pet sitting business tips

5 Secrets for Six-Figure+ Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Success

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In my own pet sitting business as well as in my work with pet sitters and dog walkers, I’ve discovered some common traits that nurture happiness and six-figure+ success.

Here are five secrets for success (practice them and watch your pet business grow and thrive!):

1. Set office hours and keep them. Successful pet business owners know when to close up shop and when to leave the door closed until morning (even if it is their home office).

2. Don’t offer discounts before your clients ask. And even then only give discounts during very slow periods. Be sure to let clients know that this is a ‘one-time event’. Also let them know (with a smile) that you plan to do such a good job that they will want you back at whatever price you charge! Confidence is attractive in a service-based business.

3. Set boundaries in a clear and direct way with clients. Successful pet business owners enforce their policies and procedures with clients regardless of how uncomfortable it might be to do so. Feel the fear and do it anyway (in a loving way). It’ll save you time and money and also gain respect from your clients.

4. Hire a manager who can help run your business so you can have a life again. (One that doesn’t involve work 24/7.) Successful pet business owners know that hiring and having a manager, or even just a phone and email assistant to help them run the business, will help them make more money in the long run. (In addition to bringing more happiness, joy and ease in running the business when they ARE working.)

5. Go on vacation at least once a year. Successful pet business owners have their priorities straight and a vacation is part of their priority. They put the vacation date in their calendar and it’s as solid as a client appointment. And once the date is set, everything works out from there.

If you have a pet sitting and dog walking company and you’d like to experience #4 above: This month I’m offering a brand new webinar on how to hire a train the right pet sitting and dog walking office manager.

HowtoTrainManagerWebinarImageIn the last few years I had 5 managers running my own pet sitting business and because of that I was able to travel around the world for months at a time (while my business ran under their care). And when I wasn’t traveling I only worked 2-3 days a week in my business. That’s the power of hiring good managers! And I’ll show YOU how you can do that too in my webinar next month.

PLEASE NOTE: THE WEBINAR IS OVER BUT YOU CAN NOW PURCHASE THE HOW TO HIRE AND TRAIN THE RIGHT PET SITTING OFFICE MANAGER WEBINAR REPLAY LINK.

 

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Stop This 4-Letter Word and Have More Peace in Your Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business

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right textFor the past couple of years I’ve been hearing a 4-letter word that causes so much stress for pet sitters and dog walkers.

Here is the word: TEXT.

Texting from clients (at all hours of the day and night) and texting from staff (also at all hours of the day and night) infuriates many pet business owners.

And of course the pet owners expect an instant response because that pet care provider has responded at all hours of the day and night in the past. It’s hard not to. Can you really just sit there at 11pm and NOT respond to a text you’ve read? It’s tough.

But training your clients and staff is like training a dog: you have to train people on what works for you and what doesn’t. When you respond to client and staff texts at 11pm, it causes your clients and staff to send more texts at 11pm (or later, egads!)

Here’s the thing with the texting: Many pet business owners keep allowing it to happen, even though they dislike it so much.

They (mistakenly) assume their clients will leave them if they stop offering texting as a method of communication. They (mistakenly) assume that as a business they have to offer texting as a form of communication to their clients and staff.

Nope. You don’t.

And if you stop allowing your clients to text you, you will be AMAZED at how much more peace you feel.

I promise.

Here’s how to stop your clients and staff from texting you:

1. Alert your clients and staff via email that starting today, texting is no longer a viable form of communication. We’ve all had the experience of texts getting lost or not delivered to the right person so you can use that as an ‘excuse’ if you need one. Let them know you can be reached at your office phone number or email. Remind them of your office hours.

2. When clients or staff members do text you (and they probably will as it’ll be a habit especially if they’ve been texting you for years), don’t text a reply. That just reinforces the ‘bad behavior’. Call or email them to remind them that you no longer accept texts and to please email or call your office going forward.

3. If, after a few weeks, large amounts of your clients can’t seem to stop texting you then I recommend looking into changing your cell phone number and getting a business landline or a new cell phone. (They don’t need to know it’s a cell phone. In fact, if they know, you’ll be recreating what you just worked so hard to change.) Obviously, changing your business number is a last resort but one that will work very well if the texting is out of control and you see no light at the end of the tunnel even after you’ve done the steps above. You can then send out an email stating your new number and that it will not accept texts going forward. That will nip it in the bud.

