365: Serving Your Community with LeAnna Quartuccio and Brandon Elkins

365: Serving Your Community with LeAnna Quartuccio and Brandon Elkins

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How do you serve your community? From offering employment opportunities to serving specific needs, our businesses can be a huge asset to our local communities. LeAnna Quartuccio and Brandon Elkins, owners of Hyde Bark Dog Walking & Pet Care + Hyde Bark Play and Park, join us to discuss why focusing on staying local is so powerful. They work hard to offer appealing benefits to their staff, and walk through how they can make that happen. LeAnna and Brandon made a huge decision to open a doggy daycare to better serve their community. They share their lessons from that process and their training protocol to turn new staff members into professionals.

364: Essential Characteristics of a Thriving Pet Business Owner

364: Essential Characteristics of a Thriving Pet Business Owner

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What mindsets and behaviors help a pet business owner thrive? Like high quality tools, the characteristics we exhibit should help us, instead of being a hindrance to our success. It starts with knowing yourself and the kind of business you want to run. Then, you can implement the best practices. We break down five essential attitudes of a thriving pet business owner and what it looks like to implement them.

363: Proving it to Yourself with Emily Duhancik

363: Proving it to Yourself with Emily Duhancik

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How do you show up for yourself? Hard work and dedication are definitional of what it means to be a pet sitter. The services you offer should be connected to the passions you have in life. Emily Duhancik, owner of Pet Sitting & Care by Emily, joins the show to discuss what it takes to offer farm care to very particular clients. Her motivation comes from a lifelong love of animals, and a desire to be an excellent role model for her daughter. Emily shares how she designs an amazing client experience, where to get more experience with farm animals, and how she honors her feelings and emotions through the services she offers.

362: Marketing a New Service

362: Marketing a New Service

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How do you market a new service? Whether you’ve created a brand new service, or reconfigured an existing one, getting it in front of your clients is the biggest hurdle. Sometimes, the same marketing tactics don’t work for a new service, so as business owners, we have to be aware of what our options are. We walk through why marketing a new service involves a mindset shift and why you should start marketing before you launch your service.

361: Parenting and Pet Care Roundtable

361: Parenting and Pet Care Roundtable

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What’s it like being a parent in pet care? As a business owner, it can be overwhelming to consider adding a child and growing your family while also keeping your business running. There is so much to account for and many different business models you can try. On a very special roundtable Marissa LeJune, owner of Tail Swaggers, Amber Van Denzen Suarez, owner of Atta Boy! Animal Care, and Stephanie Brown, owner of Happy Trail’s Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Services, join the show to share their experience of raising their kids while running their business. If you’re just starting out in your business journey, or are a soon to be new parent this is for you!

360: When You Want to Remove a Service

360: When You Want to Remove a Service

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How do you know it’s time to remove a service you currently offer? Sometimes you find yourself no longer in love with a particular service. It may be massively popular, or just a massive headache, but it’s time for a change. We walk through how, over the course of a year, we planned and removed a major service from our business. We give some of the lessons we learned and some points to help make it as easy as possible.

359: Pet Behavior and Honing Your Pet First Aid Skills with Arden Moore

359: Pet Behavior and Honing Your Pet First Aid Skills with Arden Moore

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What does it mean to understand animal behavior? As pet care professionals, we need to make sure we are communicating well to our clients and are prepared for emergencies. Arden Moore, author and radio host, joins the show to discuss confounding behaviors for both dogs and cats. She also dives into how to make sure we have a great first aid kit and how emergency preparedness is all a mental game. Arden gives her best tips for pilling cats and discusses the importance of being a poop-ologist.

358: Overcoming Your Fears

358: Overcoming Your Fears

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What fears do you have in your business? From financial insecurity to personal freedom, fear is a powerful driving force for many of us. Fear comes from both the unknown and the unplanned for, so taking time to assess what’s impacting you gives clarity for better decisions. We break down common fears of running a business and what we can do about them. We also give simple steps to start overcoming your fears and living a more focused life.

357: Empowering Empathy with Stephanie Castro

357: Empowering Empathy with Stephanie Castro

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What does it mean to be empathetic in our business? Showing empathy allows you to connect with nervous clients. It also helps both clients and staff feel like they are understood and are not alone. Stephanie Castro, owner of Stay Home Pet Sitting, joins the show to share why the words we use help clients see the value in our business. She also explains how she’s growing her company culture, and what it means to make hard decisions.

