In this podcast you will hear about how you can adapt your business to match your lifestyle. In this episode I answer the questions you submitted such as:
When you should hire on employees and who to get your clients to start using them.
How you can stay afloat and handle daily operations while working in the business.
How to get your blog to actually WORK for you. Including 8 tips on what to do after you post a blog!
It is jam packed and sure to keep you on your toes and your mind running.
Links
www.facebook.com/bellainyourbusiness
www.facebook.com/jumpconsulting
Email me at [email protected] for links to Noelle
Transcript:
This episode is brought to you by my free webinar, Jump and Scale Your Business. It’s my three-part training series all dedicated to finding and attracting the right kind of people that will scale your business. Did I mention it’s free? Listen, you have to attend this if you want to grow your staff, you feel like you’re being held hostage, you have high turnover, you feel burnt out, or you’re just not seeing the results you want. Join me for this three-part free webinar series. Register now at jumpconsulting.net/scale. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale. I’ll see you there.
Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump. Everybody and welcome to episode four of Bella in Your Business. I’m Bella Vasta with Jump Consulting and I’m so glad that you’re listening to me today. I wonder, where are you listening to me? Are you listening on your computer, maybe your laptop in the house while you’re folding laundry, driving around in your earbuds while you’re walking a dog? Shoot on over to facebook.com/bellainyourbusiness. Like the page and tell me where are you listening. I’ve been on quite a rampage today explaining to people how valuable podcasts such as this one could be and what kind of things people are listening to.
I found out that pet sitters are listening to everything from sermons to TED Talks to Comedy Central on Sirius Satellite Radio to podcasts and webinars and YouTube clips, all kinds of things. And I hope that if you’re one of those people, you add me to your library as well. You can just go to iTunes and search for Bella in Your Business, and you can add the episodes to your repertoire if you will. Or you can go to Stitcher if you are a Stitcher member. That’s a free app that has tons of podcasts on it. I listen to a lot of Marcus Sheridan over there as well as Peter Shankman, who has a podcast interviewing entrepreneurs on all of their mistakes, and his premise is that nothing is really a mistake in business as long as you learn from it. And my friend Peter, I love that idea. In fact, if you even want to see more from Peter Shankman, I landed a ten-minute interview with him face-to-face over Google Hangout. You can shoot on over to my Google profile page and hit the YouTube videos, and you can see it there.
Alright, so catching you guys up, it is now November, if you can believe it. A lot of you pet sitters are hitting it out of the park. I hear you’re up 30%, 40%, 20%, all kinds of crazy amazing things, and I am just cheering along with you. I am so excited to hear that. I’m so excited to see you guys growing your business and making the adjustments to make your business work for you. A lot of you have been asking how I can keep going when I’m going through my own personal crisis. I’ve been very transparent and open about that. I have a beautiful baby daughter named Olivia, who’s currently 110 days in the NICU, and she is such a little trooper. She was born at 12 ounces, 10 inches long, and is now six and a half pounds, and holy cow can that girl pack a punch. We’re just working on her lungs developing right now. But I go to NICU every single day. So if you add in the days that I was in the hospital leading up to her birth, I have been going to the hospital for 115 days in a row now.
To say that it’s a habit is an understatement because habits start after 30 days of doing something. Did you know that? In any case, I have started this thing called Stoplight Confessional. I have not been able to blog as much as I’d like to because I haven’t been able to sit down and crank out on my keyboard. So what I’ve been doing is I hit a couple of stoplights every morning, and I pull out my iPhone and I video myself. And I give you kind of my thought for the day. I call it Stoplight Confessional. They last like about two minutes or so, or however long it takes for the light to turn green. And it’s pretty cool. You can head on over to facebook.com/jumpconsulting or even facebook.com/bellainyourbusiness and you can see some of the videos I’ve got going on there.
My feedback that I’ve been getting is that they’re inspirational, they’re thought-provoking. I give you some tips and tricks on apps that I see really help me in my business, such as MileIQ, which is a great app to track your miles, as well as some good ideas that cost you nothing except for your time to gain you and your business more exposure for the holidays coming up. So we’ve been pretty active online, and I’m really happy that as my life has become a crisis, honestly, I’ve been able to tweak my businesses, both pet sitting and the coaching, to fit my lifestyle. Both have continued on just as normal. It just is a little bit different than it used to be, and that’s okay. And the best part about having a business, I believe, as you learned in the last episode, is to have it form towards your lifestyle and your liking because you are the one running the business after all, right?
So today I’m going to take a different approach, and I’ve collected a bunch of questions from you guys specifically for this episode. So the first one comes from Laura, and she says, “Hi Bella, my question is at what point would you hire employees and how do you transition your clients into allowing them to come to their home?” That’s a great question, Laura, and one that I definitely address in the fourth lesson of the Employee Quick Start Program that you can find on jumpconsulting.net. It is a four-week program designed to be worked on for an hour a day and then plus your homework. And it comes at about 60 pages and two hours of audio, or we could do it one-on-one, one hour a week for four weeks. But it’s basically designed that at the end of four weeks you have everything you need to know and prepare for in order to have employees. The only thing you’re left with is finding the actual person.
