Episode 133: How To Transform Your Pet Business In Just 365 Days With Becki Davis

Becki founded her business, Prefurred Pet Care Services, in 2016 after an incredibly difficult period of personal change and loss. Her hobby quickly became serious, and Prefurred is now an award-winning business employing 13 people! Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss The way that we respond to life, not react to it, determines what happens to you now and in your future. We have to make the lives that we want, and not just wait for it to fall into our laps. Show Highlights Who Is Becki Davis? [2:20] What happened with one of your IC's? [3:20] What was it about the Employee Quickstart & Bosses In Charge Mastermind that helped you? [5:45] What's the difference between a regular pet sitter Facebook group & the Bosses In Charge Mastermind? [7:45] What did your business look like in December of 2017 and what was the big goal you set for yourself in January of 2018? [10:30] How did being able to look back at all the progress you made over the past year make you feel? [13:15] What advice do you have for other pet business owners that want to transform their business, but aren't sure how? [15:50] Tell us your story about when you were waiting tables and you learned that the restaurant was closing. [18:00] Links Jump & Scale: http://jumpconsulting.net/scale Becki's Success Story: /success-story/ Becki's Website: Prefurredpetcareservices.com/blog Jump Consulting Mastermind: /mastermind Use coupon code "BECKID25" for $25 off your Mastermind subscription! Share The Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ http://jumpconsulting.net/scale Transcript: This is episode 133 of Bella in Your Business. Before we get started with today's episode, I want to know: are you burnt out trying to hire employees? Or maybe you want to hire employees but you're just terrified of that boogeyman that does not exist in the closet. Well, this episode is sponsored by my free three-part webinar series, Jump and Scale Your Business, and I would love to see you there. It's a must-attend if you want staff, you want to grow, you feel like you're held hostage, or you have high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net/scale. 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. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I've got a special treat for you. Becki founded her business, Preferred Pet Care Services, in 2016 after an incredibly difficult period of personal change and loss. Her hobby quickly became a serious business, and Preferred Pet Care is now an award-winning business enjoying 13 employees. I can’t even believe this because every time I talk to you, you've grown more and more. She is one of the strongest people I know and has been an inspiration not only to myself but to many other fellow masterminders and pet sitters all around the country. I've watched Becki completely transform herself and her business every single year, and I'm just so excited to have her on today to help motivate and inspire all of our listeners. Becki, welcome to the show. Hi, Bella. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. You are truly someone that a lot of people should look up to and aspire to be, not just because of what you've been able to build but because of how fast it's been. In just two years you've achieved so much, but during that time, you've also had a lot of personal stuff going on that you never let stop you. Now that being said, I know we were just talking before we started, and you said, “Frazzled, that everything’s going around”—and that’s just life, right? But the thing that I love about you is that you don’t let that hold you down. So why don’t you tell our listeners, for those who don’t know you, a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry? Sure. So I am Becki. I started my business, Preferred Pet Care Services, here in Central Pennsylvania. We’re based around the Harrisburg area. I actually started my business in my hometown, which was a really exciting thing since my mom and her family have lived there for generations. That’s definitely something that’s helped me out. We started with just me, and quickly—about six months of me being solo full-time—I realized I needed help. I really couldn’t do it all by myself. I sort of took the easy way out and hired a couple of ICs, and about five months after that, I wanted to transition them because it just wasn’t exactly what I wanted for my business. I had a really bad experience with one of them, which I was really fortunate didn’t tank my entire business. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? So it really showed me basically that the sitter I had—I’m pretty sure she didn’t do the overnight. She didn’t stay at the house at all. She had left the dogs for like sixteen hours on the first day. And the client’s toddler had been in the bed with them the night before they left, so they found toddler toys in the bed where my sitter was supposed to sleep. So probably no way that she did. I was really lucky that I was already in the Employee Quick Start and had already decided that this was a change I wanted to make for my business, but that really lit a fire under me. I saw just how much liability it opens you up to—not being able to track where these people are and not being able to guarantee that they’re doing what my client is paying me for. So we switched to employees, and then I was terrified to hire. I switched two of my ICs to employees and was fortunate that they stayed. I tried to keep going, just the three of us for a little bit, but it really was just way too much. We were all super burnt out. So we started hiring—and hiring was a whole other shift and fear-inducing thing: “How do I know these are the right people? How can I be sure?” I just had to keep rolling with it because I knew eventually it would sort out. I think a lot of building my business has been a lot of failure. It’s been a lot of challenges and a lot of needing to keep going, continually looking at your process. If something’s not working, change it. That’s where the mastermind has been so helpful for me. Before we get there, though, I want to back you up just a little bit. You mentioned the Employee Quick Start, and some people listening might not know what that is. That’s kind of when you and I first connected because we did the pop-up group of the Bosses in Charge Employee Quick Start program. All those questions you were saying—how do I trust someone, how do I know it’s going to happen—and your relationship becoming BFFs with failure was really pivotal in that time period, right? Yes, it’s so true. What was it about the Employee Quick Start that helped you, and how would you describe it to our listeners in your own words? Especially doing the Bosses in Charge as the mini-mastermind, it gave me this whole community of support. I finally didn’t feel isolated anymore in my business. Owning a small business for me to that point had felt so isolating. I felt like I had nowhere to go when I had these questions or when something didn’t work. How would I fix it? How could I figure it out? My family was so tired of hearing me complain about work stuff at this point, for sure. I think my mom is more thankful for the mastermind and for Bosses in Charge than I am. But it gave me that foundation. It gave me somewhere to turn. It gave me that community. When things got hard and things didn’t work out—because that’s life, right?—the more we grow, the more we take on. Things shift. But it’s always about addressing issues as they come up and facing challenges. It gave me that outlet, so much encouragement and inspiration, and knowing that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only pet sitting business owner who had gone through these struggles. There were other people I could ask and follow their journeys as well and learn alongside people who supported and held me accountable. Let me ask you another question. You talk about isolation and knowing that you’re not alone. Some listeners might be thinking, “Well, I have some Facebook groups I really like where we just go in and complain all the time, right? Misery loves company.” What’s the difference between a group like that and something like the Employee Quick Start or the mastermind? The secret sauce is being solutions-oriented. In your group specifically, even in the Jump Consulting page and the I Own a Pet Sitting Company with Staff group, yes, we all need to vent. We all want to relate with other pet sitters and say, “Can you believe this client?” But the difference with Bosses in Charge and the Mastermind is the conversation turns quickly to, “What are you going to do about it?” Yes, this sucks, and you’re right to feel the way you do, but how can we fix this? How can we change our processes? How can I make sure that in a week I’m not coming back here with the same problem again? It’s about figuring out how to fix those issues in our businesses, and that’s been total game-changing and eye-opening. Something I appreciate is that as the coach or mentor of the group, I can come back and say, “Yo, Becki, how’s it going with this?” and track it. You don’t get offended that I’m checking in. There’s resolution to challenges. Sometimes the resolution is still a failure—it doesn’t work and it takes a few more tries—but the difference is that everybody wants to jump in and give opinions and solutions so you can learn from it. That’s a huge part of how the mastermind has helped me grow my business. Instead of being stuck in problems,