pet sitting start up

5 Simple Tips for Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Business Success

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Here are 5 simple steps you can begin TODAY to create more success in your pet sitting and dog walking business:

1) Accumulate business savings no matter how small at first. Even the act of starting with $10/month is progress. Your business savings account will help get you through the lean times, especially when you are first starting out.

2) Create an action plan to ensure that your pet sitting business bookkeeping records are clean, orderly and accurate. Get accounting help if and when you need it. Pay someone to help you learn Quicken or Quickbooks. Knowing how much you make each month will help you set financial goals which will keep you focused and intentional in your business actions.

3) Develop a yearly business plan and create goals and visions for yourself and your business. Review it quarterly and adjust as needed. Having a map will help you get to where you want to go in your business.

4) Budget your time realistically and focus on income-producing activities. Get clear on how many minutes it takes to actually takes to drive to your dog walking/pet sitting jobs. This will help you get clarity about how many clients you can take in a given day and how much time you are spent driving. Setting a timer for those business tasks that are challenging can help keep you on track. Focusing your daily actions on income-producing activities such as marketing and answering the phone directly you will cause you to see your profits to rise.

5) Let go of difficult-to-work-with clients and staff members. Difficult staff and clients can eat up as much as 95% of our energy which leaves only 5% left for the majority of our clients and staff. If you notice your thoughts consumed by a particular client or staff member then it might be time to let them go. Talk it over with someone whose opinion you value and once you get clarity about how challenging they are, be willing to let them go sooner rather than later.

Need more tips? You can find them in in Kristin’s book for pet sitters and dog walkers: Six-Figure Pet Sitting: Catapult Your Pet Sitting Business to Unlimited Success.

Click to get the book IMMEDIATELY: Six-Figure Pet Sitting Ebook version or Click to get the printed version on Amazon: Six-Figure Pet Sitting print edition.

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How to Start a Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business

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Is one of your goals for 2011 to start a pet sitting and dog walking business?

Are you thinking about starting a pet sitting or dog walking business but not sure how to get started in a way that will insure success?
Or are you in your first year of pet sitting and aren’t generating the kind of profits you’d like to be generating?

If you are new to pet sitting and dog walking or in your first year of pet sitting, this recording is for YOU.

In this 60-minute recording you will learn the steps needed to create a firm foundation from which to launch and run a pet sitting business that thrives from day one. You will also receive a 12-point tips and tools worksheet for pet sitting business start up.

It’s a myth that new business owners have to struggle, overwork and underearn in their first year of business.

Why reinvent the wheel? In this mp3 recording you will gain all the tips and tools you will need to get your business phone to ring! You will learn how to create a business that will be stress-free: from Day One. You will come away with being able to create a level of success that usually happens for most businesses after year three-all in your first year of business.

Click here for more information and to purchase the How to Start a Successful Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business Recording.

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How to Set (and Achieve!) Pet Sitting Business Goals for 2010

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As I’m sitting here writing this blog post I’m reflecting on just how powerful setting goals has been in my business and personal life.

Writing goals each year has helped me:

~achieve (and often surpass!) the level of income I want to create
~work the kind of schedule I want to work (3-4 days a week)
~hire the right kind of people and the right number of people for my business
~run my business in a outside-the-box way that adds to my happiness, prosperity and well-being

Did you know?
In 1953, researchers surveyed Yale’s graduating seniors to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. The answer: 3%.

Twenty years later, researchers polled the surviving members of the Class of 1953 — and found that the 3% with specific, written goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined.

Do you have specific, written goals for your business?

If not, it is time to start:

Here’s how:

1) State your goals in the present tense.
An example of a goal for hiring would be: “I hire 3 pet sitters” instead of “I will hire 3 pet sitters”. Writing your goals in the present tense, as if those goals are already happening affects our subconscious mind in a positive and powerful way. The subconscious mind only operates in the now. If you create goals in the future tense, your subconscious will never support you in achieving your goals.

The subconscious mind is a powerful force and if it is not supporting us it can sometimes sabotage our success (and lack of success) in life. Get your subconscious in alignment with what you want to create in your business and your life this year–by writing your goals in the present tense so your subconscious can assist you in achieving what you want to achieve this year.

2) Set clear, specific and measurable goals for the year. When setting an income goal you want to be very specific about what that amount will be. If you want to make over six-figures in your pet sitting business this year, write the specific amount you want to make: “I gross $110,000 and I net $60,000” instead of writing “I make six-figures this year” .

Important: many business owners often don’t think about their net income when setting goals. Don’t forget about net! A reminder: your gross is the total amount your business generates and the net amount is the amount your business actually makes after all expenses are tallied. Therefore, your net is the real amount your business makes and it is the one to focus on as your net income is the barometer that enables you to know whether or not your pet sitting business is financially supporting you.

3) Set a date by which you will achieve your specific goal. Let’s go back the hiring goal so I can demonstrate what that will look like when you write your goals. Remember: you want to keep that hiring goal in the present and yet have the date by which it is due be in the future.

Here’s what the hiring goal will look like as a written goal: I hire 3 pet sitters by March 1, 2010. See that? Your goal is still stated in the present (not ‘I will hire’, but simply: ‘I hire’) and it has a specific date by which you are going to achieve that: March 1, 2010.

4) Break your goals into small steps and put those small steps in your calendar now. If you have the goal of hiring 3 pet sitters by March 15, 2010 your simple steps might be:

~my hiring paperwork is organized by February 10, 2010
~I put an ad on Craigslist by February 15, 2010
~I conduct face-to-face interviews between February 21-February 28
~I complete the hiring process by March 5, 2010

Putting small steps in your calendar now is a simple way to break down a daunting or big goal into bite-sized chunks.

