Are you feeling the midsummer madness and the pressures of running a pet care business? Is burnout inside your pet business dragging you down just when you should be enjoying the sunny season?
Welcome back to another episode of Bella In Your Business! This week, Bella dives into the chaos of summer schedules with 12 powerhouse tips for combating burnout inside your pet business and reclaiming your peace. Whether you’re struggling with chaotic client demands, feeling the pinch of inflation, or lying awake at night worrying about your business, this episode is your strategic rescue.
Tune in as Bella shares practical, quick, and dirty tactics to:
- Reevaluate Your Goals
- Outsource Smartly
- Automate Processes
- Boost Workflow Efficiency
- Invest in Your Team with Pet Care Team Training
Plus, Bella shares personal insights and success stories from business owners like you who have transformed their approach and seen remarkable results in dealing with burnout inside their pet sitting businesses.
Listen now!
Timestamps:
[00:00] Coping with financial stress and burnout.
[05:21] Outsource non-core tasks to reduce burnout.
[07:37] Are you using scheduling software effectively?
[12:07] Monthly pet care team training and support.
[16:09] Invest in employees, flexible work, feedback, assess.
[18:35] Team building, technology leverage, and preventing burnout.
Notable Quotes:
“You should not be in the weeds doing things that are below your pay grade. You are the business owner, the entrepreneur, the visionary, and stop doing the little things that are not revenue generating.”
“Identify tasks like data entry or invoice processing or customer inquiries and use your systems… Use methods and processes and figure out where your bottleneck is and how to remove that dam from the water so the water can flow.”
“Sometimes it’s just a matter of verbally processing it and getting it out of your head and getting that energy through your mouth and just talking about it. I know that’s one of the things that helps me tremendously.”
“There’s no sense in listening to podcasts or getting motivated if it does not inspire action. And so that is my action call to you today.”
Resources:
- Follow us on social media (a special birthday announcement and unbeatable deals coming soon!)
- Mastermind
- Pet Care Team Training
Did you love this episode?
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Transcript:
Woo. Welcome back to another episode of Bella in your business. Um, it is the summer, and, uh, we have some really cool things planned for you guys. But, um, I know that if you guys are anything like me, and I know that, you know, there’s lots of moms and dads out there, and there’s lots of single moms and dads out there and non single moms and dads out there. Everyone’s just, like, running around amok for the summer, right? And we, you know, a lot of our schedules change. A lot of our clients schedules change. If you’re doing pet sitting, it’s like, really busy. Because everyone’s traveling for the summer.
There’s a lot of stuff going on, right? And there’s a lot of demands on our personal life, things we want to do, like this past weekend, July 4, and we’re all in different places of our business. Some are still working holidays and not getting in on just relaxing, or maybe even having a drink at a barbecue because they know that they have to go out and check on some pets, or they’re just running around because they’re short staffed. Or maybe you’re not busy. Maybe you’re laying awake at night thinking, shoot, everyone else is busy. Why aren’t I? I’m a failure. This isn’t working. Whatever it is. There are times in our business where we feel like everything is working really well.
And there’s times where we feel like the whole world is crumbling down, the walls are closing in on us. You’re laying awake at night wondering if one person quits. What am I gonna do? You’re looking at your bank account and you’re like, wow, I. I really wished that I was automatically paying myself x amount of dollars and not having to do draws based off of how much is in my bank account. I wish that I had money to pay for all this extra stuff, or these extra trips, or do whatever it might be. You might be looking at inflation or going to the grocery store thinking, wow, like, things are getting so expensive and, and, and people aren’t wanting to pay my prices, or whatever it might be. Burnout is real. And we’ve talked a lot about burnout, what you can do personally and psychologically within yourself.
But today I want to talk about twelve different things that you can do inside your actual business to help with burnout. And so we’re gonna just get straight to it, and it’s gonna be quick and dirty. For those like Becky and her team of paws around Motown, you might end up taking this transcript and throwing it into AI and, you know, getting actionable items from it so you don’t have to take notes. I loved it when she told me that in one of our mastermind meetings. It was really cool. But I want to give you some food for thought. I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Okay.
So I’m going to get straight into it. Down and dirty. Have no idea how long this episode is going to be, but here we go. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re like, I don’t know what I should focus on. I think the very first thing that you need to do is reevaluate your goals and objectives. What are you doing? Are you reacting? Um. Or are you being proactive or reactive in your business? She did think that, like, burnout really usually means that you have a disconnect between your goals and your actual outcomes. Right? You feel like you’re spinning your wheels.
You’re not getting anywhere. You burned out. So I want you to consider to host strategic planning sessions with people that matter. Maybe they’re your business besties, or maybe they’re advisors that you really care about. Maybe it’s a coach like myself. Maybe it’s your fellow mastermind members. If you’re in the mastermind, get with people to try to help. Get out of outside of your head.
