How have you separated your pet business brand from the rest of the pack (yes pun intended. )?
Joanna Price is the Owner of Woofin’ It Pet Concierge. It is her vision, tireless work ethic, and passionate commitment to pets that has grown her business from the seeds of an idea to the best Dog Walking and Pet Sitting service brand in Frederick, with 5 team members. Additionally, her commitment to exceeding expectations and delighting clients is evident in their references (affectionately referred to as WOOFERENCES). She and her team truly have fun with your pets and the “work” they all do. Joanna and her team thrive on giving pet parents peace of mind, and are truly grateful for the trust their clients have in them to care for their fur-babies!
Pet Business Vision Show Highlights
- Learn about how Joanna uses her own lingo in her pet concierge brand to make it special.
- Hear how she has stayed positive through COVID.
- Learn about how commitment to hiring helped her grow her business fast.
- Understand how her vision and why helped shape her pet business brand
Links
- Joanna’s website https://woofinitdogwalking.com/
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Transcript:
This is episode 204 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 everybody to Bella in Your Business. Today I’ve got one of my long-term clients with me, Joanna. And she is absolutely amazing. You guys, not only is she a kick-ass mama, she’s also an incredible business owner. She is the owner of Woofin’ It! Pet Concierge. And it is her vision of tireless work ethic and passionate commitment to pets that has grown her business from the seeds of an idea to the best dog walking and pet sitting service in Frederick with five team members. Additionally, her commitment to exceeding expectations and delighting clients is evident in their references, if actually known as woof-rances. We’re going to totally talk about her vernacular today. She and her team truly have fun with their pets that they help and all of the “work” that they do. Joanna and her team thrive on giving pet parents peace of mind and are amazing at everything that they do. I’ve been watching her virtually and working with her personally for I don’t even know how long, Joanna, but I’ve just been impressed with your tenacity, with your mindset, which we’re also going to talk about today, and also your impeccable, happy branding. That’s all I can really announce it as, I’m not even sure. But welcome to the show and thanks for saying yes for being on.
Absolutely. So why don’t you go ahead and fill in those gaps for me really quick and tell our audience how long you’ve been in business. When did it start? Why did it start? And what burns inside your belly to keep going, especially during this recording when we’re in 2020, July 2020, and the whole world’s falling apart. Yeah, it definitely is. Sure. So I actually launched this business in February of 2017 and it was just me and my idea of doing it. I had been in the corporate world for a really long time. There had been some things that happened, a position that I had been working in had been eliminated. And so I really allowed myself to take the time and figure out what did I actually want that next chapter to look like in my life. So after taking a couple months, doing a lot of research, kind of trying to figure stuff out, I launched this business with kind of a wing and a prayer and myself. So that was February of 2017 and then by May I brought on my first team member and we have really just expanded and grown from that point. And that was May of 2017? That was when I brought on my first team member in May of 2017, yes.
Okay, so let’s dive into that really quick because that was three months into your business you brought on a team member, which I think says a lot because I know a lot of our listeners out there, they’ve either just started or they’ve been in the business for a while and they either have tried to hire or they’re just terrified to hire. So what made you want to hire that quickly into your business? Was it a perfect time? How did you know you needed to? And were you extremely successful your very first time? I mean, I wish I could say that was the reason. Basically, the truth of the matter is it just didn’t make sense to me not to leverage my time. At that point, I probably had seven to ten clients a day that I was doing by myself, but my kids are 20 and 18 now. And so they were in high school when I started this and I was kind of like, you know, I want to start my own business so I have more time with my family, not less. And so that kind of just started the whole, what if I get sick? What if I fall and I break my ankle? What if I want to take a vacation with my family? I don’t want to have to shut my business down because I myself am not available. I have to let people know this is a legitimate business. I’m not a lone person. We will have backup for you. We do have coverage when emergencies happen. And I think that just adds to the whole level of our clients having peace of mind that someone will always be there when we say we’re going to be there. It was just kind of all part of the plan. So May I brought on my first person and then honestly in July I brought on my second one and those two pet concierges are still with us today.
I love that so much. What I’m hearing from you, Joanna, what I want our listeners to pull from this is that you were connected to your why—you wanted to free up your time, not be bonded to the time. And I think so many of us get lost in that trap because we want to be everything. We want to do everything. We want to have control over everything. We want everything to be perfect. And we’re terrified to let those reins go. And it’s one of the reasons why in just three short years you have grown and established yourself so well because you went off running. You didn’t start baby crawling or jogging. You started sprinting and figured it out as you went because you wanted to be there for your family. And I think that’s really important, you guys. If anyone’s listening right now thinking when’s the perfect time to hire or how can I do it or when should I do it, I really encourage you to think about what Joanna just said. Go back to your why. Why did you start this business? Was it so you could be a slave to it or was it so that you actually could grow it into something that could be an asset that gives back to your life?