356: Using A.I. in Your Business

356: Using A.I. in Your Business

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Are you using A.I. in your business? Artificial Intelligence is a growing area of research and development. A.I. can seem overwhelming, but holds many promising tools to give clients more peace of mind. We break down what A.I. is and how it can help your business. We give examples of existing programs and also how we’re currently implementing it in our own business.

354: What’s in a Name?

354: What’s in a Name?

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Does it matter what you call your services? The language we use in our businesses is a very powerful tool in both attracting the right clients and repelling the wrong ones. As a business owner, we need to use clear language in everything we do, including what we name our services. We break down some areas of possible confusion, and then suggest ways to overcome those to connect with your clients.

353: Transforming Your Business with Michelle Kline

353: Transforming Your Business with Michelle Kline

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What does it take to completely transform your business? Creating a business that works for us means that sometimes we have to step back and realize we are capable of change. We can still serve clients with excellence, with an entirely new model of business. Michelle Kline, owner of Venture Dog Walking, converted her pet sitting business into a dog walking company. She shares the groundwork she laid to make it successful and outlines her communication strategy to both staff and clients.

352: Carrying Mental Burdens in Business

352: Carrying Mental Burdens in Business

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How is your mental health doing? It’s a new year, so it’s a great time to assess how you are doing. With so much anticipation for 2023, hopes remain high for booming business. However, busy business doesn’t mean a happy heart. Life happens, which impacts you and your ability to run your business. We break down a recent poll we ran, what it says about the state of the industry, and how we can move forward!

351: Mentoring Your Team with Cassidy LaMair

351: Mentoring Your Team with Cassidy LaMair

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Just as we work to educate clients, when we bring on staff, it’s our role to educate and mentor them in the career of pet care. Cassidy LeMair, owner of Cassidys Custom Pet Services, shares how she builds lasting relationships and partnerships with both staff and clients through her open and straightforward style. Cassidy details how she creates consistent customizable services and gives her insights into how she learns from her mistakes.

350: Appreciating Your Business

350: Appreciating Your Business

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Do you appreciate your business? Many of us struggle to see the value our business brings to us, as we focus on the hardships and frustrations. Appreciating your business has to be a conscious effort every day and is influenced by many things. We break down what it means to be appreciative of your business, why it’s so hard, and what it means to stay content.

349: Pride and Passion with Savanna Westwood

349: Pride and Passion with Savanna Westwood

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Your commitment is a promise to others to render service or provide them something. When the return value on your commitment starts to decrease, it’s time to rethink those decisions. As a business owner, it takes knowing your limits and having strength to say, ‘No’. Savanna Westwood, owner of The Savvy Sitter, shares how she thinks through what to commit to and how to know when you’re overcommitted. She also discusses what it means to have pride in your business and why it’s important to view yourself as a founder.

348: Staffing Struggles

348: Staffing Struggles

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Have you had issues with staffing? 2022 may very well be defined by the labor market flipping to empowering employees. This has meant hiring and retaining staff has been difficult, especially as a small business. From competing on wages, to connecting with mission, job applicants are able to be very picky. We break down how we’ve changed our processes and have been investing in existing staff. Having staff will continue to be a major issue into the new year, and we have to prepare for it. 

347: Managing a Crisis with Cheyenne Williams

347: Managing a Crisis with Cheyenne Williams

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Have you had to handle a crisis in your business? From personal issues to extreme weather, we’re tasked with handling whatever comes our way. We often don’t recognize the toll it takes on us mentally, physically, and emotionally. Cheyenne Williams, owner of Shiney Day Specialized Pet Care, shares how she tackles the mental toll of natural disasters, why paying attention to your mental health is crucial, and resources available for those struggling.

346: What’s in Store for 2023?

346: What’s in Store for 2023?

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What’s 2023 looking like? The economic outlook is shaping up as a mixed bag. We walk through ways to stay nimble as a business, through planning and staying open to new opportunities. We also share how we’ve been approaching planning for 2023 and why it’s critical to take a wholistic approach that takes both your personal life and business into account. 

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