The dog walker dream - Charging a flat monthly fee.

I know of a few daycares who charge a flat monthly fee for their services. You pay a set amount and you are promised x amount of walks, x amount of daycare time, etc. My dream is to be able to charge a set monthly fee and here are some of the benefits I see to it:

* You can schedule your spending around a budget

* Your employees can schedule their spending around a budget

* You will save at least 100 hours a year if not more in time not spent doing billing (and how much is 100 hours worth to you? Thousands of dollars!)

* Your clients will like knowing what their bills will be ahead of time so there are no surprises.

Of course some clients will balk at a flat fee especially while most of the country is still in a recession. But I do feel there is a lot of power to this idea and it would make all of our lives so much easier!

This post isn't meant to layout a solution to this billing method, just to raise the idea. I'll write another post in the future to try and address what I feel it would take to pull it off, thanks!

Want to join a discussion about this subject? CLICK HERE

Interview With PetSitUSA:

The following is a Q & A I did with PetSitUSA: http://ping.fm/HGJh6

The nightmare of a pet service? When a dog walker or pet sitter calls out sick shot notice!

I can't think of anything more stressful than when a walker or pet sitter gets sick short-notice and can't work. Sure I have emergency plans in place, backup walkers, help, etc. but it's still so consuming:

* I have to alert all the clients on the route that they will have a backup walker and we might need to cut time

* You need to get all the proper dog notes to the backup walker(s) (I use Google Doc's for this)

* You need to get the keys to the backup walker(s) and they should already be labeled with the proper dog's names (though sometimes they will not be)

* All the while you need to keep running your company too.

And this all sounds orderly enough but what if you don't have a backup that day (I'll need to have active walkers eat up the walks and/or cut time on walks to do so and will have to alert all dogs to this, though crated and/or sick dog can't be cut)? And what if some keys aren't properly labeled? And what if the dog notes are not up to date? You can have a lot of chaos on your hands. Days like this are the reason I'm so strong with my walkers about updating their dog notes, labeling their keys and being in touch with me about how they feel. If they even feel a little sick I want to know then, not when they can barely stand. I've also taken an initiative to keeping my walkers healthy with their nutrition, the clothes and shoes they wear.

What have your experiences been? And what are ways you have come up with to combat this issue? Thanks!

Who can be your best friends in the pet service industry?

Who can be your best friends in the pet service industry? Your competitors! Try and get to know some of your competitors...

Customer service? We don't give no stinking customer service! (an excerpt from "The Dog Walker & Pet Sitter Bible")

“In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday.” - Robert DeNiro in the movie “Casino”

You don’t have to go very far to experience bad customer service. Just think about it for a moment. How often do you receive good customer service? When you call your cable company? When you go out to dinner? When you call your property manager? If you routinely receive good customer service than you’re in the minority because polls show customer service has become very poor in this country. Because I provide customer service to my clients for a living, I have a unique view to judge the customer service I receive. I am routinely dumbfounded at how poor it usually is.

So what can you do about this with your company? A lot! From the very beginning you can set a tone with your company of providing a high level of customer service to separate yourself from your competition and from the expectations of many of your clients. Astound your clients with the high quality of customer service you provide. This doesn’t mean you should let clients walk all over you; it just means when a client has a legitimate complaint or concern make sure you address it in the manner you would like your own concerns answered.

Every time I have a bad experience with customer service, and they are plentiful, I promise myself that I need to offer better service with my own clients. If there’s anything good about how bad customer support in this country has gotten it’s that it will be easier for your company to stand out with good customer service.

BUY THE BOOK

If a pug can go green can't you?

If a pug can go green can't you? http://ping.fm/4PtTq

A recent review of our book on PetSitUSA.com:

You can checkout the review here.

The Next Generation Of Workers - The Millenials:

Want to better understand the next generation of workers coming into your work place? Watch this video: Watch the video!

Add A Facebook Storefront To Your Website:

Want to add a facebook storefront to your pet service website? Check it out: http://ping.fm/K2pua

What motivates me to provide good customer service? Receiving Bad Customer Service:

One of the things I love about owning my small business is that I have a lot of control over the community wherein I work. Whenever I receive poor customer service (which unfortunately is a lot), sure I get angry like most anyone would but then I get my thinking juices going. I try and take the negative energy created by receiving such terrible customer service and turn it into something positive for my own company. I tell myself, I have to never have a customer feel the way I just felt, at least if I can help it. Receiving poor customer service yourself can really be the best education on improving your own customer service.