Now, Joanna, you just mentioned pet concierge. I want you to tell me more about the vernacular. You’re very strong with that in your branding from the very name of Woofin’ It Pet Concierge to woof-rances and all these other cute little things that you use. Did you come up with that? Did someone else help you with that? Why did you incorporate that kind of thing into it? And what kind of response do you get from the community or from your clients? Tell me more about that because I think it’s very unique to you. I think the reason that I describe ourselves as Pet Concierge is we came into this market and I was very confident telling potential clients and our current clients we are an upscale boutique company. We’re very consistent on our messaging that our relationships with our clients are what drives us. We are not in this to just do like a one-and-done kind of thing. We really work hard on long-term relationships with our clients and therefore I feel like we become each other’s families. So the fact that I’ve never used “dog walkers,” we are pet concierges because we go above and beyond every single time for every single client, every visit that we have with them.
When I launched my business, I had two teenage children, like we just talked about. And the fact of the matter is that was not who I wanted to bring onto my team. There’s nothing against hardworking teenagers, but I was looking for moms, pet parents, seniors who were active, people who understood responsibility, integrity, customer service, and compassion—understanding that pets are people’s family members. They’re not just like, “It’s just the dog,” or “It’s just the cat.” We don’t do that. And so that’s why I dove into this market being like, we are an upscale, different company than what is already existing in our marketplace. And so I’ve just gone with that.
You get me so excited because everything that you’re saying, I bet a lot of our listeners right now are like, “Yeah, me too. Me too. I feel the same exact way.” But guys, this is the difference between saying it to yourself and actually living it in what she just mentioned—messaging. Her messaging says it all. Everything from everyone calls them dog walkers. It’s different. And I bet it actually opens up a lot of conversations for you, Joanna, where they go, “Wait, pet concierge? What exactly is that?” Do you get that a lot? And how do you answer that?
We do. And I love having conversations start that way because people want to know what the difference is with our company. And I’m always more than happy to explain it. So, because a lot of times people are like, “Oh, do you do boardings? Do you do grooming?” You know, because I understand the word concierge encompasses all the services. Where that brings the conversation to is I say, look, we do A, B, and C. For all the other services that you’re looking for, I have an amazing network of professionals in this industry that I am more than happy to refer you to who can help you with the actual services that you’re looking for if we don’t provide it. We have a lot of amazing industry professionals right here in the city, in the area that I work, and I’m always more than happy to help each other out. There’s enough business for everybody here. We should be collaborative and not competitive. And I think it’s just not a scarcity mindset. There’s enough for everybody out there, and you know, a client that isn’t right for me, I’m happy to pass it along to someone else that they might be a better fit for.
So far we’ve covered the fact that you have a clear why that helped you really get off on the right foot fast and that you had a clear vision of what you wanted it to become, which only helped make your branding stronger and make you stand out. Tell me where all this mindset comes from. Do you read books? Do you listen to podcasts? Where do you hang out? What is this all about? Because this is tough, especially this year. We’re going to get into COVID and how you responded to it. But talk to the listeners that are listening to us right now that are just feeling so defeated. How do you stay you? It’s really hard. And I will say you have to do it daily. Basically, I started on the mindset path and learning about it probably about a year or so before I launched this business. Like I said, I had been in the corporate world for my entire career. And I really hated every single job that I ever had. And I said to myself, there’s got to be more out there for me. And what I came to recognize is I’m just a really bad employee. And that doesn’t mean I’m not a hard worker. It just means I don’t like working for somebody else. And so for a long time, I didn’t believe there were any options. You grow up and you’re like, okay, you’re going to graduate high school, you’re going to go to college, you’re going to get a job, you’re going to work for somebody else. When I was going through school, nobody ever even presented, hey, you could own your own business. That wasn’t even a thought that ever entered into my brain. So I just followed along the path, right? But then it was like the job I was working at had eliminated my position. And honestly, from that day, I said, this is not even a blessing in disguise. There was nothing in disguise about it. It was just straight-up a blessing.
