584: Show Up and Stand Out: Visibility and Value for Pet Businesses
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Can showing up at local events truly set our pet businesses apart? We discuss our experiences speaking at a Home and Garden show, highlighting how community visibility builds trust and credibility among pet parents. We also reflect on powerful lessons learned from our son’s entrepreneurship bake sale, emphasizing the importance of confidently pricing premium services. Practical insights are shared about identifying speaking opportunities to boost our brand’s visibility. Ultimately, this episode explores why delivering value first can transform our pet businesses into trusted community leaders.
Main Topics:
Importance of Community Visibility
Confident Premium Pricing
Public Speaking Opportunities
Delivering Unique Service Value
Navigating Economic Uncertainty
Main takeaway: “Being visible in the community makes you a known entity—and people trust who they know.”
Visibility isn’t just about marketing your services; it’s about building real relationships with the people around you. When you’re present at local events, speak to groups, or offer genuine help and advice, your community gets to know the person behind the brand. And when pet parents know and trust you, they’re confident in choosing you for their pet’s care. How are you showing up in your community this month?
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitting, community involvement, brand awareness, dog training, visibility, value, pricing strategy, customer service, entrepreneurship, public speaking, nonprofit organizations, Chamber of Commerce, pet care insurance, economic uncertainty, client experience
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We appreciate you joining us today, and would also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and dog co launch each week. We highlight our Patreon executive producers who give back financially every month. They are Adriana Amber, Barbie, Beck Erica, Jan and Janie, Jenny And Julie, Katherine and Keith Liz, Laurie Lucy, Sarah Savannah, Scott Teresa and Yvonne. Thank you for going on this journey with us. Thank you for finding value in the almost 600 episodes now, and we hope to continue producing many more. If you are listening and love the show. Would like to give back you can go to pet sitter. Confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can this
Collin 00:45
week, we want to talk about two recent experiences that we had. The first one was actually going and presenting at a home and garden show in our service area. And the second was actually some takeaways and lessons from our son's bake sale for his entrepreneurship class. But really, the really common thread here are two things. It's all about visibility and value, right? Our recent experiences really reminded us of just how important it is to show up in your community and to stand confidently in your pricing and what you're actually providing people.
Meghan 01:16
So a few months ago, we were asked by a member of our community who puts on the Home and Garden Show to come and give a talk about dog training tips. And at first, we were a little off put by this, because we are not dog trainers, and sure, we have this knowledge and expertise that we do meeting and dealing with hundreds and 1000s of dogs over the past 13 years we've been doing this. But she really wanted us to talk about it, because she had a neighbor who let her dogs outside and they just basically bark all day, and she was getting really irritated by this, so we figured this presentation would be a good way to talk about adjustments for dogs in the home, whether it's a new adjustment or some type of training that you're trying to
Collin 01:54
work on well, really making sure that all the basic needs of a dog are met. That many people go straight to training, thinking it will solve a problem, when really what they need to do is think about environmental factors. Or does the dog getting enough enrichment or physical exercise? How is its food? What balance it is? Does it understand its routine? What are you doing throughout the day? Right? Doing all of this stuff before you get to the training? And how much of behavioral concerns or things going on can be addressed just by those foundations. Was really helping people set up for success by integrating a dog into their life, whether it is a new dog or whether they just need to change routines in their own life. And I really appreciated the ability to share about this. Cinnamon got to be involved in our presentation, which was her first public debut with our company. So that was a lot of fun but, but really just sharing tips that we have picked up, like you said, Megan, that we've picked up over the years for how do we manage a dog while we are working with them on somebody's on vacation? A lot of those same things, you know, homemade snuffle mats, or going on snifaris, or what a walk should look like, and how to loosely walk your dog, these tips and tricks that we can give to people that, from our own experience, really was the goal of helping improve their life. And I think the biggest takeaway that we got was people really loved the information around homemade enrichment toys, whether that's using a towel or paper towels or things like that, helping them go hey, you don't have to go out and spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on puzzles and things. Here are things that you can make right at home.
