Episode 82: Scaling Your Business Into A Well-Oiled Machine With Randa Clark

Today's Podcast features the inspiring Mompreneur,Randa Clark, from Tailchasers Pet Heroes Inc. Randa started Tail Chasers Pet Heroes Inc. in 2004 with the mission to help people discover, develop, and nurture the human and animal bond with their pets. She offers dog walking, pet sitting, dog training, and pet first aid classes to pets and their families in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Tailchasers Pet Heroes Inc. received the Super Service Award from Angie's List in 2016 as well as the People Love Us On Yelp Award. In this episode, Randa and Bella discussed some of the strategies that Randa used to turn her pet sitting company into a pet business empire. Do you struggle with multitasking, being a control freak, or successfully balancing the business between you or your spouse? Then this episode is for you! Biggest Takeaways You Don't Want To Miss: Instead of devoting your entire life to the business, make your business fit into YOUR life. Scheduling business operations around your day-to-day tasks like picking up the kids from school or spending time with family will help you find that work-life balance that all business owners so desperately need. Also, be sure to give yourself some time each day to work on advancing the business to the next level. It's easy to get caught up in all of the pet sits and dog walks, but ensuring you're taking strides in your business instead of running in place is crucial to success. An office manager is NOT going to be exactly like you - and that's okay! An office manager is a person that is going to allow you to really grow and scale your business so much more than you're able to if you continue to do day-to-day operations yourself. At the end of the day, there are qualified people out there that can answer the phone and answer emails just as good as you do - you just have to find them (and give them the tools to succeed!). Empowering and valuing your office managers to make them feel needed is what will allow them to be successful in their role. A fact-based mindset is a key tool that will help you deal with crises and emergencies that inevitably arise in any pet sitting company. Taking the emotions out of your response and deciding what you can do to mitigate the situation factually will allow you to make the best decisions for your client. In other words, you can't change the past, but you CAN change your response to it! The more time you can spend out of the field, the more time you can spend advancing your business. Randa's advice? Build up a route of clients, and then hand it off to an employee! The more you do this, the more income you'll have on hand, and the less time you'll have to spend in the field. The goal is to have the client's alliance with the COMPANY and not to the DOG WALKER. Show Highlights How Randa learned to multitask to get work done quickly [2:30] Evolving your business and focus; Pet Sitting Vs. Dog Walking only [3:15] Decision making for a better business [7:00] The Good and the Bad of Hiring an Office Manager [10:45] How to let go of control [15:00] Managing a business with your spouse [16:15] Separating yourself from the field for success [19:00] Tweetables [Tweet ""Accept the things you can’t change.""] [Tweet ""The business is a beast that behaves how it wants to.""] [Tweet ""You never know what is going to happen.""] 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: Bella:This is episode 82 of Bella in Your Business. 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 with Jump Consulting, and today I am here with Randa Clark from Tail Chasers Pet Heroes. Randa and I have known each other for quite a while now and she is one of the most dynamic mompreneurs that I know out there. Randa, welcome to the show. Randa:Thank you, Bella. Bella:For those of you who don't know you or haven't seen you online or in the Facebook groups, explain to us where you're from, where your company is, how long ago you started. Tell us the background. Randa:We are in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. We started our business around March of 2004. It officially opened and actually got clients then. We started everything a little bit before that, but that's when we actually started actively working. It started out as just me, and I got a few employees on board, and then a couple years later, Matt joined on with me. So now we are a husband and wife team, and sometimes the two kids help us out with invoicing and that sort of thing too. Bella:I love that. The reason why I wanted to have you on today was exactly kind of what you just alluded to. It's that you and Matt are doing this together, which is rare, but yet also pretty popular in our industry, but not a lot of people talk about it. I love how you guys tag team it. I also know that you have two little ones and do homeschool. And if you follow—I follow your Facebook feed—and I'm always like, how does she do it all? You always seem to be doing the most interesting things, whether it's the Lego movie or displays or the homeschooling co-ops that you call. Can you give us an insight to what a day in the life of Randa and family is like and how old your babies are? Randa:Actually, Miles is across from me right now doing his schoolwork, but Miles is eight and Dylan is three. So the way my days usually work is I get up in the morning and usually the kids get up around the same time as me and we take Dylan off to preschool. And then I handle all the morning stuff because we mainly do dog walking. So a lot of what our morning routine is, is getting on our email and voicemail and seeing who canceled and making sure all the dog walkers know not to go there if they've canceled. And then I return all the client emails. Usually I only spend about an hour, sometimes two hours in the morning getting back to everyone because I've set it up in a way that I can do everything quickly. We've worked with our clients so that they can communicate with us electronically so that I can get the emails out quickly. Because sometimes when you get on the phone with people, they end up telling you everything about their day and their week, and it takes so much longer. We've learned that doing things electronically via email really helps to streamline everything. It also makes it easy for me to transfer to an office manager or someone if I know that I'm not going to be available for that day. The rest of the day I spend working with Miles, and then I handle any issues that the dog walkers have while they're out. Then I'll usually take an hour or two in the afternoon to work on advancing the business and figuring out new ways to do marketing or new ways to get more training into our employees. Bella:I love that. Basically what you did is you made the business fit into your life. Did you consciously decide you wanted to only be dog walking, or were you also pet sitting and then you kind of cut it out? Tell us, because I think a lot of our listeners are like, well, that's great that you do dog walking, but I have pet sitting clients too and I can't just give them up. Was it a conscious decision or something that evolved over time, and why? Randa:It completely evolved over time. That's a lot about what works with this business—you really have to be flexible. It's its own beast and it's going to behave however it wants to. What we learned is we had a lot more dog walking, and so that's where we put a lot of our focus. We still absolutely do pet sitting. However, we've adjusted things and raised the prices to kind of slow down supply and demand so that our lives aren't complete chaos. And since we've got a little bit more income coming in on the pet sitting side, it helps because now we can pay managers to handle the crazy things like, “I locked my keys in my car,” or “I locked my keys in the client's house and now I can't get in.” We have other people to help us with that because you can't be on 24/7 without completely losing your mind. You have to be able to step away even if it's only for an hour. That hour makes a huge difference when you know no one's going to call you during that hour and say something crazy that's going to put you on high alert and make your day go nuts. A lot of what we've learned is you really have to be flexible and your plans have to be fluid. So yeah, we go to Legoland in the middle of the day or Six Flags, but I also know that there's a chance I might get a call and I might have to leave. And my kids know that too, but they also know that they get to do a lot more fun things than most people do. Bella:Yeah, they do. I have mom envy for what you do with your kids. I think it's amazing and I think it's so much fun. I’m like, I wish we lived near each other. So you said you started the business back in 2004, was it? Randa:Yes. Bella:So tell me about pre-momhood versus after momhood. How were you running the business and what did children do to help shift your business mindset? Randa:Completely changed everything, especially with Miles. When I was in labor with Miles, I finished my dog walking route while in labor and went and did paychecks because I wanted to make sure that everybody got paid before we had this baby. It was a good thing I did because I ended up with preeclampsia and I was in the hospital for five days on my back and couldn't move. Luckily, I mean, everything really happens for a reason. We already had it set up so that the dog walks would be handled.