That’s really important. And revisit what your company’s mission, values, goals are. Evaluate whether what you’re doing with your time actually aligns with those long term objectives you want to use. Smart goals. Smart, smart. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound to realign your efforts. Communication is also key. And ensure that everyone understands in your organization, whether that’s you or maybe they’re, you know, you have employees, whatever it might be that, like, hey, this is what we’re focused on right now.
Maybe that goal is to get more daily dog walks. And so maybe you’re. You’re working really hard on the next month of flipping the people that are only doing twice a, twice a week walks to three, four, or five times a week walks instead of trying to obtain new people. Right? Have you guys ever done that? That’s like, one example. The other thing I want you to think about. The second thing is outsource tasks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
I know you know all about this. You’ve heard about it. Maybe you’ve done it and you’ve been burnt by it. Okay? I could tell you I’ve been burnt more times than I could count. But here’s the thing, you never burn me the same way, or I learn things from it and it gets better and better and better. Not everyone that you hire or you delegate to is going to knock it out of the park. They’re not always going to be the right person for the job. They’re not going to have the right skill set or talent.
It is a, it’s a trial and error for you. But outsourcing non core tasks can significantly reduce burnout. I want you to think about where are you spending your time? Are you doing the same thing every single week? Why are you, let’s say, doing payroll manually? Why? What if you were taken out of that? Who’s going to do it? Right? If you’re. You need to identify the time consuming, non essential activities that you’re doing and then outsize them to specialized people or firms or contractors. Maybe it’s your website. I know a lot of you guys are doing your website. I know a lot of you have friends, family members that are doing the websites. And I’ll tell you respectfully, those never get done in a timely manner or in a professional manner.
Almost never. And you, it could be so much better when you just have like a slack channel with your developer on there or someone that you’re like, hey, website issues. This one, this one, fix this. Boom, done. Instead of asking someone that, you know, hey, when you get a minute, could you do this for me? Um, that’s just one example, but outsourcing tasks is pretty big. You should not be in the weeds doing things that are below your pay grade. You are the business owner, the entrepreneur, the visionary, and stop doing the little things that are not revenue generating. And that is a mindset that you can’t just flip a switch one day and do it.
But it’s something that will help you get tasks off your daily life, which leads to burnout. The third one is process automation. So you need to automate the repetitive stuff. So we just talked about outsourcing tasks. So what of those outsourcing tasks and you actually automate? And I know automation often has a negative tone, but it doesn’t have to be. It will save you time and improve accuracy. And it’s not always like losing that personal touch by doing it. Identify tasks like data entry or invoice processing or customer inquiries and use your systems.
I know almost all of us have a scheduling software, but my question to you is, are you using it to the fullest of your capability? Do you have things like primary and secondaries that are included in every single client profile. Do you have things like your scheduling software has all of your people’s availability and it automatically populates who should be assigned to it? Or are you doing that manually? Still marketing? You could automate those tools. I mean, in better marketing with Bella, we give everyone all of their monthly content 15 days before the month starts so that they have time to then go and put it into a scheduling software and automate it. Right. And so the third thing is process automation. So first we’ve got reevaluate your goals and objectives. Number two is outsource tasks. Number three is process automation.
Number four is improve the workflow efficiency. You guys have heard me say this so many times, you do not want to be spending 10 hours on something that you can do it on 2 hours. So conduct a comprehensive examination of existing workflows to identify where it’s bottlenecked or inefficient. Do you end up like most of the time, as control freak entrepreneurs? Raise your hand. We’re the bottleneck. Okay. And so use methods and processes and figure out where your bottleneck is and how to like remove that dam from the water so the water can flow, so it can flow through. Why is it being stuck there? You’re inner control freak is probably one of the things that’s leading to your burnout, quite honestly.
And I know I’m going to probably get a message from a couple of you right now that say, I feel personally attacked in the most loving way, of course. Number five is delegate duties. So, delegating the workloads, identifying high stress tasks that can be delegated to team members based on their strengths. Set clear guidelines and provide necessary training. Regular check ins help monitor progress. Delegation fosters a culture of trust and professional growth, enhancing job satisfaction, overall performance. I’m thinking, well, let me slow my brain down here. Number two is outsourced tasks, and that’s like Vas Orlando, people working for you.
When I say delegate duties, this is, this is like within your team. All right? So like, I know Brenton with executive pet care. He’s amazing. He has like a career track that he like casts this vision for his organization so that people can like grow and, and grow up in it. Right? Becky with paws around Motown, she has a lot of cross training going on to the point that she’s not even involved in her like twelve step hiring process anymore because they’ve gotten that good. Okay. And so when you look at people as more of just a dog walker or a pet sitter, and you identify what you could delegate out to empower people that can help decrease your burnout. Number six, focus on core competencies.
