discovered of it's very easy to define a set of core values or principles under a certain set of certain circumstances, but then as things change, as you encounter new problems. All of a sudden, it's our it's we get the job of going, Okay, remember this value and how we, you know, to this situation, here's how it applies, and here's why we're doing this. We do to this brand new situation. The values didn't change, but this brand new situation came up, and it forces us to try and understand how we then apply that value, do that situation. And I'm sure, even after being in business for coming up on 25 years, right? Like you're constantly finding new things and going, huh? Like, what do we what do we do now? Right,
Amy Munns 29:12
right, right. Yeah, that's funny enough. My second value is open mindedness. Just, I'll just jump right in. Yeah, that's, that's my Yeah, just remaining open minded to challenges or new opportunities or new developments in technology or animal care, even just learning about them. Yeah. So being in business almost 25 years, I know I know a lot. There's I've I'm just gonna toot my own horn. I feel very comfortable around dogs. I am very I'm confident in the in my knowledge on how to take care of dog. But that doesn't mean I know everything, and things are and new things are being discovered or being tried. And worked into the new, you know, process, or new
Collin 30:04
ways that
Amy Munns 30:06
that we do things you know. So I'm not going to sit here and say I know everything and I'm done. I'm done learning. I That's not me and and then so like we attend. I me and my team and I, we attend training, we I go to all the conferences. There's a couple that I attend to every year even. And I mentioned those Facebook groups, you're right. They are a blessing. Boy, we've, I've learned so much from those groups and the people that are in those groups, just the different practices, not just animal care, but technology and, you know, other systems or what have you that are out there. So it's not just, yeah, not just animal stuff, it's the whole company wide, like open, open mindedness, that's that's
Collin 30:56
well, because it can get really tempting to just go, well, book closed. I'm done. I especially if we have a business that is operating well, and we have a team and things are kind of okay, and they're driving and we're making money, and we're kind of, you know, growing a little bit, it's really easy to kind of get into that mode of, well, guess I'm I'm done. I've figured this out right. See you later.
Amy Munns 31:20
Yeah. Or change your focus on something totally different, and then you kind of lose focus on, on, you know, our company at hand, or what have you kind of thing, right? And
Collin 31:28
instead going, Okay, again, this, this kind of be, be, be Amy, be Collin. Be, be me in this moment. Okay, here I am now, but I need to be open minded, because what is going to be tomorrow, right? And how do I prepare for that? How do I and so, yeah, I mean, I find myself on Facebook threads going, this doesn't apply to me at all, but I'm learning so much just by this discussion that's happening right now, and I may encounter it later, I don't know, but yeah,
Amy Munns 31:52
yeah. Or like, oh, how would I have handled that situation? Or, sometimes I'll do that, I'll take it to my team, and I'll say, hey, this was a discussion on a Facebook group. I just want to share what was said and what kind of things we were talking about. How would we have handled that differently? How can kind of that so it kind of makes you think that way too.
Collin 32:13
I love, I love that idea of taking and kind of doing a little bit of role playing with your team, of going, I hope we never encounter this situation like this. Let's be very but just just, you know, have a discussion, and I'm sure that helps you too. Amy, go, Okay, I thought they would respond, I, you know, thought they may have responded in XYZ way, but they're taking it down a completely different track, you know, that kind of helps you stay in touch that way too.
Amy Munns 32:35
Yeah, right. And that kind of touches base, like, What would our practices be in this situation? How would we have handled that? And is that, does that line up with how we really would, you know, how I feel that would be the best way to handle it, or not, I trust my team and empower them, but like, is that? Is that aligned with our values kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. Because
Collin 32:56
again, you know, we can't. It is a struggle. As you bring on team members, we want them to be. I think that was one of the first instincts when that you and you do that is to bring on you want little automatons to just be replicas of you in the field, doing everything that you did exactly the how you did, and, quote, unquote, perfectly. Very quickly we realized that's never going to happen, and that's okay, right? Yeah. And so we then start to embrace that individuality, but we have to have seated in a foundation of something of common values and interest, and those are what we're talking about here, and going, Okay, how in alignment are, is everybody with these and and do we get a predictable and kind of consistent response from everybody once we put them in different situations? And that's that is an ongoing, never ending process, for sure, right?
