Episode 306: I Have 20 Years Experience In The Pet Industry. Here Are 3 Ways To Cultivate A Thriving Business

20 years of experience in the industry comes with a whole bunch of advice and some ideas of what not to do. If you are looking to build a thriving business you not only need to know the correct steps but the right mindset to get you there. Today, I hope you don't take this lightly, and learn from my mistakes and triumphs. Building a thriving business begins and ends with you, your mindset, and your willingness to make it happen. Today I am bringing to you 3 ways you can build a thriving business that you may not have thought of, or may be afraid to try. Either way, if this episode resonates with you, it was meant for you. I thrive from seeing my clients thrive in their business and today I am sharing with you how I achieved the success I have today, so you can too. Biggest Takeaways: 4:13 Become best friends with fear 7:15 Build your team 10:05 Surround yourself with good people 16:36 DM Me! Recommendations: Negative energy surrounding you and your business will only hold you back from being able to build a thriving business. There are people right now in the Mastermind group that are doing the things you are truly dreaming of. If you feel alone in your business, I urge you to check it out and find the positivity that you have been missing. Years of questions answered a community of strength and positivity and a place where you are always surrounded by good like-minded people. To build a thriving business, you need to surround yourself with an energy that matches that. Links: Better Marketing With Bella Bella Vasta Instagram Mastermind Group Transcript This is episode 306 of Bella in Your Business. Hi there, I'm Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you've seen me speak on stage or read my book The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you're about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin' in this next episode of Bella in Your Business. So what do you say? Let's get ready and jump. Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta and, you know guys, I've been in this industry for a very long time. In fact, it’s actually 20 years this year. Back in 2002, I had transferred from the University of Arizona to Arizona State University. And when I did that, it meant that I moved back home. There were a couple of instances that made that happen. But while I was moving back home and I was the eldest, I have a younger brother who’s four years younger than me. So he was still in high school, and my parents were terrified. I don’t know if any of you guys out there had parents that ruled out of fear—sheer fear. They literally have told me in my adult life, “We didn’t want you to get hooked on drugs and we didn’t want you to get HIV.” Like, that was the time. So my parents were extremely strict. I lovingly just say that, you know, my dad’s Sicilian and that kind of explains it all. But when I moved back in, I was a junior in college and I had a boyfriend—a very steady boyfriend, like my first love. And we liked to go karaoke. We used to go karaoke multiple times a week. And I liked to stay out until the bars closed, but my parents didn’t like that. The reason I’m telling you this story is because I had a lady across the street, Sherry, and I used to babysit for her in high school and part of college. And she had a friend, Julie, who had two white dogs—Pomeranians, I would soon learn. And she traveled for work. She traveled almost every week—like Thursday or Tuesday to Friday, or Monday to Wednesday, practically every week. She wanted someone to sleep overnight with her dogs. She had a hot tub, she had a nice, cute little patio home here in Arizona. It was amazing. At the time, she paid me $25 a night to sleep over with her dogs. And at that point, I would have paid her. That’s how I got into the industry, you guys. Well, fast forward 20 years and national awards and selling that business in 2016 with 10 employees and then starting coaching in 2007. Now we’re here, and there’s a lot of lessons that I’ve learned—both personally during it all and now. There was a gal locally, Angela, who used to do things like—I used to always say, “Bella’s is the best.” And then she started to use the thing, “Angela is the best.” And I was like, “No, no, Angela is awesome.” We had gotten nationally and locally award-winning, and she would literally put on her website, “We’re not going to brag that we’re nationally and locally award-winning.” There were a lot of tough lessons that I learned in my younger years that I definitely would have handled a lot differently today. So today’s podcast episode is all about—in my 20 years of experience in the pet industry, here are three things that I’ve learned to cultivate your business. And guys, this is the epitome of—we’re walking down a road, and I’m saying, “Don’t step there. I twisted my ankle or broke my leg and it hurt. Don’t do that.” So I’ve got three things, and I would honestly say a lot of this is mindset. The first one is definitely mindset. The other two are things that you can do, but you can only do them if you’re in the right mindset. And I want you guys to take this heavily, not lightly, right? So the first thing is this: you’re always going to have fear, but where it lives in your head matters. And what you do with that fear matters—it determines how fast you will or will not scale your business. I want you to become best friends with fear. If you say that you have none, you’re lying to yourself, to me, and to everybody else. It’s something that every single human on this earth deals with. But the way in which we choose to deal with it drastically changes our outcome. I’ve had people in my life over these 20 years who have wanted to do things but haven’t, out of fear—things like buy investment properties or start a business or change their jobs. They’re fearful of what’s on the other side of that decision. So therefore, they don’t do it. Or they get trapped in anxiety, which is worrying about the future, right? And they worry so much about it that it traps them like a cage that they’re locked in and the key is thrown away. I want you to ask yourself right now: what fear do you have in your business, and what role is it playing in achieving your hopes and your dreams and your goals and your why? What you do with that fear—does it paralyze you or motivate you? Think about it, you guys, because this totally is the difference between you staying in the same spot in your business year after year and you being like a random Matt Clark of Tail Chasers, who had a dog walking business and then bought and moved into a dog boarding facility where they live on-premises. There’s this whole facility where they also do grooming, training, and then opened up another high-end daycare location—and then opened a pet food franchise. They did all of this during COVID. Were they scared? Hell yeah, they were scared. But stay tuned for tip number three, because that’s also something that helped move their business. This episode isn’t just about me—it’s about you. These are things I’ve learned that your colleagues are actively doing. And I want to encourage you to get out of fear mode, to get out of paralyzation, and leverage fear to help move you forward. Now, as you’re doing that, clearly you can’t do it all by yourself. You’re only one person and you only have 24 hours. So how do you get more hours in the day? You bring people onto your team. You bring another person on—you now have 48 possible hours in one day. Isn’t that amazing? Think about it that way. Your business and you are like, “Oh my God, I don’t have enough time.” Well, if you bring someone onto your team, now you’ve just expanded the capacity of hours that your business gets attention per day. Stop doing it yourself. Stop spending an hour like Leia was doing in Florida, in Canva every morning, using up all of her creative energy by trying to make her own graphics. Then she joined Better Marketing with Bella, and now she’s got it all taken care of for her. You can’t stay being the visionary of the ship—the captain of the ship—seeing what’s ahead if you’re down on the deck mopping the floor. If you’re involved in all the little tasks, it literally takes your eye off of the 30,000-foot view. It’s why your business isn’t moving forward—because you haven’t hired and trusted the team that you’ve hired. Everybody says they want to delegate. Everybody says they need more time. This is the way to do it—it’s building the right team. And you know what? You might kiss a few toads before you find the right one. That’s a fact of life, especially as a leader. And if you’re doing this for the first time, it’s not always going to work out the best. I can’t tell you how many project managers I’ve been through until I found the dream team that exists today. If you follow me on IG, you recently saw our team meeting in my story—all the faces on there. I am ridiculously blessed. I’ve got a team that has bought into Jump Consulting, and it didn’t happen overnight. So guys, stop DIY-ing it. Start building that team. I mean an office manager, someone to help you out with human resources and onboarding. If you need someone, join the Mastermind—we have a resident HR person in there every month. Hire someone like Better Marketing with Bella to take care of your professional marketing efforts so that you show up looking like a professional, not just a photo book of random pictures with text and copy that you don’t even know works. You have to build a team. Now the third one—and it ties into something I said earlier—is to surround yourself with good people that will help you succeed. I know this sounds so remedial, but stay with me. Limit the energy-sucking vampires in your life. I heard it—I said that and you thought about someone in your life.