Meghan 03:25
And for us, it wasn't necessarily about getting clients. So whenever you go to speak at a presentation, you are asked or you offer, think about why you are doing this. For us, it wasn't to get hundreds of clients. We knew that while we are a home based service, there are people going to be there for roofs or for landscapers or internet providers. And so while we did feel like it was a little bit of a mismatch, we knew that this was going to be beneficial because it was going to highlight our brand, our expertise. We were going to be able to share this on social media as another way of we do know what we're talking about. We sure we run this company that plays with puppies and kitties all day. But at the on the other side of it, this is a brand building exercise,
Collin 04:05
yeah, yeah, that brand awareness is huge for us. A big initiative that we're working on is just making sure that we are seen in the community, and being involved in the community and doing things for that, right? So even if this, we weren't talking about our dog walking, we weren't talking about our pet sitting, we weren't talking about these things. We were just showing up and sharing information and knowledge going we are here to be a part of this. And it was reminded every time that we were to go give a talk, the announcer would come over this the PA system and say, you know, come over to the stands to hear presentation on dog training and dog tips, tips for your family. And it was really nice. It was really good to be able to be seen in that context, because that's not something that we have done before as a business. So
Meghan 04:49
it really was something new for us, something outside of our comfort zone. We have given presentations at Chamber of Commerce events or hosted our own events, and we're able to talk about our services there. But this was something different. For us, where we had to craft a different presentation, a different spiel, than we typically do,
Collin 05:04
but in the end, it was something to help us give credibility to ourselves and our business. We weren't there just with a booth handing out stuff. We didn't even have a booth. We were just there to give this presentation and really show up to be a speaker and to share information. Really helped we feel like was something that could elevate us in our business and in the eyes of our community, of what can we really do? Do we really know what we're talking about? Well, here we are talking about something that has nothing really to do with our business or what we do. It's just information that we have that we're sharing. And we want people to know. If
Meghan 05:36
you are an introvert like me, it can be really hard to give presentations, so if you are thinking about speaking at a conference, a pet sitting conference, or speaking at a local Chamber of Commerce event, maybe start with something small, maybe just your friends and family. You give the presentation in front of them, and then go and speak at something that's not in your niche, not in the pet sitting or dog walking world, and something where you're not necessarily pitching your services, it can help you feel comfortable just talking at all in front of people, which is nerve wracking if there's more than four people in the room, think about home and garden shows or city expos or local pet events. If they have a sponsorship that includes some stage time, you may consider that rescue organizations and events or fundraisers for them. Think also about vet clinics. If there's a lunch and learn that you could put on. I know we're tangentially related to the vet industry, but a lot of times they don't know the intricacies of what we do and how it actually can be a professional thing that we do as a career. You may also consider public libraries or schools for kid friendly animal talks. I know Collin has brought his tarantula in a few times to various schools to talk about how they are okay and to not necessarily have this big fear over them, but you handle them with respect, and you are able to make a relationship with them well. And
Collin 06:53
our Public Library has kind of an ongoing series of education, whether it is around finances or retirement or things like that. So reach out to your library and see if you could give some pet friendly tips, whether that's people in apartments, or whether that is loosely walking, or whatever problems you want to help people solve. Bring a topic to them. A lot of towns now have local podcasts or online community groups where they'll go live and give presentations. See if you can get on those and just share your experiences again, you're not really pitching your services. You're showing up with value for people. You're trying to help people with where they are based off of your own experiences. There's a
Meghan 07:29
lot of nonprofit organizations as well that would love tips for pet parents. There's the Rotary Club, the moose, the elk, the kiwanas, the list goes on. There's a ton of them out there. And then also Chamber of Commerce events. If you are part of one, check that out. We were asked to do this event, but that might not always be the case. You may have to go and pitch yourself, but offer value. Don't just say hey, I'm a dog walking company, and I want to talk about how we give the best dog walks ever. Well, probably not. A ton of people, especially nonprofit organizations, are going to really be okay with that. They want you to provide value. So reach out with two to three topic ideas that you can speak on. It doesn't have to be crocheting and knitting, but something obviously pet related. Start small, even five to 10 minutes of a talk at a local meetup really builds that confidence, that experience, that I can do this. This was very scary the first time, but it's going to get easier as you do it well. And
Collin 08:25
what's important on that is start small and really do build from there. Because let's say you do want to sponsor your local chamber breakfast. Well, that's a lot of money you're going to be investing. And you're going to be speaking into really your core audience there, your target audience that's really dialed in there. So you want to make the most of that practice by starting off small, going and talking to your local Rotary or the moose or the elk or your library, start here, so that by the time you get more confident and you can go to those big events, you're actually more well versed and more practiced.