5) Keep your goals where you can see them on a daily basis. This step is crucial. I’ve found that when I have my goals in clear view I’m much more apt to do the actions it takes to achieve them.

I’ve worked with hundreds of pet sitting coaching clients from around the country who are amazed at the simple act of power that setting goals in their pet sitting businesses can be. Will you be one of those amazed pet sitters next year?

Write out your business goals this year and let me know at the end of 2010 what you created in your business and your life as a result. I’d love to hear from you!

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How to Create a 3-Day Pet Sitting Workweek Teleclass: January 6, 2010

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This will be my last teleclass before I head out for my 2-month trip around the world until April 2010.

I’m a business coach who practices what I preach and I’m offering this teleclass to share my secrets with all of you wonderful pet sitters before departing for my traveling adventure.

This teleclass will truly change your life by profoundly transforming the way you relate to your work and your work schedule! You will come away excited and ready to create a work schedule that is beyond your wildest dreams (while being firmly rooted in reality).

Most pet sitters think that they have to work long and hard hours to create a successful and profitable business. If you are one of them you are not alone.

I thought that I had to work countless hours to make a lot of money until the year I began running my business in a completely different way.

In one year I began transforming my relationship with my business and the way I ran my business. To my surprise and amazement my profits began to rise even though I was working much, much less! It didn’t make sense at first (in fact it blew my mind a bit!) but then it completely made sense.

In less than one year, I went from working 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week to working three 8-hour days a week.

If you have an established business and responsible staff members that you trust, you can too!

All it takes is some out-of-the box thinking and a willingness to try some new ways of running your company that I will outline in this teleclass so that you can create the schedule that works best for you in 2010.

Whether you want to take one day off a week, weekends off, or create a 3-day workweek like I created, it’s up to you. I will tell you how to do it and outline the step-by-step method necessary to create time off.

Click here to find out more and to sign up for the How to Create a 3-Day Pet Sitting Workweek Teleclass.

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#1 Pet Sitting Business Tool that is Helping Me Travel for Two Months

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As most of you know I will be traveling to Indonesia for 2 months in late January. This is a dream I’ve had for years.

When I first started my business I was able to do world travel for six to eight weeks at a time fairly easily because my business was smaller and thus, I didn’t have a lot of clients and staff.

Now my pet sitting business is huge: we cover two enormous counties, have over 30 pet sitters on staff and close to 700 pet sitting and dog walking clients!

Thankfully I also have 2 trustworthy and competent managers who run my pet sitting and dog walking business as well as I do. I also have two back-up managers. Having these 4 managers in place is definitely the only way I could be able to travel and leave my business humming along for 2 months.

But it’s not all I’ve needed…

THE most powerful tool (besides my managers) that is helping me travel for two months is Power Pet Sitter.

Power Pet Sitter is an administration software system for pet sitters that enables my managers to manage my pet sitting business from the comfort of their own homes. By using Power Pet Sitter my managers can easily access client data, schedule sits for clients, send the schedule to the staff, invoice clients and powerfully run my business for me while I am out of the country!

It took me a long time to use an administration system. I’d been doing things by hand for years and years and years. And it worked. But it was tedious. And it wasn’t an empowering way to run my pet sitting business.

Most of you know I do not recommend products for pet sitters unless I believe in them 100% and stand behind them with every ounce of me.

Power Pet Sitter is one of those products. If you are interested in running your pet sitting business in a way that is more ease-filled and empowering I encourage you to contact Power Pet Sitter today.

If you mention that were referred by the Six-Figure Pet Sitting Academy, you can sign up for Power Pet Sitter and receive 3 months free when signing up for 6 months. You will prepay for 3 months and you get 3 months free. It’s a great way to try out this system. This offer expires December 31, 2009 and is only valid for Six-Figure Pet Sitting Academy students and fans of the Six-Figure Pet Sitting Academy. You must specify that you found out about this discount from the Six-Figure Pet Sitting Academy in order to receive this special discount.

Power Pet Sitter is the #1 tool that is enabling me to step away from my business more and more and to create the right work/life balance for myself that includes 2 months of travel in 2010!

I highly recommend Power Pet Sitter (and, as I mentioned above, I don’t recommend things lightly -products have to *really* be amazing tools for pet sitters for me to toot their horn!) Power Pet Sitter is one of those products.

Once you sign up you won’t know how you lived without it.

And maybe you’ll find YOURSELF planning a two-month vacation away from your pet sitting business in 2010?

Click the link to find out more and to sign up for Power Pet Sitter today.

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Conflicts with Your Pet Sitting Clients can be GOOD for Business

3351810231_f7edc2eccaSound strange? It’s not.

Here’s why: when we work through issues that come up in relationships, including our working relationships, we then develop trust in that particular person and in the relationship itself. Often that relationship is then stronger and more connected than it was prior to the conflict.

That’s why having conflict with your pet sitting and dog walking clients is a ripe opportunity to create a bridge from anger, resentment and misunderstanding to a meaningful, lifelong working relationship.

Think about it: when you hire a service or company to do something for you and they screw up and then bend over backwards to make it right don’t you come away happier and raving to your friends about the excellent customer service?

I know I do. And you probably do too.

And for good reason. You were upset, the company made it right and then some (probably throwing in a little something extra to sweeten the deal and the thus, creating a sweeter relationship) and wah-lah! You went from being an angry, unhappy customer to telling your friends how incredible this particular business now is.

Had there been no conflict you might not be singing their praises to the masses.

Now pet sitters: I’m NOT advising you to create conflict for the sake of creating a more loyal relationship with your clients. Not at all!

What I’m advising is simply to look at conflict differently: look at it as a possible bridge to a more meaningful and lasting relationship with your pet sitting clients.

In my next blog post I will write about how best to bridge that conflict from tension and anger to harmony and customer loyalty. Stay tuned!

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