Are you tired of feeling stuck in your pet business, struggling to find the RIGHT employees? Does the hiring process feel like a never-ending cycle of frustration? You’re not alone… Today, we’re tackling pet business hiring strategies that WILL change the game for you.
Finding passionate, dedicated individuals to join your team can seem impossible. After all, every hire impacts your business’s success. You NEED people who genuinely care about the pets and clients you serve.
If you’ve been overwhelmed by countless applications that don’t align with your company’s values, it’s time for a new approach!
In this episode, I’m sharing practical, actionable insights that combine hiring strategies with effective marketing techniques to help you streamline your hiring process. It doesn’t have to be a struggle. In fact, it can actually be an enjoyable part of building your dream team.
Furthermore, you’ll learn how to create a compelling employer brand that showcases what makes your pet sitting company UNIQUE and attractive to top talent, effectively using marketing to draw in the right candidates. We’ll also discuss crafting engaging job descriptions that resonate with your ideal employees and how to create a positive interview experience that reflects your company culture. This is YOUR opportunity to elevate your hiring game and leverage marketing to attract the right talent!
Ultimately, if you’re ready to take your pet business to the NEXT LEVEL with the right team in place, tune in NOW to discover the best pet business hiring strategies that will set you apart from the competition. It’s time to build the team that drives your success!
Timestamps:
[02:50] Case Study: Anne’s Business Development
[06:59] Connection Between Marketing and Hiring
[08:14] Crafting Effective Hiring Ads
[10:59] The Hiring Process as a Marketing Tool
[14:14] Post-Hiring Marketing and Employee Retention
[16:14] Challenges in the Industry and Auditing the Hiring Process
Notable Quotes:
“It’s not that it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work this way.”
“You have to be open to hearing a different way to do things. You have to be open to trusting me and walking down a path that you might not think would work, but I’m not going to tell you to do something that doesn’t work.”
“I truly want to see you achieve all of your wildest dreams. I want to see you at home on Christmas morning with your family. I want to see you Thanksgiving getting all that Turkey in you on Thanksgiving Day, not on another day, because you were so busy working on Thanksgiving.”
“I don’t care where you live. I don’t care what your area is like. I don’t care what your minimum wage is. You have to get out of your own way. And I’m telling you I could help you, but you have to trust me.”
“I’m not doing this for my ego. I’m not doing this to be right guys, I don’t even. Necessarily need to do this podcast anymore, but every single week, not only do I sit in front of my microphone and I come up with a topic, and I create the script, and I send it over to my podcast producer, and I pay money for him to create this podcast, and then I pay money for my virtual assistants to get it on my website, and then I pay my social media girl money to promote this podcast. Why? Because I truly love you and I care about you, and I want you to succeed.”
Resources:
Did you love this episode?
Make sure you never miss an episode! Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to Bella In Your Business.
Transcript:
Welcome to another episode of Bella in your business. Oh, my gosh, you guys. There’s been so much happening lately. First of all, I didn’t know if I was going to actually be able to record this week’s podcast and if I’d actually have to skip it because I’ve been so sick. But luckily, my voice is back. I might not be able to hear through one of my ears right now, but nonetheless, I’m really excited to bring this episode to you because I want to talk about two things at the same time. And we’ve talked about these two things separately many times. But if you are a pet sitting company that wants to start hiring, that’s heard horror stories, or is having a hard time hiring, or think that everything else is wrong and that you’re just perfect and right, and I say that lovingly, then this episode might trigger you.
So, yeah, I’m gonna put a trigger warning on it. It’s not them. It’s you. There is a saying that someone once told me a long time ago. It’s always stuck with me. It is. It’s not that it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work this way.
And so there’s definitely a lot of different ways to get to the goal, right? There’s many different paths. But my job as a coach, someone who’s been in the industry for 20 years, someone who has grown my own business for from nothing to six figures, and then had someone think that it was so valuable that they gave me six figures in cash for my business, someone who has helped assist people buy and sell companies. People. A person who has helped grow businesses to six figures within twelve months. A person who has helped grow hundreds of business throughout United States, Canada, the UK. I know a thing or two of what I’m talking about. If you don’t believe me, or if you need a little bit more convincing, you also, and you probably have already seen this, can go to my Instagram highlight reels and go click on happy clients, and you can see all the testimonials. Guys, I get testimonies on a weekly basis.