Another way to say this is focus on what really matters, right? What are the things that you really have to focus on and figure that out. Like figure out where am I spending a lot of my time on, where am I generating the most amount of revenue, and then focus on it. Shift all of your resources, your time, your money, your energy, your people to these areas and stop focusing on the stuff. That’s not another way to say this, guys, is the 80 20 rule. Don’t be spending 80% of your time on 20% of your revenue. Okay? We want to make sure that we’re spending our time in the right places. Invest in employee development. This is also where you need to ungrasp your control freak hand.
And I say this to myself, okay, so ongoing employee development keeps the workforce motivated and skilled. Arrange regular training sessions, workshops. Encourage professional certifications. Provide access to learning resources and initiate mentorship programs regularly. Regular performance reviews and constructive feedback. Set development goals. Foster a culture of growth and reducing burnout as a whole in your whole organization. Something that comes to mind with this is, you know, those of you who use pet care team training.
Pet care team training gives you monthly emails to help support and develop and grow your employees. Monthly training, things to talk to, talk to them about. They give you four blueprints so once a quarter on how to have employee meetings. There’s so much support there that with pet care team training, not only do you get CPR, first aid and pet care certified, two certifications in under 2 hours, but you also get ongoing development. The problem is, is that most of the time, a lot of business owners that don’t have this built into their culture and their routine, they end up sending out emails, don’t forget to lock the door. Right. And it’s, it ends up being like you’re always yelling at them, right. But when you build it into part of your culture, you’re doing that and you’re developing people and they love it, and you’re going to see the cream of the crop rise.
It’s going to be beautiful. Number eight, implement flexing working arrangements. So flexible working arrangements can also alleviate burnout access. You know, our whole entire organization, like our whole industry is flexible, right. It’s not like a nine to five, but make it so that it benefits you and them. Okay, so maybe you like to work at night. Maybe that’s where it’s the best for you. So be flexible about that and set boundaries around that and say hey, guys, like, I’m going to get to you about this at a certain time.
I was actually just having a conversation with one of my team members about this when she was like, oh, my gosh, I’m so burnt out. There’s so much happening, happening in my personal life, Bella. And I just. I don’t always feel like working. What do I do? I literally told her, I said, well, there’s a couple of things. Like, figure out what time you work the best, when is your brain the least foggy? Okay. And then protect that time like you’re protecting your life, and that’s going to really help. And so when you can make your brain flexible with when you’re gonna work and not beat yourself up about it.
Just because some people get up in the office and start working at 09:00 a.m. does not mean that’s when you have to. Just because the traditional people take off Saturday, Sunday doesn’t mean that you have to. Okay? And so figure out what works for you and your life and your family, and. And be flexible about it. The other thing, number nine, that helps is regular feedback and communication. So you really want to figure out, like, with your team and you, it needs to be a two way communication about, you know, how are you doing? What’s your check in? Like? Um, are you. Are you doing okay? Or ask them for help? Hey, guys, like, I really need your help this week on X, Y, and Z.
Or, hey, I have a vacation coming up, and in preparation for that, we need this. Or we have three team members that have vacations coming up, so we’re all going to be working a little bit more. But whatever that looks like. Communication and feedback amongst those that can help you both in your organization, but also maybe even just your. Your business besties, which y’all should have, by the way, is going to really help you. Sometimes it’s just a matter of verbally processing it and getting it out of your head and getting that energy through your mouth and just talking about it. I know. That’s one of the things that helps me tremendously, is just being able to, like, verbally diarrhea of the mouth and just talk about it to a safe person.
Um, and just get it all out of my head, and I feel so much better. All right, let me refresh or, like, retell you all these things before I keep going. So, number one was reevaluate goals and objectives. Number two is outsourced tasks. Number three is process automation. Number four is improve workflow efficiency. Number five is delegate duties. Number six is focus on what matters, the core competencies.
Number seven is invest in employee development. Number eight is flexible working arrangements. Number nine is regular feedback and communication. Number ten is pause and reassess strategic direction. So a tactical pause can offer new perspectives. Think about, like. Like, your market, your market area, maybe something like, okay, we’re putting a lot of resources, or having a team member go, you know, 10 miles out in the opposite direction, but it’s only 5% of our revenue. Do we really need to develop that area, or do we need to cut back that area and bring our resource, our sitter, closer to the nucleus of our service area? And focus on that, because when you send someone so far out, or maybe you’re a solo sitter and you’re like, oh, I’m gonna drive 20 minutes to a pet sit.