Meghan 08:54
You may also consider partnering with another business for a co hosted event or a co hosted presentation. If you want to approach the Home and Garden Show and say, hey, I want to partner with a dog trainer, and we both want to come in and talk about x, y, z, it may boost that level of credibility if that other person is well known, or just the fact that there's two businesses wanting to come together and provide that much more value. Ultimately, though, visibility really matters for us as dog walkers and pet sitters, because it builds trust with pet parents. The more they see are phased out there. They more the more that they see that we are involved in the community. We're invested in it. We want to give back and we want to help other pet parents thrive. They know that we are the real deal. They can trust us.
Collin 09:35
Yeah, you really become a known entity, and it's easy to remember you the next time they think about you because they saw you at an event, or they start seeing you around. And really, what it's doing is it's putting a face to your company. It's going, Oh, that person is the the dog person, or that person is the cat person, or that person I saw the person talk about this. You become recognizable in the community, and when in an area as a service that requires. So much trust. Letting a stranger into their home, being known and understood is one of the best is really essential to what we do. Well, even
Meghan 10:08
if you have a team, they know the owner of the company. If you are the owner and you are going out and doing these presentations and becoming the expert in other people's eyes, they will know like and trust you and say, oh, okay, I know like and trust the owner of the owner of the company, so I trust that they're going to make good decisions when employing other people. Yeah, well, and that
Collin 10:25
trust really starts by helping them before they need to. This is why it's so important to show up with value and give value to people. If you can help them before any money has been exchanged. That builds trust that. But when they do pay you for a service that you're going to do it, because if you did something for free in that way, again, this can go way off the rails. But if we're just saying, I'm can give you some information and some tips and be a guide to you through this problem and help you in your specific way, as opposed to just being an infomercial or an ad. This really helps them go, okay, they helped me understand loose lead walking. So when I need help, the next time I need to go to these people, because they know what they're talking about, you really do become a go to resource in your community. Word
Meghan 11:08
of mouth really does spread faster when you are seen as a leader. So being out there leads to unexpected opportunities, or it may like referrals and partnerships and press and getting in the local newspaper or magazines. There isn't really a downside to doing these types of things.
Collin 11:23
Yeah, you see that snowball effect of, well, because you went to this event and you spoke for five minutes. Now, people know that you're the kind of person who will go and speak and do this kind of thing, so the next time there's a need or another opportunity, you're going to get reached out to, if you're if your local newspaper or if your local news station needs help and understanding, if there's a connection of somebody who saw you at an event or presenting or helping people, your name's gonna get floated to the surface faster than other people, because you're known. Again, the more that we can be visible, the more that we are known for our niche. Means that we can help people, and actually, then we gain business from that. On the very on the on the back end of this,
Meghan 12:02
something that will make your life easier is our friends at pet sitters associates, all professionals should have specific pet business insurance. So as a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at petsit llc.com and as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's petsit llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. So that home and garden experience reminded us of the importance of community connection, but it also got us thinking about how we present and price our services. Because, funny enough, our son's bake sale taught us a big lesson about that. So he's seven, he's in an entrepreneur class at our homeschool Co Op each week, and he's taking an entrepreneurship class because he doesn't get enough of that at home, right? No, we just we thought it would be a good experience for him. But his class assignment was to choose something to sell. The goal was to have a bake sale. You could choose whatever you wanted. So he was in charge of planning it, pricing it, preparing it. And he really took the lead. He was mixing all the things in there to make the cookies, stirring it, baking them, cleaning up. And while I was there for the first batch of cookies to make sure he didn't add in four pounds of salt and added the one and a half teaspoons that it needed. He really drove the rest of
Collin 13:28
it. And by the third batch, was completely doing everything on his own with minimal oversight. Even helped clean up. And then we had a poster board that we had to put together to help advertise, because we were going to be at a bake sale with a table and have a poster to explain what he was selling, and he had to be ready to exchange the money, you know, understand the pricing everything. And that's really where we started to circle and have some good discussions. Because when we started talking about pricing and what he was doing, what he was going to sell these for, when we showed up at the actual bake sale, somebody mentioned kind of offhand of like, oh man, those prices are a little bit high for this, aren't they? And
Meghan 14:04
we chuckled to each other, because we're like, of course, they're premium. Yes, premium cookies, premium pet care. Yes,
Collin 14:11
right? We're kind of premium or bust people over over a year. But what was interesting is that most of the students actually sold more of their individual items. They sold more of them, but I guarantee you that, because of their prices, they sold way more, but they didn't a make nearly as much, or B, cover their expenses that they had in order to make them in the first place. So our son, while he sold fewer of the cookies, the ones that he did covered way more of the costs, and he walked away with a lot more money than had he sold them at the prices that I think a lot of other people were expecting. And it was a great reminder about the things about value and margin and really standing out as a business with our services.
