Dear Jumpers
This podcast is breaking it down explaining a lot about what I believe about business and how to look at life. I get pretty real and you are going to either love it or hate it, but it is a risk I am willing to take.
You see, I truly believe that I owe it to you to explicitly state who I am, what I believe about business, and how I deal with tough times. Included you will hear a audio clip that I recorded on my iPhone especially to you as I was driving to visit my daughter in the hospital.
It concludes with (what I feel is) an inspirational song and the story about why I am so tied to it. It is my wish that you too will gain some inspiration from it and the entire episode will put a smile on your face.
Now go listen, and don’t forget to comment below so I know that I am not just talking into thin air! 🙂
Your Coach (and parachute holder)
Bella
Transcript:
Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I’ve got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It’s called Jump and Scale and it’s free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale. I’ll see you inside.
Welcome back everyone, it’s Bella Vasta your host. It is Monday right now as I’m recording this, late at night on September 15th, and I’m so glad to be back here with you. Thank you for being patient during my hiatus. Since the last time I came over the airwaves to you, I am now a mother. And that is one of the most incredible and important things that I could ever add to my resume and something I’ve always, always, always wanted to be. And we’re really excited. We welcomed Olivia Grace into the world on July 21st. For those of you who may follow me on Bella Vasta on Facebook or on Jump Consulting, you may have noticed or read that we’ve had a challenging story and we’re still in the midst of it. As of today, we have spent 56 days in the Neo Intensive Care Unit where all the critical babies are, otherwise known as NICU. So I’ve had a little bit of a hiatus from work and really just not so much planning my day by the clock, but more so planning my day by my energy level and just seeing what I could get done. So as I sit here tonight talking to you, I had some extra energy and have been really wanting to get back in this podcast. So here we go.
There are two major things that I’m going to talk to you about today. The first is going to be who am I, and I don’t want this to sound like I’m talking about myself, but I really feel like it’s pretty important for you as a listener and maybe a follower online to really know who you’re following. I’ve written and spoken a lot about this before in the past and oftentimes I kind of wince when I see people following others just because their message looks shiny and bright and they don’t really know what’s under the hood nor has that person ever really stepped out to say what’s under the hood or kind of walked their talk. You know what I mean?
I also have a lot of people that might say, “Bella’s not the one for me,” or “I don’t really agree with what Bella’s saying,” or “Bella thinks that she knows it all.” And you know what, that is totally fine because I am definitely not for everyone, and everyone is definitely not for me. And I’m really secure in saying that. All I know is that there are a few truths that I can really put out there for you guys. In the first part of this podcast, I’m going to explain to you what I believe in for business, and then the second part of the podcast, I’m actually going to play about a seven-minute clip that I recorded in the car. I wanted so badly to get something off my chest and tell you guys. And so I just got my iPhone out and I recorded it. So you might hear the car in the background; it might not be the perfect audio clip, but that’s something that, if you don’t know already about me, is that I do not strive to be perfect because in the end, nothing is ever perfect.
So I’m going to start off first with what I believe for business, and if you get it, all the power to you. I would love for you to keep staying on this journey with me, keep listening to me run my mouth on these podcasts just for you, reading my blogs, and joining me in my private Facebook groups. If for some reason you don’t feel like this is a good fit, that’s fine too. No problem, no hard feelings. When it comes to your business, I really believe in building businesses that are of value. And I don’t mean that intangible value that you’re like, “I just love my business and I love pets and they make me happy every morning.” I mean actual value on paper that you can give to a mortgage broker and they’re going to give you a loan for your house. I mean an actual balance sheet or P&L that you can give to a business broker and they can say, “You know what, Jane Doe, your business is worth X amount of dollars.” There’s a hardcore value to it, and each year that value is growing because we are putting so much into our businesses every single day.
Most pet sitting business owners that I work with or talk to, especially when we talk about pricing, don’t actually have a well-funded 401k or Roth IRA. So they don’t have a lot saved up for retirement. If your business is going to be building value for you one day, you’re probably not going to be in it until the day you die. So I believe in building businesses that actually have value on paper.
This list I’m about to tell you is in no particular order, so we’re going to kind of jump around here. I believe in saturating territories. I believe that if you can have a client on every street or in every neighborhood, it’s going to make your profits go up. You’re going to spend less time driving around. It’s going to be fewer places that you have to market to. It’s going to be less driving for your staff. It’s going to be a more saturated area. So you could hit not just one house in an hour, you could hit maybe two or three depending on how your business is set up.
Playing along with saturated territories, I believe in having a small, lean staff. I believe in having five people that could bring in $100,000 that all work maybe 80% of their capability rather than having ten people working 30% each, all making the business $100,000. I think it’s less expensive, it’s less stress, it’s less planning, it’s less schedules to work around, it’s less taxes — it’s a whole bunch of stuff. And yes, it takes a little bit longer to find that more perfect person for that type of fit; however, you will be a lean, mean machine rather than having multiple employees everywhere and dealing with all those headaches.
I believe in working smarter, not harder. If you’re too busy for the most important things in your life — like your family, your friends, maybe your personal time — then you’re working too hard, and you need to start working smarter.
I also think or believe that you should hire your weakness. I don’t believe that we can be the Jack or Jill of all trades. I don’t believe that we all came from a design background; therefore, I don’t believe you should be designing your own logo, or doing your own books, or doing your own website. There is definitely a certain amount of knowledge that you can have for doing that. But just as we all preach, “Don’t get the kid next door or your friend to pet sit for you — hire a professional,” it’s the same exact mentality when I say hire your weakness.