In all that drive time, how many visits are you missing out on? And so you want to just figure out what your strategic plan is a little bit more, and that’ll help you, because if you’re running around with a chicken with your head cut off, like, running around, amok, amok, amok, amok, amok. I’ve always remembered that from hocus pocus. Does anyone. Did anyone ever see hocus pocus? Hocus pocus. It was my favorite movie when I was a kid, and they used to walk around. Okay, that was a side note. But you don’t want to be running around in Amok, all right? And you want to be strategic about what you’re doing. And sometimes it’s just reassessing that strategy, because sometimes life gets to us, and it’s kind of like an overgrown bush where the.
The. The arms of, like, a rose bush just keep, like, you know, overgrowing, and you got to trim it back and get it back to basics. Number eleven is engage in team building activities. This also could give you a new renew for your business. This can help you figure out, you know, oh, this person’s, like, really here and enthusiastic about the brand, and they’re really wanting to help grow us or be a bigger part of it. I had no idea. Well, yeah, you have no idea, because our industry is so remote and everyone’s always so separate that these team building activities are really important. And maybe you’re sitting on a gold mine of a person or skillset that you don’t know.
And so it’s really good to build that team just. I mean, for so many reasons. But we’re talking specifically about burnout right now, because then you can help form those bonds and get that information that you need. And the last thing I want to tell you is leveraging technology, and that’s like slack, asana, ClickUp, all that stuff. And so you might, you can put workflows in there, you can put due dates, you can look at all of these things in multiple different ways. If you like to look at in like a brain flow, like a yemenite, uh, or you want to look at it in board, or you want to look at it in a list, or you want to look at it in a calendar. However your brain works, you can do that in these things. And not only that, but when, if you establish that now as a solo person, or maybe you have one person working with you in the office, then the proverbial office, quote unquote, air quotes there.
Um, then what you can do is you have everything on this board and you can put your sops in there even if you really wanted to. Or you can create templates for things that you’re doing and it’s going to really help, like leverage the technology that you have and take some time, your personal development, your professional development. Go sit on YouTube for an hour and take some courses and learn about how to use slack to the best of your ability. Or ten great efficient ways to use slack or ClickUp or asana. Right. Just take a minute to learn it to make sure that you’re using it to the best of your ability, because without it, you’re a chicken with your head cut off. You are writing things down in a notebook, you’re writing things down in the notepad on your iPhone. You are, you know, trying to remember them all in your head, which, God help you, God save you.
I know that feeling. That’s why I write everything down. These are all things, these are all like little things that you have to be intentional about. And even if you. My challenge is just pick two off of this list. I gave you twelve things to do. I’ll repeat them once again. We’ve got.
Where’s my list here? Let’s see, I have lists. Evaluate goals and objectives. Number two, outsource tasks. Number three, process automation. Number four, improve workflow efficiency. Number five, delegate duties. Number six, focus on core competencies. Number seven, invest in employee development.
Number eight, implement flexible working arrangements. Number nine, regular feedback and communication. Number ten, pause and reassess strategic decisions. Number eleven, engage in team building activities. Number twelve, leverage technology for collaboration. I want to know which one has stood out to you and I want to know which one or two you are going to pick to focus on and I want to challenge you to do it by the end of this month. By the end of this month. There’s no sense in listening to podcasts or getting motivated if it does not inspire action.
And so that is my action call to you today. I want you guys to be following us close on social media because this week we are coming up on a really big announcement at the publishing of this. It is now July 11, 2024. My birthday is in one week from today, and if you’ve been a jumper for a while, you know I love to celebrate my birthday with you. And the easiest or best way I can do that is by some killer deals. And so I have some amazing deals coming out for the mastermind where, by the way, you can get your business bestie. You can do those smart goals. You can have the camaraderie of other people who are of growth mindset, who is your business bestie, who knows your business inside and out.
If you don’t have anyone or you don’t have them all the time, you really. I want to encourage you to check out the mastermind. So follow along with our socials because there’s a unbeatable offer that you’re going to see for the mastermind, and you’re also going to see if you have been wanting to work one on one with me. I would love to. And I’ve opened up my calendar for some more time slots, but it is limited because there’s only a limited amount of hours in the day for me where I am giving a huge percentage off working with me. And those are going to be the birthday sales. I really hope to see some of you on there. And if you want to find out more about pet care team training, which I mentioned, it’s just pet careteamtraining.com.
if you want to learn more about the mastermind, it’s jump consulting.net forward slash mastermind. See how easy we make that for you. And until then, I will see you next week. I’m going to actually go ahead and record this next episode soon because I will be on vacation on my birthday because guess what? I too experience burnout. And I am going to go on vacation because I deserve it. Okay? Hmm. Yeah, I’m going to say that a little thing that I started saying to myself this year is I deserve it. Instead of, oh, my gosh, that’s.
I can’t believe it, I deserve it. I want you to practice that too. Next time something good in your life happens, say, I deserve that. Create those new neural pathways all right. This has been another episode of Bella. In your business, remember, when life gets you down to always keep jumping. Bye, now.