It forced me to reevaluate and take a look at what I wanted to do. But the mindset, I guess I kind of started out just reading inspirational quotes. It started really small. I’m not a good book reader. I can’t say that this author changed my life. But I have gotten a lot of good information and really inspirational stuff from Audible books. I listen to books a lot more than I read them. It’s literally like every time I get in my car, I either put on a podcast or listen to an audiobook. I made it a point to utilize my time because everybody’s like, “I don’t have time to read.” I say, “Yeah, but do you drive to the grocery store? Do you drop your kids off at baseball?” You have to squeeze in those five minutes and get your mind to believe a different story than what you’ve believed your whole entire life.
As far as 2020 has been going, my survival mode was go, go, go from March until probably the first week in May. There was so much that I was trying to tackle and I was working every day and still waking up early in the morning and trying to stay on a routine. And then I kind of hit a wall in early May, like, “I’m actually really tired,” but it is the mindset of essentially there’s no plan B, right? What’s the saying—if you’re going to cross the bridge, you have to burn the bridge because you can’t go back. You just have to go. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I know in my mind I have to move forward. My family—this is how I support my family. This is my business. This is my source of income. So it’s literally like I’m refusing to quit. I know the circumstances don’t look great, but I have to believe in my heart they’re going to change and improve. In the meantime, I’ve just been working really hard on doing everything I can so that once that happens, we’re ready to roll, we’re ready to scale, and we’re ready to jump right back in where we were.
There’s so much beauty to what you just said. You’re not sitting here saying, “Yeah, everything’s fine.” You’re realistic about it. This is something, like you said, that you started before you even started your business. It was an intentional decision and every single day it’s an intentional decision. One of the things that has always drawn me to you is as you are in the mastermind, every time there is a call, a training, or whatever, you are front and center. You’re like, give it to me, how can I do this? I watch you as you work through it and take the parts that you want to take and leave the parts that you don’t want to take, which is totally fine because it goes back to your why. It’s like a litmus test. I see this happening from afar with you and it excites me because you have this vision, this branding, and this why. As you’re learning, you’re so much better off than someone else who’s just like, “I’m going to read everything” and not do anything, or the ones who try to do everything and then wonder why it doesn’t work. You have such a strong core why and vision that it’s beautiful to see you take things and go with it.
One of those examples is we talked about doing a campaign, a local campaign. We talked about this in Better Marketing with Bella and the mastermind, and it was really cool because you came up with this program. It was basically like the sidewalk chalk campaign that when everybody was in quarantine, there were so many sidewalk chalk drawings all over the neighborhoods. So I kind of took that and ran with it. In our local park here in downtown Frederick, I found a covered red track and I just went down there with my daughter and had her draw these pink paw prints there. It said our company name, Woofin’ It, and it was like, “Take a picture, tag us.” We gave away prizes and cute things, like to a local swimming place or a couple of free visits or 10% off your next month. But it was really fun to see our clients and people who aren’t our clients find the spot—almost like a scavenger hunt. Having them find the spot, take pictures of their puppies, tag us in it—it was just a fun thing to do while people were feeling down, hopefully helping lighten things a little bit.
And then you also did this other thing, the Everyday Heroes program, and actually got a whole PR thing around it. Explain to our listeners what that is. Like I said, during this time, I’ve been trying to work on my business instead of in my business—making improvements and adjustments in a lot of areas. One of the things I came up with was the Everyday Heroes program. It’s basically a 20% discount off our daily dog walking services for any first responder. A first responder could be EMT, doctor, nurse, teacher, police officer, firefighter—anybody who’s working these front lines for us during these crazy times. We want to make sure our community knows that we are there for them as a resource. People have pets, but when you’re working 16, 18, 20-hour shifts, that creates a lot of guilt and we want to be able to give back to our community. So we launched that program and we’ve gotten some feedback on it. We did have a press release done, and I’m still working on implementing and getting it out there for our community so they know what’s available.
All of these things are like a fighting chance. We talked a lot about campaigns in the mastermind and that’s a big part of it. You’re not just throwing a post up saying, “Hey guys, 20% off for all first responders.” You’re making it a big deal. You did videos, wrote a blog, created graphics, reached out to people about it—you made a mini marketing plan and are going for it. And then you’re surrounding yourself with other people that are also doing stuff. Tell me more about any ideas or excitement or creative juices that you’ve got from just being in the mastermind and chatting with people. Yeah, so honestly, the creativity part of it is where I really struggle. I’m a doer. I’m an operations person—I go, go, go—but to actually formulate an out-of-the-box idea, I’m not your gal. That’s why the mastermind has been so amazing for me because I love the open dialogues where people share like, “Hey, what are you guys doing about this? What kind of marketing are you doing?” It’s like the sidewalk chalk campaign—that’s where that came from. All the marketing and the really good community inspiration I get from being in these groups with other really smart, creative people has helped me so much.
