Posts Tagged ‘Animal’
Author: admin
Everyday someone asks me, “How do you start a pet-sitting business?” I try to answer their question succinctly. But the truth is, starting a pet-sitting business, or any business is not always a succinct process. Following are 21 tips that I know can lead to pet-care business success in any economy.
1. Accept what you don’t know. Not everyone who starts a pet-care business is an expert on every type of household pet. Be honest with clients who call requesting care for a pet you’ve never cared for. Your honesty and commitment to learning from them will go a long way in building long-term trust in you and your company.
2. Commit to learning about business. Unless you’ve run a series of successful small businesses before, you must create a self-education plan for yourself. No matter how much you love animals (and they love you) your business will flounder without attention to the mundane details of accounting, sales, marketing and filing.
3. Have a realistic budget. Set up a realistic budget for running your business. Be honest about how much money you need in order to pay your bills and invest in your business. Many pet-sitting businesses close because the owner did not evaluate how many visits they would need to perform in order to meet their basic financial needs.
4. Evaluate the competition. Make sure you understand what the other pet-sitters in your area are already doing, and what you can do better or more efficiently. If there are no other pet sitting companies in your area, find out what your potential customers currently do to care for their pets when they can’t be there.
5. Set realistic rates. Yes, you love pets and you can’t believe that you can get paid to have fun – that’s what a great many star athletes say too, yet they manage to make millions of dollars each year. You won’t likely be able to draw clients in by charging thousands of dollars for your services, but you won’t be able to serve pets well if you quit in 6 months because you need more money to survive.
6. Listen to pet-lovers. Ask pet owner’s what is most important about their pet’s care. Never imagine that you know everything – a pet owner always knows their pet best. Listen and you will learn how to serve them better.
7. Enjoy the people. I often joke that “Until that puppy can write a check, I work for his Mom!” And it’s true. The people who love their pets are your customers – even if you don’t see them. Check in with them and find out how they feel about your service. Make sure they understand that you are happy to work with them and you appreciate being part of their care giving ‘family.’
8. Make business decisions. You are in business, so treat yourself like a business owner. If you intend to work as a sole proprietor, make a decision to work only with the clients that contribute the most to your bottom-line.
9. Build Alliances. Work with the other pet-sitters in your area. If you need a back-up or you are booked, you need to know the other quality caregivers who service your area. You can ruin your great reputation simply by recommending someone who doesn’t live up to your standards.
10. Build alliances with other small business owners in your area. Who better understands the ‘downside’ of pet ownership than the dry cleaner or housekeeping service in your neighborhood? Their businesses are based partially on the pet-owning clients in your area. Ask to place your cards in their shops, or if you can run put a flyer in their monthly bills sent to their clients.
11. Serve the client, not your ego. It’s a heady experience to feel the power of running a business and sometimes you will think you know what’s best when caring for someone else’s pets. Realize that you need to ride the fine line between educating customers and talking down to them.
12. Be genuine. Everyone wants to work with someone “real.” When people are making decisions about letting a stranger into their home to care for their most precious possession, they want to feel that you are a real human being with an understanding and appreciation of their relationship with their pet. You need to be a business person with a heart – have all your forms and policies in place, but let your personality shine through.
13. Believe in yourself. This is the most important success factor I have found. Define your success by your rules and wake up every day with the knowledge that you can and will succeed.
14. Ignore the naysayers. Plenty of people are going to doubt you when you tell them this is your goal. Don’t listen. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and never stop moving forward.
15. Create systems to work smarter. Everything can be systemized to help you get everything done. Make a list of all your ‘must dos’, ‘should dos’ and ‘want-to-dos’ and determine how often they happen (annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily). Sit down with a calendar and plug in the activities that will accomplish your lists.
16. Network. Just like building alliances, you need to step up your ‘face-time’ in your community. Investigate several networking opportunities in groups that are industry specific (like pet-rescue organizations, pet-sitter networks) and business or community specific (like the Chamber of Commerce, or NAWBO). After visiting several, select the ones that are most effective for your business – both in terms of referrals for new business and for educational purposes.
17. Evaluate. If something is working (or not) for you – find out why. Ask questions of everyone – your happy (and unhappy) clients. Find out what keeps happy customers coming back. If someone decides not to hire you for their pet’s care, ask them what influenced their decision. If their decision was based on an area where you can’t compromise – you won’t provide every other day service for cats – move on. If it’s something you can improve upon – they thought you were too abrupt on the phone – fix it! Get to the heart of what drives your business and take time each day to improve.
18. Set goals and action plans. You must know what your objectives are for you and your business. When you envision your life in a year, three years and ten years, what will you be doing? How will your business be running? Whether you intend to serve ten clients for life, or you want to establish the top pet-sitting franchise in North America and Europe – you need to have a goal and a plan.