Meghan 14:57
While there were other kids that sold cookies, there were. Chocolate Chip Cookies, like our sons, but chicken chocolate chip cookies. There were other cookies there for roughly the same size. They were not with premium ingredients or a little bit of pizzazz. You know, we think about the 30 minute dog walk. Lots of companies offer 30 minute dog walk or 30 minute pet sitting. But what are you doing to stand out? What pizzazz Are you adding that isn't like anybody else, right? Our cost
Collin 15:23
is really it's not just a factor of the cost to do a service and the time taken to do it. It is things like, what is your expertise? What is your brand positioning here? What's the quality of the experience, and not just the experience. This is where, where we can often get focused as a business is the experience of the dog. I'm going to focus all in on the dog walk itself, and it's going to be a really enriching thing, and it's going to be fantastic. It's going to be the best ever. However, what's the customer service like on the other side? Well, because
Meghan 15:54
unfortunately, the dog can't talk for him or herself. So if they could, they would say, Wow, that was the best thing ever, but it really is all about the client experience. And yes, we can have the dog sniffing every blade of grass, but they can't report that to the client. We do,
Collin 16:09
right? Yeah. So what's it like to book that walk? What's it like on the back end to pay for it or to get the report and the update? What's What's the entire experience like for that person with your company, that is really an X factor for a lot of companies that either they have no idea or they focus on it exclusively, and it can really help a boost. And that's where people understand the value of that. Meg and I have run into that when we've had, you know, we've used different software programs in the past for various things, and one thing that I've really come and honed in on is I need to make sure that whoever we use in whatever capacity has amazing customer service on the back end. Who can ask? I can ask questions and get a really quick reply consistently, because when something doesn't work or when something's broken, we need it to be solved now.
Meghan 16:56
So pricing is more than just the cost and time it may takes to make something or do something. People often undervalue their emotional labor, the admin time, the availability, the route planning, when you add up your total revenue and divide it by the number of hours that you work on a typical week, you can see that, wow, I should be paying myself a lot more than I do, because what I do is very valuable to my company.
Collin 17:18
Yeah, watching our son bake cookies for several hours over the course of two days, when the scrubbing of pots and pans and the careful measurement that went into this and the mixing and the stirring and the monitoring and the writing, all of this stuff, was like, oh, man, that's like watching me or Megan run things in our business that people have they don't experience that the amount of time and effort it took for him to show up at his bake sale, to just stand there and have people buy, it was immense. And just like us, the amount of time it takes to get prepared, study, review, Route, plan, to just show up for the just showing up takes a lot of back end work that people have no idea, and we undercut and undervalue ourselves on our admin side most of the time. Yeah,
Meghan 18:01
the cookies that he made were homemade. They were vegan. They were beautifully packaged. They he had this nice board that was very eye catching and attractive and made you go, Oh, what's this thing over here? All of this really justified a higher price. It's just like when you have the insurance and the bonding and the certifications and you go to the conferences for continuing education and and, and it goes a long way to justifying the higher price. Healthy pricing does equal a healthy business, because under charging leads to burnout and resentment. One of the girls there had 100 little cookies, little thumbprint cookies, and she was charging 25 cents a piece. Well, she probably put a lot of time and elbow grease into making those cookies for just a little bit of profit back. And
Collin 18:43
if that was her full time thing where she was having to continually make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these on a daily or weekly basis and not getting a lot back in return, you can see how that would be like, well, this is actually isn't worth it. I don't want to continue to do this anymore, because I'm having to work so hard to get so little in return, and all the more so for dog walking and pet sitting, because what we do is it really is, yes, it is really a passion business. We do so much. We care so much about what we do and how it's done and the health and safety of the pets and the well and how we care for our clients. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to earn a living wage and be able to pay our bills off of this. It's okay to make money here and do it and do it well so you can show up again tomorrow. Because if you have to continually take on a hot if you have to continually work at 120 or 150% capacity for your day, you're not going to be able to do that for much longer.