If it’s something you’re not good at, I am all for you learning it. But seriously, still hire a professional to help you. This is your business you’re talking about. This is your lifeline. And if it’s your weakness, chances are you’re going to procrastinate on it. At least that’s what I do in my life. Or chances are if it’s your weakness, you’re not going to understand it, you’re not going to enjoy it, therefore you’re not going to do well at it. So hire your weakness.
I also believe in having a good support team. If something goes wrong or you need something in a bind, you don’t want to be scrambling to find a CPA that you can trust or a lawyer that can fire back a letter within 12-hour turnaround time or maybe a bookkeeper to help you wiggle through some questions on how to balance your money. There’s so many different things, and having an established team is something not only that I believe in, but I also spend a lot of time in the Employee Quick Start Program in Lesson 1 discussing having a good team around you. I also give you all of my recommendations for people that I use personally in my own team — people that are tried, true, and tested through me.
I also believe that employees are the way to go. I have done so much this year on proving that point. I have written blogs on 18 real reasons why employees are better than ICs for your pet sitting company, with actual facts backed up to state and federal statutes that show exactly why you need employees. If that wasn’t enough, I also interviewed a whole bunch of pet sitters that have been audited — some not just once but twice — and what their experiences were. Overwhelmingly, almost all of them either switched to employees after independent contractors or were so glad that they had employees and did not have a tough time passing the audit. Folks, it’s a fact of life: the government needs money, and they are spending more money this year than they ever have on trying to investigate businesses and see if they’re classifying the correct way.
A really quick point — unless your ICs have their own business, registered with the state, and their own clients, newsflash: they’re employees, not independent contractors. Employees are the way to go. It’s the best way to unleash your inner control freak, and 90% of you are because I talk to you every day. So you know that’s something I believe in. This does not mean that I don’t think highly of your business if you have ICs. There are some people out there that are running pet sitting companies in a very great way — namely Beth Green and Teresa in California, for example. They’re rocking it. These ladies are doing it the right way. But many people I come in contact with are not, and for that reason alone I feel that employees are really generally speaking the way to go in the pet sitting world.
I also believe that pet sitting is a luxury service with a luxury price. I believe that people who have that guilty conscience that want to hire a pet sitter to let their dog out in the middle of the day — when truth be told, that dog would absolutely be fine for eight or nine hours — it is a luxury service appealing to their emotions. I don’t believe that it’s a quick, cheap business with $10 let-outs. I believe that that attracts price shoppers and people that aren’t going to be with you for a long time.
The last thing I want to tell you on my list that I believe in is systems and processes. If you don’t have systems and processes in your business that — here’s the key word — run without you in them, then you still have room for improvement. People should be able to book without contacting you or waiting for a callback. People should be able to update their notes without waiting for a callback. Your staff should be able to get the information they need on a client without ever talking to you. Your credit cards should be able to be processed easily and fast. You should take credit cards, period. There are so many things about systems and processes that, when they’re in place, will save you so much time — or rather, give you back so much time.
So those are the really heavy, important things that I believe, and I’m not hiding that at all. If it’s something that you don’t agree with, that’s fine. That means that I’m simply not the leader for you to follow, and that’s okay. But I’m going to be really blunt here — those are the things I believe in, and that’s what you’re going to hear in my platforms, in my Facebook groups, when you work one-on-one with me, in these podcasts and in my blogs. That’s what I believe.
Now I’m going to segue into that recording I did in the car. This is specifically for you, for your ears. I’m going to get a little personal here because I made the personal decision back in the beginning of July that when I went through this toughest time in my entire life, I was going to be transparent about it, and oddly enough, it’s actually really inspired me in a lot of different ways.
Have you ever wanted something so bad but had to wait for it — like you want it now? You just want it to be done with, you don’t want to sit there and try to figure it out, you don’t want to spend money or time or face the challenge of it and then start procrastinating. There are so many times that things in our business that we want to get done — like maybe websites or marketing or finding the right employee — are things that we can’t just snap our fingers and make appear out of thin air. Fortunately, life’s like that too.
There’s a lot of things in life that we just can’t have. The one thing, as I’m driving on my way to NICU right now, that I’m thinking about is instant gratification. A lot of people told me that pregnancy is supposed to be this perfect Cinderella story. You get pregnant, you have the pregnant glow, the big belly, you take baby bump pictures every week — and that didn’t happen for me. I had to reframe my mind.
When I delivered, I didn’t get to hold my baby, or hear her cry, or see her face. She was whisked away immediately to the NICU, and the doctors worked on her tiny little body. She was 12 ounces, 10 inches long — the tiniest baby they’d ever seen. And I had to wait 21 days to hold her. I couldn’t kiss her forehead or feel her heartbeat. But sometimes, the sweetest things in life we have to wait for.
That’s what I want to remind you — sometimes we have to wait for the good things, and that applies to business too. You can’t expect to post a “help wanted” ad and instantly get amazing applicants. You have to expect that it’ll take time. And you can’t compare your journey to someone else’s. Everyone’s story is different. The destination matters, but the journey molds you.
Patience is everything. Accept your journey as your own and don’t compare it. Be positive, not fake-positive, but genuinely choose to see the light and the silver lining. That kind of mindset gives you strength.
I hope that helps you. That’s kind of who I am, and I really hope my story inspires you somehow.
Even if the sky is falling down, I know that we’ll be safe and sound.