Amy Munns 33:40
Right? Exactly. Yeah, I think, yeah. I, I tell my team all the time like, Oh, I've never had, like, for example, we just met these two pulley a pulley dogs, P, U, L, I have you ever taken care
Collin 33:55
of one of those? We have not had that opportunity. No, not either. They're
Amy Munns 33:58
hurt Hungarian herding dogs, and they're so cute. They're about 25 pounds. They're the ones with the dread locks that look like big mops, yes, okay, yeah. Oh my gosh. They're adorable. And we, after 24 years, we just met them, and we just met What, like two of them, and, um, We've never taken care of this breed before. They're not very common, and they're not very she said they weren't very common in the States, but they're definitely not common here in Washington. Um, Washington. I've never seen them out in the wild or what, you know what I mean, like, what other people have never taken care of one. So it's just really fun. So I shared that with my team member who's going to be taking care of them. Sadly, I just got to meet them. She gets to take care of them, right? But I'm like, hey, this a first for us, this is new to our portfolio. We've never taken care of these dogs, these types of dogs, before, so, you know, and that's, that's just so I share that like that excitement too. That's kind of fun. Like, Oh hey, this is, this is new. We're going to learn something new here today. Yeah,
Collin 34:53
I love that. Yeah. We had that happen with a client who reached out about a mini pot belly pig. Oh, yeah. In there. House, right? And use the they had a litter box and everything. Then it was, I mean, we had our first one. It was four or five years ago, I mean, and we had never cared for one before. And it was like, this is exciting. Everybody gather around, okay, we're going to be learning. We're going to be diving into this, learning about the care plans, how we're going to get this. And it did cause quite a bit of an excitement amongst the team about this really fun opportunity. And I think what I took from that was a reminder to try and find those opportunities in everything we do every day of every day's new. Every time we meet that dog, it's a new day, right? We're gonna be dealing with new histories and new things that happened overnight and all sorts of stuff and that to try and bring that excitement and that open that, you said, open mindedness, like we have to bring that to every situation. That's an intentional choice that we have to bring every time that we show up,
Amy Munns 35:55
right, right, right? And like I've said this, and I say this a lot, like, you can have. You can have a room for full of yellow labs. And I love yellow labs. They're labs. I mean, there is there anything wrong with the lab? They're just, they're perfect. I love them. But you can have a room full of yellow labs, and you will have a room full of different personalities and different needs and different, you know, whatever, just because, you know, one dog, or just because I've been doing this for 24 years, like I haven't met every yellow lab out there that, and maybe someday I will, but I you know, just like every opportunity is new and every opportunity is different, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we
Collin 36:41
jump to number two. Number let's go back to number one here for you, for your list.
Amy Munns 36:46
And I don't know if there's like ranking, it's just kind of how I have them listed, sure, but yeah, our first one is honest and reliability. Honesty and reliability. That's our, that's our and we have that everywhere. We have that all over our social media, I mean, and our website and our even our business cards. When I meet new clients, that's on there. It's in our service agreement. We talk about that with my team. We do what we're told. We're do what we are hired to do with honesty. We're going to do it, and we're reliable. We if we say we're going to take care with we commit to your job or your request, we're going to do it. And if that means somebody else has to kick in, if somebody gets sick, or somebody else, you know, what have you, we're going to do it. That doesn't mean that we're 100% available all the time. Sometimes it turns out that, you know, I have two of my employees on vacation at the same time and in that area of town, and we're just not available, you know? And that happens. It happens rarely, and we try not to make that happen or let that happen, but it does happen. So it's not that we're 100% a guarantee that we're always going to be available, but if we say we're going to do it, if we if we confirm commit to that we're doing it, we'll make it work. I mean, that's one thing I'm really proud of. We've we do what we say and then honesty too. We just we we're there. We're there for the time that you hire us. If you hire us, we have to to visit links either an hour or half hour. If you hire us for a half hour, we're going to be there. We're not going to cut it short. Or if we're there for an hour, and we're taking care of a shy cat and she doesn't come out, we're still going to be there for that whole hour and no and that cat's going to know that we're there calmly waiting for her to come out when she's ready. Yeah, that's
Collin 38:35
such a big thing. You mentioned the that we're going to show up right? Like it was the week in between. It was a week after Thanksgiving, and we still had a ton of vacation clients, and we had two of our employees come down with, like, the stomach bug, and they were, I mean, they were just laid out. Could not and was it fun getting that taken care of? Absolutely not right, but, and did we have to turn away other client requests that we could have taken on, yes, but we were committed to this, and we had to do what we had to do to get those done, and everybody understood, and everybody was okay and taken care of, but it was that reminder of Okay. I see a lot of people say reliability is important to me. Do you really understand what that means? Right? When push comes to shove, right? That that's where we start going. Okay, do you you promise them reliability? Are you going to follow through with that? And that's really where you start to see a lot of differences in really, what these values mean to people and what they don't mean to people exactly.