Meghan 19:36
Yeah, you have to have confidence in your pricing, because your pricing matters. It helps you to pay your bills, pay your employees, if you have them, keep food on your table for you and your family. So you need to have that boldness in what you charge when you have a high quality service. It deserves that high quality compensation.
Speaker 1 19:51
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Meghan 20:17
Nobody wants to race to the bottom. Sure. It seems like everybody can just do a dog walk. The neighborhood kid down the street can as well. But it is important, especially during economic uncertainty, to not race to the bottom. Prices are high across the board, whether you're going out to eat at a restaurant or you're getting your tires changed, prices are going up. So you shouldn't feel guilty about charging what you do. It
Collin 20:38
can be a little daunting, though, especially during times of economic uncertainty, or if you look at your broader market of what are other people charging where I live, to be a price leader, does mean that there is extra pressure and focus placed on you for kind of, not really justifying it, but but proving what people get on the back end and why that matters, and why that is critical. And so focusing in on one, two, maybe three, things that really distinguish you and set you apart. It could be the certifications, it could be the training, it could be all of that stuff. It could be your customer service. It could be the training that you do, or it could be any number of things that you want to focus on to be your differentiator there. When our son put together his poster, we walked in we were the most expensive cookies in the entire class, and going, wow. Why would anybody want to buy these over those 25 cent or over those 15 cents, you know, things over there, he was able to have a differentiator of the quality of his products that he had, and the ingredients in what he was selling, and the presentation that he had, and how he communicated that to people, the exact same thing with our services, that when people can see the price, see the value, because that's really what we're talking about here. We're not talking about the dollar amount, or the amount that it costs somebody to pay you to do the thing. It's what value, what problem are you solving for them? What kind of life are you helping them lead, or what are you able to give their pet while they aren't there? What experience can you bring to them? You you specifically you and your business, but
Meghan 22:08
to also know that not everyone is your client, and that's okay, you do have to be picky with who you take on, not only pets, but clients as well. A lot of us don't really like clients who are penny pinchers and questioning why we do things and have the policies that we do. It can be tempting when we're first starting out to just take everybody we want, every dog, every cat, every turtle, every fish, but that is not wise. So trying to figure out who you want to work with is going to help you out in the long term. So to tie these two events together, get out into your community, talk about what you do, or maybe not, what you do, something in the pet care space, share value, and then show up, be there when you say you're going to own your value and price. Accordingly, it's okay to have the prices that you do, and if anything, you probably need to raise them. Here are two things we want to encourage you to do for your business. The first one is look for a small speaking gig this month. It doesn't have to be an hour long presentation, maybe something that's five minutes long at an event that you're already going to and then the second is review your pricing with fresh eyes. Has it been a while since you've done a price increase? You may want to look at all of your services across the board and make sure that they're in alignment. And it makes sense, yeah, because
Collin 23:13
what we see a lot of times is they'll if you are offering boarding and daycare in your home, and you also offer drop ins or overnight that it really doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem logical for why one thing is priced over the other. What it's important to focus on is focus on where the value is. Focus on the value for the client, what they get. The most valuable thing really should be priced the highest, and then work your way down from there.
Meghan 23:39
If you would like to share a time that you learned something big from a small experience. You can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional, we appreciate you listening today and anytime you spend listening to a pet sitter confessional podcast, we appreciate you, and we also want to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and dog coat launch, we will talk with you next time Bye. Happy.