So how do you know when you need to hire employees? Well, that’s kind of different for everyone. I’ve worked with some pet sitting business owners that have hired them right out the gate. It’s kind of the chicken and the egg question. Does the chicken come first or does the egg come first? It really depends on your outlook. Do you want to start off with all this help and kind of get them built up? Or some people have this myth that in order to have employees, they have to guarantee them X amount of dollars per week or per month. That is just a myth, you guys. It is a fallacy. It is a self-prohibiting, stinking-thinking kind of thing. And I want you to believe that. It really comes down to you and your goals and what you want. So if you want to run out the gate with employees, there is no law that says you cannot do it.
I made the mistake where for some reason I was looking for some golden ticket or sign or something that I wanted someone to tell me, “You need employees.” Well, that came in the form of being offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica in July, which in Arizona is one of the busiest months of the entire year for me. Well, I didn’t want to let that opportunity go to waste. So I quickly scurried, and I hired an IC, yes, an IC. And I understand that many of you are screaming at me right now, “Bella, you can’t hire an IC!” You’re absolutely right, I contracted them. So I contracted with an IC, and the more I got to realize what a true IC was, the less I wanted one. But it helped me get past that one moment, which was the need to actually go on this trip, and I was able to take the jump.
But then I waded through all of these waves, and I had no idea who to go to, what to do, what workman’s comp was, where to go, how it worked. I didn’t know anything. So I had to struggle through it the whole time. I didn’t have anyone showing me how to do it, let alone in the pet sitting world. Nobody at that time had ever explained how to get employees. In fact, at that time in the industry about five years ago, hardly anybody had employees. Everyone was doing independent contractors.
So Laura, back to your question: when should you hire and when should you hire those employees? Well, my dear, only you can know that. Hopefully, you don’t reach the point where you’re completely burnt out and desperate because making a desperate move doesn’t always yield the right results because then you’re forced to make decisions out of desperation. And that’s the last thing you want. At the very least, know this isn’t a clear answer, I would encourage you that if that’s something you’re going to move towards, build the foundation for it.
And by foundation, I mean make sure that your structure, your pricing structure, and your services line up with that. What do I mean by that? Well, if you’re going to have day visits and overnights and you’re going to offer those, say you’re a pet sitting company, then I believe that your day visits and your overnights should coincide with one another. You shouldn’t have an overnight that starts at six o’clock with visits running until eight or nine o’clock. Your overnights should start when your day visits end. And that’s because you can have one person working for you doing both of the jobs instead of two people working for you doing two jobs. It’s easier and more efficient in my opinion.
The other way with pricing. Right now, if you are a sole proprietor and say charging $15 a visit, that is in no way going to yield you any profits, let alone any money for yourself or dare I say savings for yourself. We are putting in so much hard work and energy for our business. I firmly believe that you should be not only paying yourself but saving money for yourself. $15 isn’t going to cut it. So if you’re a sole proprietor and you’re starting out and you definitely know that you’re going to end up having staff one day, make those prices able to support that staff.
And that’s also something that I can help you out with. Just go ahead and post on the Facebook wall and I will help you with that, I promise. The next part of your question, Laura, is how do you transition your clients allowing them to come into their home? Simple. Guess what, Laura? You are booked. You’re booked. A client calls and says, “Hey Laura, can you come to my house?” “I’m so sorry, Mary Jo, I am booked. But I have a great person I’m going to send. I’ve trained her personally. She’s like my right hand. She’s amazing. You can go to the website. You can see her bio. You can see her video bio.”
You can feel really comfortable with her, and I just know that you’re going to love her as much as I do.” You have to say it with confidence, and if you are not confident, if you’re nervous or insecure about it, they’re going to hear that, and they’re not going to be confident. You have to fake it until you make it. You have to know that if you’ve done the work, you’ve screened the person, you’ve trained them, you’ve set the right expectations, then you have to trust your system. The clients will follow your lead.
So that’s how you transition them, Laura. You show up confident, you make it sound like it’s a good thing, and they’ll follow suit. You can’t say, “Oh, I’m really sorry, I can’t do it, but I’ll send somebody else.” That doesn’t work. You have to say it like it’s an upgrade. Because in truth, it is an upgrade. That’s how your business grows.
Alright, the next question comes from Jennifer, and she says, “Bella, I have a question. How do you handle it when someone owes you money and you can’t get them to pay? I don’t want to be mean, but I feel taken advantage of.” Oh Jennifer, this happens to the best of us. No matter how long you’ve been in business, you will have clients who don’t pay or who delay paying. The best way to handle this is to make sure your policies protect you before it even happens.