Amy Munns 39:35
Yeah. I mean, there's been times I've I've had to cancel a vacation plan or a weekend plan, or dinner plans, what have you, because some things come up. Luckily, we don't have a lot of that. We my team's amazing. And I'm not just saying that because I'm hoping they're listening, but I really I say that to him all the time. I just they're so amazing. They make my job easy and but. Things come up. You never know. You know, I had somebody could she was in a minor car accident and we needed coverage. We, you know, that kind of thing. Some people do get sick and or people, yeah, I was gonna say that they go on vacation, but that's not that's different. We planned for those things. But yeah, yeah. So if that happens, then we have the other team, or me or what have you that we fill in. We are not going to leave. We're not going to just say, oh, sorry so and so sick. We're out and you're in. You know, Hawaii on vacation. Yeah, we're still going to take care of your dog for you or your cat. Yeah,
Collin 40:38
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Amy Munns 42:10
yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a situation over the summer where we we had to stop servicing one a taking care of a dog who kept, she's a Border Collie, kind of a little nervous, and she was big separation anxiety. So when her parents would leave, she was, she was sad. She stayed outside in an enclosed pin. Now that it's, it's safe, it was, and we're here in Washington, we don't have extreme weather. So it was, it's always, it's always pretty mild, temperate our temperatures out here. But she was nervous, and she kept digging out and escaping. And this is where she would stay, like when her parents would go to the store or run an errand or what have you. So this was the norm, but she she escaped three times, and we just said, Nope, we will finish this job, but we can't do this anymore. And honestly, we aren't the best thing for them. For her, she needs somebody there longer, or somebody there to spend the night with her and just be with her longer the visits that for so in that situation, I had to be honest, and it was hard. It was a hard blow. Like, I don't ever like to say no, or I don't like to say that we are not the right fit for you. But I didn't want to just say, Oh, the next time she had a question in a request, oh, I didn't want to skirt around it and say, Oh, we're booked or this, yeah, what have you I needed to tell her honestly why we couldn't take care of her dog anymore. Yeah, and it's hard. It was hard, yeah,
Collin 43:40
we had a situation come up where we did a meet and greet, and then they didn't use us for many, many, many months later. And then when they did request, you know, we showed up, and the house had actually turned into a hoarding situation, and it was where we went. Okay, well, we committed to this for this week, and we're going to be here, but I do have to tell this the owner why we can't take them on anymore. And that was not fun. I really struggled. That one was, I think, one of the hardest ones we've had to do because trying to say it without judgment and with love and compassion and some in a level of understanding, but also being firm and saying we can't move forward with this. This is where this is not okay for us to be here. And that really, I mean, I we sat on that for a couple days later, after we got finished, and just had to go. It's the kind honest thing to do, and we've got to send this for ourselves, the team and the client too, right,
Amy Munns 44:35
right, right? And it's hard. It's yeah, those are the hard times to Yeah, yeah, for sure. Alright,
Collin 44:41
so you've talked about honesty and reliability, open mindedness. What's the next one? Amy, so
Amy Munns 44:48
our last core value is passion and fun is that we, we this is our passion, all of it, everybody on our team are, you know. The employees we we love animals. That's what has brought us here. And I sometimes will have team gatherings and stuff, and I might have some team members that are shyer or not as outgoing as others. And I always just say, just come and be with everything, if anything, we all have our love of animals in common. Like, that's like, and it's hard, right? Because our team doesn't know each other until they get to know each other, but they don't work together side by side, like in a normal office setting or what have you. So it's, that's what I always say, like, that's our, yeah, the animals is, that's our deep love, and that's our deep passion, and then just general fun. I know that sometimes it could it's a job. It is a job, and there's not it's not always great. It rains out here all the time. Now, we don't have to deal too much with the snow and ice or the super hot temperatures, but I'll tell you, eight months out of the year it's dark and wet out here, just being wet, just gets old. You know, we, we, you know, you pick up poop that you pick up poop, that's part of the job. It's not always the best part of it, but the reality is, and I remind myself this all the time, is that we get to play with dogs and cats all day long. And sometimes you'll hear like people think all we do is play with dogs and cats all day long. The thing is, we do play with dogs and cats all day long.