19. Find your niche and stick to it. When I started peggiespets.com, I was intimidated by narrowing to a niche. By defining your niche and marketing to them, you are not turning away other business (our niche is big dogs and puppy potty training) you can continue to accept all the business you want that is outside of your niche (ask all the terriers, birds and rabbits we care for!).
20. Strive for success everyday. Never compromise your ideals to meet someone else’s expectations. The reason you started your own business is because of your passion, so always stand by your convictions and work hard to exceed your expectations each day.
Author: admin
Someone said that a pet is the only being in this world that you will love more than yourself and how true that is! If you own a pet than perhaps you know better how mush you love them. Pet owners leave no stone unturned to ensure that the pet that they love so much gets all the attention and love that the need. Taking care of a pet whether it is a cat, a dog or any other pet takes a lot of time, effort and hard work. Now it may happen that footing the vet’s bill can prove to be very costly for you and to take care of this by taking insurance for your pet. Unlike humans, pets cannot say when they are suffering form any kind of problem and this is where a real pet lover will understand what his or her pet is going through. As owners, you need to be very careful about this and if you find any kind of abnormal behavior from your pet, you must see a vet immediately.
Like humans, they also suffer form aliments and it is very important fro the pet owner to understand and find out what is bothering them health wise. Pets can suffer form different types of health and medical conditions and you can opt for a pet insurance that covers several aspects. Pet owners know that the bill of the vet can add up dramatically and after the treatments, you will find that you have to pay a pretty large amount to the vet for the treatment and that is why opting for a pet insurance makes much more sense. Therefore, the first thing that pet owners need to do is find out an insurance broker that will provide them with the kind of insurance cover they are looking for their pet.
The whole idea behind pet insurance is to ensure that as a pet owner you are prepared to meet any kind of emergencies that you may face while looking after your pet. Today you will find that more and more pet owners are opting to take a pet insurance to make sure that their pet gets all the treatment it deserves in case it is diagnosed with any kind of ailment. The advancements in the field of medical sciences have insured that treatments for almost all type of ailments are available today. All you need to do is make sure that you have the money to take care of your pet and even this can be arranged with the help of pet insurance.
You can opt for cat insurance, dog insurance or pet health insurance depending on the kind of pet that you have. The pet insurance company will offer you with a wide range of pet insurance policies. All these policies will have different options and you must make sure that you read all this thoroughly and find out which policy you would like to take for your pet. There are some pet insurance policies that cover the advertising cost and reward money that you may need to put up if your pet is lost somewhere. Now pet owners must be familiar with the number of times the have lost their pets and the cost accompanying this.
Insure your dog with a Churchill pet insurance quote
Author: admin
If you own birds and keep them in an enclosed area, filtering the air you and your birds breathe is just as important as proper housing, food, and water. Here are 7 reasons why filtering the air your pet bird breathes is a necessity.
1. Birds’ respiratory systems are very easily clogged by airborne particulates. Clogged airways foster disease and infection. Birds instinctively hide signs of illness so that other animals don’t see them as weak and ideal as prey. In many cases once your bird develops symptoms, the condition is grave and the bird cannot be saved.
2. Their air passages are so effective at delivering oxygen that birds can become ill very rapidly when exposed to airborne chemicals, smoke, and other gases that can sometimes be present in your home. Fumes from a burned Teflon pan can be fatal. Making sure that you are able to filter gases as well as particles is crucial.
3. If you have more than one bird, it is even more important to clear the air because the additional volume that is produced by several birds can make the entire population ill, and their owners as well.
4. Bacteria and viruses travel most often by attaching to airborne particles. If the air is thick with dander, this makes it easy for disease to move from one host to another through inhalation and/or ingestion. And even though many viruses are smaller than the .3 microns that HEPA filters can remove, by clearing the air of particles you are also greatly reducing the number of pathogens as well.
5. There are numerous other airborne particles that are common in the cleanest of households that can also stand in the way of your bird’s good health. Household dust, dust mites, mold and mildew spores, pollen, and dander from other pets are just a few. Removing these pollutants from the air will increase your bird’s chances of staying healthy.
6. Now let’s focus on the people in the house. The protein found in bird dander is one of the most common allergy triggers. Your feathered friend will only stay healthy if there is a healthy human to provide top notch care.
Filtering the air with a medical grade HEPA ( which stands for high efficiency particle arresting) filter will remove dander (as small as .3 microns) that is invisible to the eye, but let’s an allergy sufferer know it’s there by causing watery eyes, congestion, itchy nose and throat and a general discomfort when close to the birds. Clean air means you feel better and are able to take better care of your bird.
7. Some birds are more susceptible to diseases that can be transferred from birds to humans. Constantly filtering the air to remove these germs greatly reduces your chances, your bird’s and your family’s chances of becoming infected.