And I’m not saying this to toot my own horn. I’m saying this because I know what I’m talking about. There is proof in the pudding. There are people that actually are benefiting from what I’m about to tell you right now. I can say this on the podcast because it’s one me to many you. But this is where, in my coaching sessions, we get down to the nitty gritty and we really strategize for what makes you unique. Right now I’m working with an amazing woman. Her name is Anne, and we’re working about 5 hours a week together.
We just went through her entire handbook, her manual. We did her entire, all of her phases, and then we did her, all of her onboarding steps. We created her 30 day review. We created each phase and all the questions for the phases and the standardized answers or like how to score them, right? Because we’re building this as if she’s not going to be involved. That’s our goal. We did the whole orientation all lined out like an SOP. This is what we do on orientation. This is what we need to have.
This is what, what we need to say. This is what we need to collect and do. Here are all the links. This is what training is all about. This is a checklist for day training one, day training two. This is how you rate the trainer. This is how you rate the trainee. We built out all of these documents.
We have built out her hiring ads. We have uploaded them into jazz HR. We are now moving on to updating her website. Now, why are we doing this? Well, the point of this entire episode, also inspired by some of my works, that I’m doing this with this amazing woman, is to talk about perhaps why your pet sitting company can’t find good employees is because of your marketing. Now, I’m saying this, and I’m going to be really bold and you’re either going to love it and keep listening or you can turn me off and you have that choice. But I’m saying this from love. I’m saying this without sugarcoating things or worrying if I’m going to offend you, because I’m telling you right now, I’m not trying to offend you. I’m trying to real talk with you.
I’m trying to not kumbaya you or chat GPT you into an oasis where we can just sit on it and meditate because that doesn’t work. All right, so have you ever considered that your marketing efforts might be the key to attracting not just clients but also the best employees for your pet sitting and dog walking business? I want to talk about this connection between marketing and hiring because most people think that marketing is only for clients and they forget, or they only do a third of what actual marketing is about. They forget about partners and they forget about employees, and we’re going to talk about that today. So there’s a connection between marketing and hiring. So let’s redefine how we view marketing traditionally marketing is seen as a tool to attract clients and to make the sales. But in reality, marketing is way beyond that. It’s a really, really powerful thing that you can do to attract quality employees. So that when those employees come across your company, whether it’s word of mouth or maybe it’s an ad on indeed.
Which by the way, side note, if you don’t have a business email on your indeed. And when I say business, I mean, excuse me, when I say business, I mean like infoourbusiness.com, not yourbusinessmail.com. the first one is a business email. If you’re not getting seen on indeed, that’s, that might be one of the reasons why. But anyways, if someone sees it on indeed or a word of mouth, or they stumble upon your instagram, their perception of your business, and if they want to work for you is going to be heavily influenced by your marketing materials. Every message that you send out to the world shapes how people perceive your business. And it’s your social media, it’s your website, it’s your branding, it’s the way you communicate in emails and over the phone, the whole entire hiring process. Are you a hot mess typing every single email back and forth to the employee? It’s a brand new email each time or a cold template that’s just like.
And like. It doesn’t really do much. It doesn’t excite someone. It doesn’t. It just makes them feel like a number. Those all could be hindering you. So I want you to think about like crafting effective hiring ads. So this is the first thing that I really want you to think about.
I’m going to talk very general about this stuff because there’s just simply not enough time to go into the details. And the details are going to vary between who you are. For example, my client that I’m working with right now, she has a very heavy influence into pet rescues, to the fact that she will actually pay her staff up to 4 hours a week to go volunteer at rescues. That’s how she puts her money where her mouth is in terms of giving back to the community. Not everyone’s like that. And so that’s why I say it’s very, it’s very personal to everyone. But like, when you’re creating these hiring ads, the images you use matter. Images, Bella.