Collin 46:19
It's technically true,
Amy Munns 46:24
not always fun, and yeah, we have to work on weekends, and we have to work on the holidays, and we don't have to pick up poop. And sometimes they throw up and sometimes and sometimes they die or they move away, and that's heartbreaking, but they're dogs and cats like we should be having fun and really being grateful and embracing that, like, let's have fun with this. Yeah,
Collin 46:45
it there's and there's some things that are very can be very invigorating about that fun aspect. I one of the things I've really grown to enjoy over the past couple years as we have grown our team, is when I'm training people, and I get to see that level of excitement that they have, and it's like something unlocks in them, of like they have found their thing, and they've realized what this is. And it's been a reminder to me, of, even though I've been in this for, you know, coming up on 13 years, not quite 25 but like I've I still have to remind myself of, like, I need to bring that each visit. Because A, it's true, I do get to play with dogs and cats all day, and B, like, that's, that's what the pets deserve. Like, they don't need me showing up, kind of slopping in, being like, okay, whatever. I'm going to be over here and then ignoring them or not bringing that to it, because then I'm not doing a good service to the pet or the owner. Yeah,
Amy Munns 47:42
that's a great that's a great reminder too, right? Yeah, like they deserve that. That's yeah one. That's why we're hired to do but also the dogs and cat most cats want that. They they want us to be there. They want us to, yeah, to be interacting with them and and, and playing and and what have you with them? Yeah, well, and
Collin 48:04
I love this, this core value, especially in the context of what you started off talking about when you have that conversation with your husband, and he said, you know, this isn't gonna be some, some high school, you know, part time gig thing. And you said, No professionalism. So Amy, how have you walked that line and balanced the level of professionalism versus fun, and how do you work those into every day?
Amy Munns 48:28
For sure, I would say fun doesn't mean casual or lazy or non committed, I don't know. I'll think of other words that you the way we are professional is that we have, we have professional forms. We have, you know, we have our systems lined up. We have a process when we onboard new, you know, new clients. We we share our service agreement with them. Then we have them enroll into our software. Then we go and meet them. And then every visit gets a report, gets a, you know, a professionally, casually but nicely, well written report on what was done during that time. Hey, you know, fluffy whatever. We went for our walk today. It was super sunny. We saw flowers along the way, and he smelled some flat, you know, he ate a little bit of grass, and he's doing great. We had a great day. Pictures all the time. We're professional in that we do. We're consistent in those, those standards. We always do all those things. We send invoices on a timely manner. We offer different ways to accept payments. And then the bonus is we do get to have the fun we get to have. We to enjoy our time with them, and we get to and I, I give my team a lot of I empower them a lot, and just kind of let them be themselves. And I. Bring their personalities to their care. So, like, when they're writing their updates and stuff, it's so fun to for on my side to read what they're writing. Like, we have a couple of them, a couple of people on my team who notice flowers on their walks all the time, and they'll just say, Oh, this is blooming. And she knows flowers. I can't even name I'm like, this flower. It's, there's a yellow one, you know? Yeah, the yellow flowers are up today, yeah. And I like to garden, but I'm not good at that. But she'll take pictures along the way, and she'll kind of give updates, you know, we always seem to give lots of weather reports, you know, oh, the sun, especially if the sun's shining out here, because the sun doesn't always shine out here. No, the sun shining right now, or it was a beautiful sunny day, or look at our shadows, kind of thing. And I let, I not let, but I empower my team to feel comfortable, to bring their personalities to that kind of situation, and let their, let their that their enjoyment of the job, shine through in that
Collin 51:04
no because we're right, we have to. We've been learning this lesson a lot. We have people who have different writing styles and abilities, and they focus on different things. And at first, when we were hiring, it's very jarring, because it was like, that's not how I would write my update out. Why didn't you mention this thing? And what we learned is that our clients love the diversity of reports that they get from our team. Absolutely adore it and they and it adds a variety to the client's life too. And it's not, you know, because that's at the end of the day, who's getting this the dog isn't reading our report, so they don't care. But the person, they get three, four different reports every day about how things are going sometimes, and it's like, that's enjoyable for them. And I'm not sitting over my team's shoulder going, don't write that. No, you need to write it in this way that kind of squelches the fun out of what they get to do, in talking about what the, what the great experience that they just had?