View Our Q & A on DogTipper.com:

I Recently did a Q & A with Paris of DogTipper.com and I'm very happy with how it came out. You can click the following link to view the Q & A.

How to start a dog walking company - marketing:

There are two things a dog walker wants to always have with them, their leash and some business cards. Here are some low cost options for creating your business cards:

* Vita Print

* Staples

GREEN OPTION: We have all of our promotional materials printed by GreenerPrinter.com and I highly recommend them for your business cards and all other promotional materials too. They use recycled card stock, soy based inks and they also happen to do an amazing job!

Quick Thoughts For Your Pet Service:

* When a dog walking or pet sitting client leaves your company they're likely never going to come back, so do everything possible to keep them.

* Offer your dog walking and pet sitting clients casino customer service. Clients love free walks and your quick attention to their problems. 

* Small touches like knowing the dates of their dog's birthday or giving them a present when they have a baby create a personal bond.

* Have lots of clients and want to give them all gifts at the same time? You can find low prices on pet products here: http://www.petedge.com/

The Dog Walker & Pet Sitter Office - Be Productive, Not Busy:

I think many of us have this instinct where we feel guilty if we're not working on our businesses ever second of the day. I for sure used to be that way but I've started to believe in the philosophy that it's more important to be productive than busy. This will be a continuing post with ideas to help save you time and here is one:

Save time on your typing: Always typing the same answers to people over and over again? Save time with "tetxtexapander" (FOR MAC) from Smile on My Mac. This software allows you to create small 3-4 letter abbreviations that stand for large blocks of text. It's faster and can be more useful that your email programs signature feature.

Wondering if changes to your pet service website would give you more customers?

I think it's easy to get complacent with our websites, especially if they look good and people seem to enjoy them. But what if you could make small changes to the layout of a few pages on your website without changing the design of your site? And in doing what if you could increase the number of new clients you get from your website? You'd definitely do it right? But maybe you're like many and you worry that if you make the slightest change to your website you'll ruin it and/or mess up your Google rankings. Well Google's Website Optimizer provides a wonderful alternative to testing out variations on your website. This is how it works:

1. You take an existing page from your website.

2. You take a new page or a variation of the existing page on your website.

3. You take a results page where you want people to eventually end up on your site. It might be your contact page or a shopping cart if you're selling an item.

You follow Google's simple instructions and you are able to see which of the two pages leads to the most conversions and then you'll know which page is better for your website (:

Click the following link to learn more about Google's Website Optimizer.

Want to make your dog walking and pet sitting client applications more professional?

Want to make your client applications more dynamic? Try adding a fillable form to a pdf version of your application. A great software to do this is PDF Pen Pro (for MAC only!). PDF Pen Pro is also great for editing pdf's in general too. You can learn more about using PDF Pen Pro here.

Are Live Streaming Video App's Right For Your Pet Service?

Live streaming video app's might be an interesting feature to utilize for your pet service. If not now maybe in the future but for now you can learn more Justin.tv or Ustream.

Spring Time Cleaning For Your Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Website:

Spring time is here and it's time to clean up your website. Check your key pages like your home page, your about us page, your vacation holidays page, etc. Is the information on them current? If your client's are looking at information that still pertains to last year it looks unprofessional. Stay on top of your website and have things reflect the time of year. We just put a new image on our home page that promotes running services now that it's nice outside. A website that is actively updated with fresh content is alive and moving and a place your visitors will want to keep coming back to.

Want to increase the prices of your pet service but scared to because it's a recession?

A big problem I find in the pet service industry is that most companies and walkers never raise their prices. Inflation never stops going up and neither does the cost of living but yet so many dog walkers and pet sitters are charging the same prices they did 5 years ago. I think it's very important to raise your prices over time but maybe you scared to raise your prices right now with the recession? If you're scared about angering your existing clients you can do the next best thing and raise the rates for all new clients who come into your company. I think a $1 to $2 rate increase is usually acceptable and I have experienced little to no loss of clients when I've increased prices. Once the economy gets better you can bring your old clients' rates up to the new ones.