Yeah. You should be using images in your hiring ad. That’s another thing. If you’re saying that you’re having a hard time hiring and you’re not using images or you’re not using any supporting evidence or videos, then that is a way that, you know, you might want to try that before you go and say something doesn’t work. That could be an example of you not working or it not working this way. Right? So the photos that reflect your company’s culture and values, showing real moments from your team, group outings, team meetings, candid shots, the staff enjoying their work, maybe your work, quarterly meetings or something. The voice and the tone of your ads are also equally important. Again, finally, everyone’s getting on with chat, GPT and the likes thereof.
are you doing it in your brand voice? Do you know what your brand voice is? Have you trained it in your brand voice? Strategic posting is another crucial aspect. And it’s not just about how often you post, but it’s where you post. Regularly posting. Hiring ads keep opportunities visible, ensuring that you’re always attracting fresh talent. There’s a big difference, you guys, between being offensive and defensive hiring. Many of you guys are defensive hiring. What do I mean by that? It means you’re only trying to hire people when you need people. You need to understand what it means to be offensively hiring people.
And this is the way that, like, I’m using it. So hopefully, like, you’re catching my drift here. When you’re constantly hiring, you’re constantly keeping your ads fresh, you’re constantly trying to attract talent, whether it’s posting ads or posting things on social media, or always having in any kind of ad that you do, having like a little saying at the bottom that says always looking for great pet lovers and apply within. That means that you’re constantly on the offense, you’re just letting it come into you. All right, so hiring, the hiring process is also a marketing tool. And what many businesses fail to see is that every interaction with a candidate is an opportunity to showcase your company’s value and culture. Just like you would try to impress a client from the minute that they start talking to you. You need to be able to do that.
you have a employee and, and the time that you get to take back to, to reply back to them, or maybe the way in which you’re replying back to them or the tone that you’re replying back to them, all of these things matter. And so that’s why it’s really important to have a standard process so that with a click of a button, everyone can have the same exact experience that is personal to you in your brand, company and culture. From the very initial application to the final interview, you are communicating who you are as a business. And I don’t think a lot of people understand this. A lot of people just get applications, call someone up, have a candid conversation that demands no respect, and it’s just kind of like, and then it’s like, okay, I kind of feel like this person’s good. All right, let’s, let’s see if they want to do an interview at a coffee shop. Oh, no, they ghosted me. Well, of course they did.
They have no respect for your company because you haven’t set that process up for them. You haven’t made it so that it’s like not every Tom, Dick, and Harry or someone with a pulse can kind of get in. You haven’t showed them who you are, what your whole entire process is like. So you want to consider the emotional impact of your hiring process. The hiring process is emotional. And you, how do you, how do you make the candidates feel after interacting with your company? Do they feel valued, respected, and excited about the prospect of joining your team? Or do they feel like just another resume in the stack? Paying attention to these details can make a significant difference. Transparency and communication are key, clearly outlining your process on your website.
What? Oh, yeah.
My mastermind members did this, like, two years ago when Joey Coleman came in and taught us this. It, believe it or not, makes a huge difference. Do you want to be blindly interviewing with a company, or do you want to understand what their process is like and what’s coming up? When you can outline your process and say, here’s our stages, this is what’s coming up next. It turns from endless emails back and forth, or I wonder when this person is going to hire me to, oh, okay. Now they anticipate my questions, and now I understand that they understand what it’s like to be an employee and, and they, they care about how I feel through this. Also, being authent, uh, authentic is like, crucial. Ensure that the culture you depict online matches your real work environment. Aka, don’t let chat GPT, just generically create something for you.
Make sure it actually is backed up in your employee handbook, in your employee manual, in your training materials, in your onboarding, in the way that you talk to your staff. If there’s a disconnect there, it’s going to be like a beat and switch. It’s like you’re dating someone and then they, like, change into a different person. Now, marketing’s role is also really critical post hiring. So let’s say you’ve, you’ve hired these new employees. The marketing still continues to play a vital role. There’s two parts to this and I want you to think of retaining employees as just as important as attracting them. This is part of the company culture, publicly highlighting and praising your team members celebrate their success on the milestones of social media and your website.
This not only makes your employees feel valued, but it also showcases your company as a great place to work. Imagine those other people that might be attracted to working for you because of what your marketing is putting out there. Happy employees often become your best brand ambassadors. They share their positive experiences with friends, family, their social media, their networks, and it might lead to inbound increase from potential hires or clients or maybe even partners. This organic form of marketing can build a strong talent pipeline for your business. And this is also why I always say business. I’m sorry, a relationship will last a lot longer than a business. Cardinal another common mistake in the industry for pet sitters and dog walking companies is that they make their marketing efforts solely on attracting clients.