Amy Munns 52:03
Yeah, 100% Absolutely. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to edit them, like, or or proofread them. I don't want to get into that. I haven't ever, luckily, I haven't ever had a situation where I've had to, like, Oh, that's a little off. Now this is not quite what we're gonna. Haven't ever had that. It seems like the everybody on my team just kind of gets it and knows what to say. I think one of the best compliments, or fun, funnest, the best thing that I get is when clients will say, I'm on vacation, and everybody in my family can't wait for the updates to see what's happening back home with the dog. You know, I think that's just so awesome. And so they're looking so sometimes, you know, when I first started this, we had paper, I would have, like, a memo paper, and just write a little report after every visit. So then at the end, when people came home, they just had, like, a log of everything I did each day. But then as texting came around, and now software, then I started doing updates via the phone and that kind of thing. So it's really kind of fun to see how that's, like, evolved into the into this. And for a little bit, I used to think, Gosh, I hope I'm not, you know, for three to four visits a day, sometimes we're visiting animals when they're on vacation. Like, are we bothering them too much? Are they, you know, do they want that many updates? And we seem to always yes, they do. They enjoy them. Yeah,
Speaker 2 53:24
they love the pictures. They love the updates. And yeah, no,
Collin 53:29
no, it is. It is a good reminder that that is something we get to do. And again, that's a word that I have to remind myself of. I get to report on this, and I get to do this, and then try and encourage our team to do that and to to show that personality, because that's part of the fun that we have and our clients get on their end, too. Right, right, yeah. In closing, here, Amy, have you maybe talked to us about a challenge that you had to in facing or standing up for one of your core values in through, through your business, and sticking to it and holding to it for for whatever reason.
Amy Munns 54:05
Yeah, I think it would probably be more like it would you kind of touch into more of my personal stuff. I would probably bring up, like a COVID situation or COVID timing. I just remember when you know, COVID first hit and they we got shut down out here. I know that different areas of the country got shut down at different levels or what have you, but we were totally shut down, like kids came home from school, and they were at school for almost a year. We did online schools so and I just remember it was like two or three days worth of just cancel, cancel, cancel, just phone calls and emails, just coming in, coming in. And my cousin called me, and we were just, she's in Texas, and we were just talking, and I just broke down. I thought, what is happening? You know? What is happening? And so just talking with other friends. About, like, gosh, my, my company's really taken a hit during all this. And so I got a lot of suggestions from other people about what, what I could do during this time. And it was like, you know, maybe you could offer taxi service or pick up, pick up dog food from people when they're, you know, they don't want to go out or what have you. And, and there were a lot of or sell gift certificates. I just, you know, maybe you could sell for future service kind of thing, kind of thing. And though the suggestions were really good, they didn't, I wasn't comfortable with them. So it was sort of that, keep it simple, and it's that whole thing, trust my gut, be Amy like I just none of those suggestions were resonating with what I how I wanted to deal with the that situation. So I just, I think, just like remembering, instead of trying to force it and trying to go with those suggestions and try to force it and make those work, I just said, No, those are all great ideas. I think we're going to do this instead. So what we ended up doing was we did, like, I just kind of reached out, and we did a big pet food drive where I just contacted all my clients and said, Hey, we're going to be collecting pet food. If you want to buy some, leave it on your front porch, and we'll swing by and we'll take it to the different food banks. We have, like, three food banks in our area. We service a big County, so in the different areas, and then we just stopped them off that, that and that kind of helped me focus and get through that time. I mean, it didn't help, it didn't bring me money, and it didn't help anything like that, but it just kind of helped me focus. So I guess just like, you know, I was, I was kind of being suggested ideas on what to do, and I just didn't, I just didn't feel them. It just didn't feel like me, or didn't feel like something I wanted, how I wanted to handle the situation. Well, I think just being true to myself, I was able to to hone in on, really, what, how I wanted to process my own, you know, our own time through that. Well,