4. If you feel that you simply must keep texting your clients and staff (and it annoys you that you must) then set firm office hours and put your cell phone in the closet during non-office hours.

5. If you do need to get a new phone line (or simply upgrade the one you have), I highly recommend this phone service: Ooma.com. It is fantastic! Here’s some of what I love about it: it’s super easy to set up, the Ooma box plugs right into your wall jack and Voila! You are ready to go.

The business phone service is under $20 per month (the personal phone service is only $4 a month!) There are too many great features that Ooma offers to mention here so I recommend that you check them out if your current business landline is too expensive (mine was over $100 a month before I switched to Ooma) and/or if you need to create a new phone line.

Wishing you a wonderful (and text-free!) weekend,

~Kristin

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Self-Authoring Your Pet Sitting Business

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Recently I was in a yoga class and the teacher said to our class: “Even though you might think you can’t do a pose, TRY. Don’t just assume you can’t do it. Attempt it. Find out.”

So many pet sitting business owners run their businesses from the place of NO.

No, I CAN’T DO IT.

No, I’VE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE.

No, I’M AFRAID.

It takes a lot of courage to feel the NO and turn it into a YES. To run your business from outside-the-box. Which might be very different from how you think you should run your pet sitting business or how your competitors are running their pet sitting businesses.

As I’m traveling I’m even more aware than I was back at home of how we create our own reality.

I’m not getting woo-woo on you here.

What I’m talking about is that most people put limits on what they can and can’t do in their business and their life which ends up becoming their limited reality.

Where are you putting limits on your pet sitting and dog walking business?

Here are some common areas that pet sitters put limits on their businesses:

1) Your Schedule: You don’t like doing early morning or late night visits and yet still you do them.

2) Hiring: You are afraid to hire pet sitting and dog walkers so you don’t. Or you need to hire more staff yet you keep putting it off even though you are getting more and more stressed by having to do the work yourself.

3) Your Income: You have a mental ‘cap’ on what you think you can make in your pet sitting business each month. You say to yourself, “Oh, I can’t make more than $________/month” which becomes a self-imposed glass ceiling. You don’t imagine or believe you can make more than you’ve currently made and thus live out that reality from month-to-month.

4) Your vacation: You haven’t had a vacation in years and you feel burned out. You are afraid of leaving your pet sitting business. You don’t know what to do with your business when you go away and don’t investigate options.

5) Business Duties: You really don’t like (or aren’t good at) a certain aspect of your pet sitting business and yet still you do it because you feel you ‘have’ to. You don’t allow yourself to think creatively or ask for help in thinking creatively for how to delegate specific tasks or jobs that you really don’t enjoy.

Guess what?

YOU are the author of your pet sitting business. You get to make up the rules for how you run your business and what jobs you do or don’t do.

So many pet sitters that I work with forget this. They let themselves be swept away by the whims of clients or their own fear of doing something differently than they (or another pet sitter) has done before.

It’s the halfway point through the year here, folks: June 2011.

A perfect time to honestly access what works and doesn’t work with the way you are currently running your business.

You really are the only one who creates the stoppers in your business and your life. Not your clients. Not your family. Not your staff.

YOU.

And you can also take that pen and start self-authoring your pet sitting business!

Try this bit of self coaching:
Get a piece of paper and a pen. Set a timer for 15 minutes. For one minute focus on an area that is clearly not working in your business or is causing you discomfort or unhappiness.

Then, with the remaining time, write down all the possible solutions that come to your mind.

Don’t censor.

Don’t edit.

Don’t spell check!

Simply write fast, without thinking, for 14 minutes.

You may be amazed at what may emerge.

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Pet Sitting Business Tips for February

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Want to start off on the right foot in your business this month?

Here’s how:

1) Take one marketing action a day to ensure that the calls come rolling in by the end of February. Drop your business cards off at vets, groomers and pet stores. Begin listing your business on as many websites as you can (links on other websites will help you come up higher on the search engines). Join a networking group. Get out there and market. Soon clients will be calling you saying, “I see your business everywhere!” (When that happens you know you are doing the right kind of marketing.)

2) Do you have an accountant ready to help you with your 2010 taxes? If not, February is a great time to find one before they get booked up at tax crunch time. Ask your business-owning friends for a recommendation.

3) Make self-care a priority this month. Put yourself in your appointment scheduler. If not now, then when?