Number one: always get paid up front. I can’t emphasize this enough. This prevents 99% of problems. When I was running Bella’s House and Pet Sitting, we required payment before the first visit started. If they didn’t pay, they didn’t get service. Simple as that. You can be polite but firm. “Our company policy is that all payments must be received before services begin.” When people know that up front, there’s no confusion, and if they forget, you can politely remind them.
Number two: automate your invoicing. Use software like Time to Pet or Power Pet Sitter or whatever system you’re on to automatically send reminders. It’s professional, it’s consistent, and it takes the emotion out of it.
Number three: if someone still doesn’t pay, you can send a written reminder — short and to the point. “Hi Mary Jo, I hope everything’s okay. We noticed your payment for last week’s visits hasn’t been received yet. Could you please submit payment by Friday so we can keep your account in good standing?” That’s it. If they ignore that, send a firmer one. And if they still don’t respond, stop services immediately.
And number four: if they still owe you money after that, send them to collections. It’s not worth your time or stress to chase them. There are small agencies that specialize in small business collections. But honestly, most clients will pay after the second reminder because they want to keep using your service.
The key, Jennifer, is to have your policy in writing, make sure every client signs it, and then stick to it. People respect what you enforce. If you bend your own rules, you’re training them that it’s okay not to follow them.
Okay, next question. Amanda asks, “Bella, I feel like I’m losing my passion for my business. I used to love it, but lately, I just feel drained. What do I do?” Oh, Amanda, that’s a big one. And it happens to every business owner, especially in our industry where we’re giving, giving, giving all day long. You’re pouring yourself into clients, pets, and staff, and sometimes you forget to pour back into yourself.
The first thing I want you to do is step away for a bit. Take a day off, even a weekend. You don’t have to fly anywhere or spend money. Just disconnect. Go for a hike, read a book, spend time with family, or even just sleep. When you’re constantly in your business, you can’t see it clearly. You need space to think and breathe.
The second thing: reconnect with your “why.” Why did you start your business in the first place? Was it for freedom, flexibility, love of animals, or to be home with your kids? Write that down. Literally write it out and put it somewhere you can see it every day. When you reconnect with your why, it reignites your purpose.
And third: delegate. If you’re feeling drained, it’s often because you’re doing too much. You’re doing things you don’t enjoy or that aren’t your zone of genius. Hire help. Even if it’s part-time. Maybe it’s a virtual assistant, maybe it’s a pet sitter, maybe it’s someone to handle scheduling. The more you offload the stuff that drains you, the more energy you’ll have for the things that light you up.
And one last bonus tip: talk to someone who understands. Join a mastermind, get a coach, talk to another business owner. Sometimes you just need to vent to someone who gets it. That alone can bring so much relief and clarity.
Alright, next question. Katie says, “Bella, I’m thinking of raising my prices, but I’m terrified I’ll lose clients. What should I do?” Oh, Katie, that’s such a good question. I hear this all the time, and I want you to know something: raising your prices is not a bad thing. It’s a sign of growth. It means your business is evolving.
Here’s the truth — if you’ve been charging the same rates for more than a year, you are losing money. The cost of living goes up, gas prices go up, everything goes up. If you don’t raise your prices, you’re actually making less. And the clients who value you will stay. The ones who leave were not your ideal clients anyway.
When you decide to raise your prices, the key is communication. Give them notice — at least 30 days. Be professional and confident. You can say something like, “In order to continue providing the highest quality care and to keep up with increasing costs, our rates will be increasing as of January 1st.” That’s it. You don’t need to over-explain or apologize. You’re running a business, not a charity.
And if you’re still nervous, start small. Raise by $2 per visit. You’ll be surprised how few people say anything. Most of them will just keep booking. The only person panicking about it is usually you.
So that’s what I have to say about that, Katie. Raise those prices, own your worth, and don’t apologize for running a profitable business.
Whew, I love these questions. Keep them coming. This is exactly what I want these episodes to be — interactive, real, and helpful. If you want to ask me a question for a future episode, go to jumpconsulting.net and click on “Contact,” or shoot me a message on Facebook at facebook.com/jumpconsulting.
Before I go, I want to leave you with this thought: your business is a reflection of you. When you take care of yourself, your business thrives. When you invest in yourself, your business grows. When you have boundaries, your business respects you.
It’s not selfish to build a business that serves you. That’s why you started this in the first place — to have freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment. Don’t lose sight of that.
Alright jumpers, that’s all for this episode of Bella in Your Business. I hope you found it valuable, and if you did, please take 60 seconds to leave me a review on iTunes. It means the world to me and helps more people discover this podcast.
Until next time, keep jumping.
Thanks for jumping with Bella in Your Business. For more information, free articles, free coaching sessions, and more, go to jumpconsulting.net. And remember, Bella’s got your chute.