Collin 56:55
that's a good that's a good reminder, too, of the fact that many of these boundaries attempt to get pushed by people with the best of intentions, for sure, well meaning of individuals or other businesses or clients or staff, like they have the best intentions to offer something. And this kind of thing is going just be me. Means I don't have to pick up anything that you're putting down, and I'm going to be okay with that, right,
Amy Munns 57:23
right, exactly, yes, yes. That's great. Yeah. I love how you said that. Yeah. That's yeah, exactly yeah. And they did, and their intentions were good. I mean, they were just they, I mean, we, you know, everybody kicked in, and everybody was trying to offer support and help for everybody, and how, during that COVID time, that was so weird and awful. So yeah, that it was that 100% that what they were suggesting we're good in ideas. I'm not taking away from that.
Collin 57:49
Yeah, yeah. It's just not, not for me, right? And that's part of that's part of our our learning experience. As we develop these core values for both our personal and our business life, of we get to define them. As you've said, it's beginning of sometimes that's not important to me anymore, or sometimes I'm adapting this to a new phase of life, or sometimes I'm rephrasing this or learning how it applies in these situations. And that's just part of this continual process. You even said, this is an organic list. It's never static. And because I'm never static, and the world never is either. So I'm always learning how these things come up. And that's that should be very freeing to us. I feel like it should be very feeling and open to know that I'm not locked I don't have to make a decision now and then live with it for the next 80 years, like, No, right? Yeah, exactly.
Amy Munns 58:35
I'll remember when I was 22 and I made that decision, and now I'm 65 and I can't go back on it. Yeah, no,
Collin 58:45
I even wrote them down on a piece of paper and everything. What do you
Speaker 2 58:49
mean? It's practically just now, but I'm holding true to that.
Collin 58:55
Well, Amy, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today, sharing with us the values and that guide you and your business and encouraging us to find those for us, and some of the challenges that you face in working through those and that that's constantly a balance of knowing what to do and how to follow those in the right way. I know that this is a pretty big topic, and so people are interested in following you or reaching out to you and picking your brain and getting connected about these. How best can they do that? Oh, I would love
Amy Munns 59:21
that. That would be awesome. I I'd love to talk about this. Thank you again for having me. You are so easy to talk to. I wish we were in the same room. I could give you a hug after we're all doing this.
59:34
Yeah, to contact. So my
Amy Munns 59:37
my website is the company name, leash for lease. That's the number four. So L E, A S H, the number 4l, E, A S e.com, email is the same leash, for lease@gmail.com, and then we're on socials. We're on Instagram and Facebook, at least, for lease, professional pet care,
Collin 59:56
cool. Well, I'll have all those links in the show notes and on the website. So people can get connected with you, Amy and following along. This has been I've just, I've just absolutely loved this conversation. I'm so thankful for you coming on the show today. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah,
Amy Munns 1:00:08
thank you. It's been a great time. Yeah, I've had a great time, too. Thank you. I loved
Collin 1:00:12
when Amy said that fun doesn't mean casual or lazy. It's about embracing the joy in what we do while staying true to our professional standards. This is what we get to walk through and how we present ourselves to our clients. We get to have fun. This is the most fun job in the entire world, and it brings us so much joy. Is every little detail, quote, unquote, fun? No, there are tough times. There are certainly hard times. There are difficult decisions and conversations that we have to have, but boy, does it bring us joy to serve others and help pets. That's what we put at the center of everything that we do, every SOP, policy, hire, new direction, branding, messaging, all of that links back to joy when we give people joy, how special that truly is, especially when it's ourselves. We want to thank today's sponsors, time to pet and pet perennials for making the show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
1:01:32
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