4) Were you short-staffed in 2010? Spend the month February hiring even more people than you think you will need. Having an overflow of staff members will help you say YES to all the clients that contact you this year. Be clear in your communication with new staff members about how much work is/is not available; Let new staff members know that you may not call them for a few weeks but that as business grows their workload will grow.

5) Set a clear financial goal for February. Put your goal on your computer where you will see it daily. Write it on a sticky note in present tense: “I earn $_________/ month easily and effortlessly.”

6) Write your top 10 goals for February 2010 where you can see them. What do you most want to accomplish this month? What did you want to do in January that still needs to be done? You want your Top Ten Goals for February to be where you can see them daily as that will help you stay on track. In goal setting it’s especially important to remember: ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Put those goals in your car, in your office, on your bathroom mirror…wherever you will see them each day.

7) Set aside money for 2011 Q1 Taxes NOW. A lot of pet sitters that I’ve worked with the past few weeks have been surprised at the money they owed for 2010 and/or their 4th quarter tax payment for 2010. To avoid being surprised when taxes come due try this: split each quarterly payment into thirds and pay monthly so you aren’t hit with a large sum of money to come up with for your first quarter payment in 2011 (due April 15).

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January Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business Tips

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It’s usually pretty slow in the pet sitting industry in January. After the hustle and bustle of the holidays that have just passed this can be welcome relief. For others you may be wishing/needing new business now to keep up with expenses that ocurred over the holidays.

No matter where you are: busy or not busy, glad it’s slow, not glad it’s slow, there are some very specific tasks that you can and should do this month to insure business success all year long.

Here they are:

1) Pay your Q4 2009 estimated tax payment by January 15 for both State and Federal taxes. It’s important to get in the habit of keeping current with taxes for each calendar year or you will be faced with hefty penalties and interest if you have not paid enough for 2009 taxes.

2) Begin to set aside money now for your Q1 2010 estimated tax payment that will be due by April 15, 2010. How do you do this? Put an envelope on a bulletin board in your office. Get in the habit of putting a minimum of 10% of whatever total from checks that you receive into that envelope. Next create a tax savings account and every month deposit that money into your tax savings account so when it comes time to pay your quarterly payments you will be breathing easy because guess what? You have the money.

3) Place an ad for staff now and spend leisurely time hiring the perfect staff members. This time of year is the best time to hire people–you are not in a hurry and probably don’t desperately need staff members the way you did, say, over the holidays. You want to hire people when you don’t need them. That way they will be ready to go when you do get busy and your judgment will not be impaired by an intensity of need to fill particular pet sitting jobs.

4) Get those 1099s out in the mail to your staff by January 29, 2010. The government will charge you $50 for each and every 1099 that is not sent out by the end of January.

Next make sure to send your information to the government no later than the end of February or same thing: you will be charged $50 for every 1099 that is received by the government after the end of February. Ouch!

5) Write your goals for this month and for the New Year. Setting goals is one of the most powerful actions you can take in your business. It sounds simple, right? It is. The simple act of writing your goals will help you take actions that will enable you to create what you want this year.

I did it last year at this time as I do every year. But last year I wrote:

I will go on a two month trip in 2010.

I saw that goal there day after day on my bulletin board (it’s very important to post your goals where you can see them) and I began to take big and little actions to support that vision.

A year ago taking this trip was just a pipe dream.

Six months ago I started seriously considering it.

And now I’m going.

You can read more about setting and achieving business goals in my goal setting for pet sitters blog post below.

6) Take the word ‘recession’ out of your vocabulary. That’s right. I know…you turn on the news and it’s recession this and recession that but STOP. Don’t allow yourself to go there or engage in conversations that take you into a downward spiral about the economy.

I can tell you this: for myself and those pet sitting clients that I drilled this into last year: we all had the best year ever!

In a supposed recession.

Why? Because we refused to engage in the conversation of the recession and instead focused on what tasks needed to be done in order to succeed in our businesses.

YOU can have a financially successful year no matter what the media says.

Here’s how: turn off your TV when negative economic news comes on, let friends and family know that you are committed to having the best financial year ever and that you don’t want to talk about a poor economy, when you do get discouraged remember that there are hundreds of other pet sitters across the country who had the BEST YEAR ever in 2009 and that you can create that experience for yourself this year.

Happy 2010 everyone!

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