They neglect the whole employee aspect of marketing. It’s actually really difficult for me to even tell if some of you have employees. If you have interacted with me, you know that I literally creep all of your, your Instagram profiles. When I’m on Instagram, when I’m on Instagram, what I’m doing is I’m going through your feeds. I’m liking your stuff. I’m commenting on your stuff. Sometimes I’m trying to start a conversation with you guys because I care, because I want to get to know you. But sometimes when I look at your feed, I have no idea if you even have employees because you never talk about them, you never show them.
So if you have employees and you have not talked about them in the last four or five posts, I would really encourage you to think about doing so. It will really help attract people to you and it will really help enhance the company culture that you have inside. Now the comprehensive hiring journey. I want you to think of the entire hiring journey as an extension of your marketing efforts, all right? And people don’t, they don’t put enough emphasis into the hiring journey. If you’re having a hard time hiring people, I want to get on a 20 minutes call with you because I will audit your entire hiring process. I will tell you where there are gaps and where there’s spots for you to, to get better. Now, some of you might not take me up on this offer because you’re not ready to be told what needs to change. And that’s okay.
That’s completely up to you. But what could it hurt for some, other than your feelings maybe getting hurt, which they shouldn’t because you’re not your business. Okay? And nothing’s ever perfect. The hiring process is always changing. Even my clients that have great success. And I literally, right before I got on this podcast, I had a gal, uh, text me, and she said, bella. And I put it on my stories today. Uh, she said, bella, I just got an application from an indeed ad that I posted 350 days ago.
That’s almost a year ago. That’s kind of unheard of. But she’s still getting applications from it. I isn’t that incredible? You know, she’s not even hiring right now. Cause she has enough people hired. A year ago, she didn’t have anyone hired. She’s now got a team of five, and one of them she’s grooming to be an office manager right now. Isn’t that amazing? Our last coaching call that we did together.
And this is different from the person I was just telling you about. She’s actually trying to figure out how to get involved with fourth quarter events, which we’ve talked about on the podcast, because she needs to get these people ours, and this is a great way to get these people ours. It’s amazing. So I want you to really have a come to Jesus meeting with yourself, and I’ll help you. I’m not. I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to come down on you.
I’m going to be real with you, which is what every business owner needs. Okay? I truly want to help you. I do this. I say this because I want to see you succeed. I want you to be someone that I’m talking about on this podcast saying, oh, my gosh. When I first talked to her, she was like, I can’t hire anyone. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. You have to be open to hearing a different way to do things.
You have to be open to trusting me and walking down a path that you might not think would work. But I’m not going to tell you to do something that doesn’t work. These people that have people waiting in line to work for their company, or they have a really big applicant pool, they didn’t just. It wasn’t like they threw a dart and they got a bullseye and that’s it. And it stays like that forever. They have a whole process. And so when they don’t get the results that they want, they can see in the process what step has broken down and started failing them because they have the processes done out so well. If you don’t have processes or phases, then it’s going to be impossible to identify what part of the chain link is broken.
Let’s talk about that. I truly want to see you achieve all of your wildest dreams. I want to see you at home on Christmas morning with your family. I want to see you thanksgiving getting all that turkey in you on Thanksgiving day, not on another day because you were so busy working on Thanksgiving. I want you to be home trick or treating with your kids or handing out candy or going and having your own Halloween party or whatever it might be. You started this business because you wanted time and financial freedom, not so that you could be a slave to this business or a slave to your clients. You started this business because you love pets. And I’ll tell you something.
You cannot do as good a job as your employees can do. If you have the proper hiring and training methods, your employees will actually be better than you. And the reason is, is because you’re wearing 100 hats and they just need to wear one hat. They can focus all their energy on being the best dog walker or pet sitter, but you can’t get there unless you get out of your own way. And I say this with so much passion because I’ve seen people go from dire straits to taking a month off of their business a month, three times a year, and they go to the woods, they go to the cabin, and they do nothing. It is possible. I don’t care where you live. I don’t care what your area is like.
