Episode 148: What I Would Have Done Differently If I Started My Business Today

This episode, I want to get into the six things I did wrong when I started my pet business. If you have not been listening since episode 1, I started my pet sitting company in 2002 when I found out I could get paid to sleep with two dogs for my neighbor who traveled four days each week. I didn't know anything about business and had to figure it out on my own, so I went to a lot of networking events and made friends with people who knew more than me, but I made many mistakes. I live with no regrets though because I learned a lot from those experiences and that's what I'm sharing with you. Biggest Takeaway You Don’t Want To Miss Invest in your own business and your own learning early on, it's a mind-shift, you are not spending, you are investing. What costs the most amount of money is not having the knowledge and not having the right team. Remember that your business should work for you, you should not work for it. Show Highlights Are you investing back into your business? [3:15] Are you investing in yourself? [6:30] Is it a people problem or a process problem? [9:50] Who is doing your marketing? [13:30] Did you develop your own website? [16:00] When is it time to switch to employees? [18:50] Links Barketing Solutions: barketing.co/ Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale 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’ Transcript: This is episode 148 of Bella in Your Business. This is Davis, and you're listening 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. How adorable is that? That was Davis from Space Coast, Florida. He is Space Coast Pet Services’ Melanie B.B. Haines’ son, and I love it. I take it to heart because I know a lot of you guys are listening to this podcast in many different situations. Melanie's kids actually have memorized the beginning and the ending of the podcast, and they listen to it with her in the car. I know there are a couple of other moms out there with kids that also know the whole “Let's jump!” So I said, yeah, send me an intro. I hope you guys liked that. I absolutely loved it. Davis, way to go. You have a career in radio, my friend. Great job. Thank you for doing that. All right, you guys, today I want to get into the six things that I did wrong when I started my pet business. A little bit of a background on me if you have not been listening since episode one, which was almost 150 episodes ago — I am in beautiful, sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. I started my pet sitting company in 2002 when my parents wanted to give me a curfew in college. I found out that I could get paid to sleep with two white dogs — because that’s what they were to me at the time — for my neighbor who traveled four nights a week for business. It was basically like having my own house free of rent, and I could come and go as I pleased. When I graduated college with a BA in Human Communication, I decided that I really didn’t want to work for anybody, and I had a pretty cool thing going, so I just went full-fledged doing the business. However, I didn’t know anything about business. I never took a business class, didn’t know how to balance a balance sheet, didn’t know what a profit and loss was, had no idea what systems and processes were — that was just some buzzword. I just really had to try to figure it all out on my own. I became a really big sponge, and I listened more than I spoke. I went to a lot of networking meetings and a lot of lunch-and-learns, where I was able to learn a lot of stuff and just become friends with people that knew a lot more than I did. However, I did make some major mistakes that really hindered the trajectory of my success because I was too afraid. Let’s call a spade a spade — I was terrified, you guys. I was terrified of making the wrong decision. I was paralyzed by fear because I didn’t know what the right decision was, so it actually cost me a lot of time building. Now, I also live with no regrets, so I’ve taken many lessons from them, which I am now turning over to you because no matter what stage you are in your business — whether you’re just starting your business, building your business, or scaling your business right now — these lessons apply to all of us because they’re kind of timeless. So the very first thing that I didn’t do was I did not invest back into the business. I was terrified of spending money on the business. At that time, I’d get $100, I’d put $100 in the business bank account. Actually, if I’m being quite honest, I don’t think I had a business bank account when I first started. I think it actually took me a little bit to get a separate business bank account because I felt like I wasn’t even making enough to have one, which was a total lie. So I had this business bank account, and I didn’t know how much I actually had to spend on the company. I didn’t know if I was going to have enough to pay my bills, my cell phone, my rent — I was renting a condo at the time — my car payment. I was driving around my Mini Cooper convertible, which I dearly miss and love. It was kind of like paycheck to paycheck, if you will, or check to check at the time, because I was accepting cash and check. It was just me, and I was just really scared. I was kind of brought up in an environment where I was always taught to save. I don’t know if any of you guys had some quote-unquote “mean parents” out there that made you save half of your birthday money, half of your Christmas money, half of everything for your “college fund,” but that was me. So I grew up all the time thinking, “I won’t have enough,” or “I need to save enough nuts for the winter,” if you will. When I was in this mentality, I was really afraid to spend money on the business. When I did, a couple of times I got burnt. I don’t know if any of you listening right now have ever been burnt by a purchase you’ve made, and you feel like, “Oh my gosh, it’s the biggest mistake I ever made. I wish I could get that hundred dollars, thousand dollars, couple thousand dollars back.” It’s a terrible feeling, and it kind of makes you a little gun-shy moving forward. But what I did not realize is that just buying things to buy things wasn’t going to get me ahead — but investing was a whole different thing. I didn’t want to spend money, and my mindset — this is really big — my mindset was all on spending. It was like I was giving money away and was never going to see it back again. I did not think of it as an investment where I would put money down and get even more back. These are timeless lessons because throughout our business we have to remember that things are an investment, not an expense — or at least they shouldn’t be. You pay someone to help you with SEO or a blog — well, you should, in turn, have the same goals with that person, and they should know what success means to you, and then you should start reaping those benefits. If you’re not, then you need to move on because things shouldn’t cost you money; they should be an investment. You should get it back. In our business, it’s not that complex. That’s why networking and being a part of my crew, knowing the people I know, and being able to ask me for references means I’ll give you quality people that won’t let you down — myself included. So the first thing that we all need to do is have the mindset of, “How can I invest in my company to make it better, to make me better, and to get to my goals quicker rather than longer?” Now, the next thing is I didn’t invest in my own learning. This is actually kind of funny because in 2016 or 2017, I started working out every single day through this program called Beachbody. You guys might have heard of it. I was working out half an hour in the morning, every morning. I was so on my game — that’s a whole other story, but it’s all about morning routines. It wasn’t until I started doing Beachbody and started being engulfed in this multi-level marketing MLM that I realized self-development. I realized how lonely it is as an entrepreneur. MLMs are not bad — in fact, I’d say that if you have an MLM right now, it means you’re on top of the pyramid, and the people “underneath” you are actually helping you make more money. So I want to dispel any kind of negative energy toward MLMs because I don’t want that to block what I’m about to say. Everyone involved in these kinds of things needs to keep their following motivated and excited. The amount of personal development my coach poured into me, that my teammates and I discussed, the books we read, and the podcasts we listened to — it was so mind-blowing that it actually helped me create a bunch of programs and things in Jump Consulting. I saw the power of what I could do and got out of my own head. I learned about Mel Robbins and The 5 Second Rule. Anytime you don’t want to do something, count down — five, four, three, two, one — then take action. It’s uncanny. Go look it up; it’s amazing. I learned about Brené Brown, Darren Hardy, and The Compound Effect. All these things invigorated me and fed my brain. I also didn’t hire my own coach until about a year ago — and when I say “my own coach,” I mean I spend $2,000 a month on my own coach, because I feel like my personal development, my growth, my ability to see the bigger picture, to help as many people and live out my mission as possible, is really important. But when I was a pet sitter, I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t seek advice from others, especially in our industry — it was in its infancy then. What I want to encourage you is, don’t make the mistake I did about not investing in your own learning.