I will say a big piece of the reason I think I was able to move forward during this crazy quarantining and everything was when you set up that COVID survival group for us. I needed help with what was available for business owners and our staff. It was so important for me to make sure my staff was taken care of during this time because as much as we were all like, “Holy shoot, what’s going on?” I didn’t want my staff to be left alone. I was in constant communication with them. None of them went on unemployment—they wanted to remain on staff. It was amazing staying in that group. It gave me a lot of purpose because I knew I had somewhere to be every day, on these webinars. It was so educational. Even introducing us to Profit Hero—amazing—and all the different people that you brought in to talk to us and explain, “Okay, what do we do now?” It was so educational for me. After that two weeks, I was like, “I love this.” I bet you had a long list to-do stuff after that too because we just piled it on. Totally. But the thing was, I didn’t see any other groups doing that. Even local agencies and national support groups were like, “Hey, maybe we should look into the PPP loan.” I’m like, “If you haven’t applied for that…” I’m pretty sure the first wave was all the Jump people because we were unpacking it before they even signed it, and by the time they signed it, we were already on top of it. Then other groups started talking about it a week or two later. They’ve come out with some cool things since then, but instead of being shocked and scared, you and I are very much alike—we’re like, “All right, we’ll deal with the shock later, but right now we need to stand up and be leaders.” And that’s what you did. You were a leader in your own community and over your own business and you did it scared. That’s why I wanted you on this podcast today.
Why don’t we wrap this up a little bit with a couple of lessons your business has taught you that you never really expected or are thankful for? One of them, not necessarily that I didn’t expect, but I’m really pleasantly surprised about, is when you have people on your team that you inherently trust with everything, that is everything. That is the crux of your business because you have to have that, right? You are entrusting these people to go into your clients’ homes. They’ve reached out to you, but you have to at some point say, “Okay, you’re not getting me; you’re getting different people on my staff.” If you don’t have that inherent trust in your team, then I don’t even know how you would do it. It doesn’t work. So giving that independence and trust to your team is everything. And I feel like they will give that back to you. Because it’s not micromanaging—they know their limits, I know their limits. And I will say, finding people that are better than you at things is a total strategy for me. Because honestly, the whole point of me hiring a team is I don’t want to be doing this stuff day to day—scheduling, etc. I want to hand it off to a fantastic client success manager. I brought a new one on our team last week. Once networking starts up again and we’re allowed to be in other people’s presence, that’s what I do. I like going to networking things. I’m a member of our local chamber, so I like being out there meeting people. I want to hand off the day-to-day operations to someone who does it better than me. I purposely and consciously hire with that intent because I don’t want people to say, “I only want Joanna doing this.” That’s not the way this organization works, and I don’t want people to want that. I want them to trust me enough as the owner of this company that I’ve vetted my people enough, and if I trust them to be in your home with your pet, you can 100% trust them too.
Well, that is a winning attitude. I hope that everybody hears that last part because that was so important. “I want someone that is better than me at doing it.” That mindset will get you everywhere, you guys. Just watch and look at Joanna and what she’s been able to do in just three short years. That’s incredible. Joanna, how can people go stalk or talk to you? Because I’m sure at this point they’re like, who is this chick? What is this branding you guys talked about? And I want to see how she talks about everybody on her site and in her social. So how can they find you?
Absolutely. So my business Facebook page is Woofin’ It Dog Walking. So hop on there and follow me. I am pretty sure Instagram is the same, Woofin’ It Dog Walking. And then of course, anybody can just hop on our website, which is woofinitdogwalking.com, or email me at [email protected].
Awesome, you guys. I want to thank Joanna so much for spending her time with us today and inspiring you. We also would love to know—where are you listening to this podcast? What are you doing? Are you dropping the kids off at baseball or cooking dinner? And while you’re telling us where you’re listening, tell us your biggest takeaway because I’m sure Joanna and I would love to know what stood out to you. So go ahead and message us and let us know wherever you saw this podcast posted. Also, if you love this episode, go ahead, like, share, subscribe, and leave a five-star review if you think it deserves that. I mean, come on, this episode was amazing. You guys, it is a tough time out there and I just want to encourage you—keep your head up. And when life gets you down, always remember to keep jumping.
So what did you think? Did you love this episode? I sure hope you did because I put a lot of love into this for you. The best way you can show me that is by going to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcast and go ahead and leave a review. I just might read it on the next episode. I also want to remind you that when life gets you down, remember to always keep jumping. Thanks for listening.