I don’t care what your minimum wage is. You have to get out of your own way. And I’m telling you, I can help you, but you have to trust me. And I’m doing this because I like to do it. I love. I get so excited when you’re like, oh, my gosh, it worked. No kidding. It worked.
I’m not doing this for my ego. I’m not doing this to be right, guys. I. I don’t even necessarily need to do this podcast anymore. But every single week, not only do I sit in front of my microphone and I come up with a topic and I create the script, and I send it over to my podcast producer, and I pay money for him to create this podcast, and then I pay money for my virtual assistants to get it on my website, and then I pay my social media girl money to promote this podcast. Why? Because I truly love you and I care about you, and I want you to succeed. And I am dedicated to 80% of my business being this motivating, this tactical, this stuff that you could actually take to the bank. And if you’re listening right now, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have met already.
So I want you to get on jumpconsulting.net forward slash 20, and let’s do a free 20 minutes call. As one person said a couple weeks ago to me was, oh, my gosh, you say this all the time. I didn’t think you really meant it. Let me be clear right now. I mean it. I want to see my calendar flooded with these 20 minutes calls. I want to help you. I want to hear what your biggest pain point is right now.
I want to give you resources. And just like I told you, last call, I’m sorry, last podcast. Not everyone, and I say this respectfully and lovingly, is ready to be a client of jump consulting. It’s not a sales call. I genuinely want to help you. I will tell you if you’re ready to jump or if you need to go do some jumps on your own first in order to make your jump with me, the best return on your investment. Because at the end of the day, guys, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I do this because I want to do it.
I do it because I love you and because I believe that we can change your I can’ts into I can’ts. I do this because I’ve been through enough things in my life that I know that it takes the right people around you, it takes the right ideas around you, and it takes the right motivation to inspire you to action. There’s too much in this world trying to divide you and trying to black and white you. And my ways are not the only path to success. But I’ll tell you, I got so much proof in the pudding that I should probably open up a bank. That’s how much proof is there. So let’s talk. Let’s talk.
You get me preaching or on here. I’m not like this on the phone. I would love, love, love to get to know you. It literally brightens my day. Jumpconsulting.net forward slash 20 and if any of this is of interest to you, guess what? In the beta marketing with Bella program, where our doors are open right now, every single month since 2018, when we started this program, I have been dedicated to giving you marketing materials that also are about hiring. Our marketing materials also help you get partnerships with people. We are, we specifically create these marketing materials to make those connections because, again, relationships last a lot longer than a business card. So if you’re not sure how to do the strategy to attract these people, better marketing is for you.
You have two options, 300 or 500 a month, and it’s a six month contract. Go to jumpconsulting.net, forward slash marketing. And again, I will tell you right then and there if you are a good candidate or not. I will look at your social media, I will look at your website, or lack thereof, and I’ll tell you if you’re a good candidate or not. I don’t want you joining my program if you don’t have a good enough foundation for it. And at the same time, I’m going to tell you exactly what I can do for you. I’ll probably even make you a guarantee if I get to talk to you of what we can do. If I think you’re a candidate, I’m gonna have to tell.
I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do, but we’re gonna take the guesswork out of it and we’re gonna give you all the strategy. It’s only for a limited time, though, because come November 1, we need to start replicating everyone’s content for January through June next year. It’s a lot of people and a lot of brands to do it for. We have to batch it so it’s only open for a limited time. So reach out to me, [email protected]. or dm me on Instagram at Bella Vasta and hopefully I’ll talk to you soon. This is a one way communication, and I’m begging you. I would love to talk to you.
I’d love to hear what your biggest challenge is, where you’re at with your business. What are your hopes and dreams and goals? I’m not going to tell you what you can’t do. I’m going to tell you how you can do it and what it’s going to take. And I’m not going to bullshit you. Sorry, mom, if I just offended anyone’s kids. Anyways, you guys, it’s been another episode of Bella in your business. I hope to hear from you. Please share this with your friends.
And please, will you please give us a review? I never asked for reviews, and it just kind of occurred to me that we don’t have that many reviews and I need to get more reviews. So anywhere you listen to this podcast episode, could you please leave us a review and I’ll see you again next time. Remember, when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Bye now.