Episode 83: Balancing Business & Family With Mompreneur Katie Westerfield

Joining us today on Bella in Your Business is Katie Westerfield of Homeward Bound Pet Care out of Historic Centerville, Ohio. She is an entrepreneur (and mompreneur) in the Pet Industry. She is well versed in juggling life and business ownership as a mother of four and wife. In this episode, Bella and Katie discuss the struggles she has faced and how she became a success while managing to raise a family and be a superstar mother! Biggest Takeaways You Don’t Want To Miss: The moment you realize you need a staff is when you are turning clients down. They will always find someone who will be able to fit their needs if you can’t. That is when you need to grow to a point where you can hire someone to fill in the gaps. Knowing how to hire and retain staff is key to success. You need to fully invest in them as a person, support them individually and in the workplace. Motivate them to do the job, coach them instead of harping or nagging. You want them to feel like they can come to you. You don’t want to always be a slave to your phone, but you don’t want to miss clients and hurt business. That’s why you need a reliable management team to pass along some of the responsibilities. Being open to change is important to growth. It’s a privilege to be able to have a staff and it can be scary to grow, but it is extremely important. A staff is not a burden, but a great asset to your business. Your business will never grow unless you can delegate your workload. Don't forget to separate your emotions from your business. You have to know when to move on from things that aren’t working, regardless of how much time you’ve spent on it. Always keep in mind where you want to go and continue to move towards it. Do not lose your positive mindset no matter setbacks or naysayers, just go for it. If you fully believe you will succeed, you will. You want to have options, you don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket. That’s why you need to have more than one person that you rely on to help out. You could have one bad egg hold your business hostage. You may have to fire someone who is not a good fit, or you may have a worker or their child may fall ill. That’s why you need to have more than one option. You never want to have your hands tied in a situation because a staff member didn't work out or is unavailable. Show your staff you appreciate them. It’s easy, a simple text message if you know they are upset. A little gift for special occasions like wedding anniversaries, their kid's events, or birthdays. You need to be able to separate a barrier between staff and friendship, but still, let them know your door is open and you are there for them. Knowing that someone cares goes a long way in helping them succeed. Show Highlights: The benefits and drawbacks of running a business from home with children [4:45] Struggles of hiring and retaining staff [7:20] Delegating your responsibilities to your staff [8:40] Being open to change [14:30] How mindset plays a big role in growth [17:30] The business success and the importance of having a staff [20:00] Ideas to reward your staff and show them that you care [22:30] Tweetables: [Tweet ""If something is not working in your company rewrite what you’re doing, change your process.""] [Tweet ""It feels great to be able to extract money from the economy and insert it to these awesome people that work for you.""] [Tweet "“You have to constantly keep looking forward.”"] [Tweet "“Everyone controls that mindset. If you think you can’t, you won’t. If you think you can, you will.”"] Links: Get to know Katie and the Homeward Bound Pet Care team! Find them on the web at HWBPetCare.com Follow Homeward Bound Pet Care on Facebook 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 83 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 have Katie Westerfield with us. Katie is the owner of Homeward Bound Pet Care out of historic Centerville, Ohio. She's an entrepreneur in the pet industry and she's well-versed at juggling life and business ownership as a mother and wife of four children. We're going to talk about the struggles she's faced and her success and how she's overcome them today. Katie, welcome to the show. Katie:Hi, thank you for having me, Bella. Bella:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for being here. I know many of our listeners are pet sitters and dog walkers and we're all struggling. Every single day we struggle and we succeed, but it's always kind of really inspiring when you get to hear other people's stories and think, wow, if she did it, I could do it. So let's just jump right into the middle of it, Katie. Take us back to when you said you were driving through the Badlands with your husband and just decided, you know what, I'm going to start a pet sitting company. Tell us about that moment. Katie:Sure. We were in the middle of a really bad snowstorm and he decided it was time for his nap. And I'm driving this big Dodge, you know, through nowhere. There's nobody around. And I just really had the time to myself and to think. I had just left my dream job essentially with the fire industry. And what did I want to do next? And at one point somebody had said, “Hey, I wish I had somebody to let my dog out,” when I was doing that for work. And, you know, my dog had been in for a really long time and I'm like, maybe I can solve this. I wonder if there's anything like that around me. And so, you know, I just kind of decided like, hey, we're going home anyway right now, we're driving back to Ohio, and Homeward Bound—like that's my favorite childhood movie. You know, and that's essentially what we'd be doing. We'd be going to people's homes. So the name seemed to really fit me and what I wanted to do and I just kind of went with it. Bella:That's incredible. So you just went home and just started pet sitting? Like, how did you get your name out there? What kind of vision did you have for it at the time? Was it just to make money or was it to grow it to what it is today? Katie:It was not initially to grow to what it is today. I'm really happy that it did end up this way. It was more just, you know, making me the little extra money. Like we had two children at the time. It was kind of more a hobby thing. I love animals. I enjoyed it. It was like, why not get paid for it? So I went home, I did a lot of research, kind of looked at pricing. I had no idea where to start. What does somebody even pay for that? You know, let alone the ability to have it grow to what it is today did not even touch that with a ten-foot pole. It was honestly, what is my pricing going to be like? What do I do for a website? And my first website was horrific. Fully admit it. I think everybody needs to start somewhere. Yeah. You know, and then it was just a matter of getting that Facebook page launched, getting out there, and just trying to see trial and error. Bella:So what happened between when you first started and then you realized—like, do you remember that moment where you're like, “Shoot, I really have something,” or “Shoot, I really need to make this something”? Was there something that happened in your life that it was kind of ride or die? Katie:There's been a couple. I mean, this is for seven years, so for kids, I'm sure you can imagine all the roller coasters. You know, the moment I think I first realized I needed staff was when I realized the moment you tell a customer no or a client, whatever you call them, no, you end up losing them. They'll find somebody else and somebody who's always going to say yes. And so I think when I got pregnant—it was like five months or so after I opened the business—I got pregnant with our third child. And it was kind of like, you know, I can only do this for so long. I know I'm going to have maternity leave and that kind of thing. So I started finding somebody to help me at that point. I only needed one to fill in here and there. And so that was the first moment where I'm like, okay, I've got to be able to pay somebody. Bella:How do you think being a mom has changed the way that you look at things? How old were the first two kids when you had started the company? Katie:Three and four, roughly. Maybe four and five. Bella:Yeah, so they could feed themselves. Katie:Maybe in like kindergarten or something. Kindergarten, preschool. Bella:Yeah. So you had that little time, but here comes like a brand new newborn and the maternity leave and the pregnancy leading up to it. What kind of mind shifts did you go through with like, “My gosh, I have this other baby, this business. How am I going to manage all of that?” What did that look like for you? Katie:Your whole mindset changes when you have a newborn. You obviously need your rest and everything else, but at the same time, you also don't want to leave. You want to be able to stay home and you have this dream of, you know, can I do this from home? Obviously, the business was built from a home base. Can you manage staff and everything else? And so that's when it really turned, okay, I need multiple people. I need to be able to fill their time. I need to grow and I want to stay home. I want to still have my independence as far as money and a business and that kind of thing, but I want to be able to grow too and stay home. And it's a privilege to be able to do that. Bella:It absolutely is. That's a great word, Katie—privilege.