How To Start A Pet Sitting Business/Dog Walking Business - Social Networking

Here are some easy and “free” ways to add community features to your website:

- This is an excerpt from "The Dog Walker & Pet Sitter Bible"

o Start a Twitter Feed (website: http://twitterfeed.com/) and Twitter account (website: http://twitter.com/): Twitter is a great place to condense all the new things going on in your company. When you make new posts your followers will receive emails with your new posts automatically. You can also put a live Twitter feed on your website where users can view all your recent Twitter posts. I’d check and see if your company name is available as a user id on Twitter.

o Google Friend Connect (website: http://www.google.com/friendconnect/): Google offers free software you can add into your web pages giving clients the ability to comment, rate and discuss items on your website.

o Facebook (website: http://www.facebook.com/): In full disclosure I am not an active Facebook user. I do not have my own personal Facebook page and I rarely use the company page I have. But there is no denying that Facebook is on fire these days. On Christmas Day 2010 Facebook surpassed Google for most visitors on the web that day. That’s impressive to say the least and with that many people logging onto Facebook I would definitely try and utilize a page on it.

o Disqus (website: http://disqus.com/): Disqus is a free “comments” software you can add into your web pages. It is a little bit more flexible than Google’s Comment and Rating Software and also allows users to have their reviews shoot straight into their Twitter accounts, etc.

o Vanilla discussion boards (website: http://vanillaforums.org/): Vanilla is a wonderful open source discussion board you can add to your website. It has a lively user community who come up with useful add-ons for your forum. This software does require the ability to edit CSS and PHP files. If you don’t know how to do that you could probably find someone to configure a forum for only a few hundred dollars.

Mobile blogging (Blogger):

Just imagine if your client goes away on a sleepover and they’d like some feedback on how their dog is doing and what do they receive? A video of their dog at home lying on its back in ecstasy as its tummy gets rubbed. You can rest assured the client will now rest easy and again this shows you are digitally connected and that will impress clients.

What's a Good Indicator Of The Employee Your Prospective Dog Walker Or Pet Sitter Will Become?

A good insight into the makeup of your prospective walkers is how they speak of and treat their past and present employers. If a prospective walker is presently working another job you can see how much respect they give their present boss. When you ask the applicant how much notice they need to give their present employer before leaving the job listen closely to their answer. Do they show respect for the position they are about to put their present boss in? Or do they show no concern at all? How do they speak about their present boss? Or their past bosses? Do they go out of their way to speak badly about them? These are all very bad signs and I'd make a strong mental note. When I think of those applicants I hired who spoke badly of their past bosses, almost all of those walkers ended badly here. If they had problems with their past boss(es) and left them short-notice they could just as easily do it to you...

What's a good way to keep your dog walker or pet sitter happy with their job? Keep them engaged...

Having a problem keeping your dog walkers and pet sitters happy and engaged in your company? I was, so what I did was try and involve their passions outside of the job into their daily lives on the job. If you're like me you have a lot of truly creative and talented people working for you. But most of them do not want to dog walk or pet sit for the rest of their lives and are pursuing careers in their free time. Why not combine their love for dog walking with their career pursuits? Here are some examples of how I've done just that:

* I had a photography enthusiast take wonderful pictures of all the dogs in our company. The project was extremely fun for the walker, put more money in their pocket and gave our company endless photos to use on our website.

* I had one of our walkers who wants to make movies shoot a promotional video for our company and the music was provided by a musician in our company. They loved the project and the video has been well received and has produced new clients.

* I've involved walkers who want to be dog trainers and vet techs in the training of my potential walkers. This added responsibility has kept these walkers intellectually stimulated here and they are able to practice their skills at teaching others. Having walkers who can help me train the prospective walkers has freed me up to do my own projects.

* I'm presently working with a walker who is a very talented comedian and writer on creating a viral marketing video for our company.

* I'm also working with a walker who wants to open their own daycare one day on a new bill keeping method she has developed herself on her Blackberry. We are going to simulate the idea for a few weeks and then once it's ready I'll have her teach all the other walkers how to do it on their phones.

These are just a few examples of side projects I have done with my walkers and highly recommend this approach, thanks!