I didn’t go into this expecting it to become anything bigger than my side-gig, an excuse to be able to stay home.
Melinda Walker
Athens Pet Sitter
Melinda Walker: I started a company called Athens Errands after my daughter was born so that I could make enough income to justify staying home with her. But I only found one person who would hire me to do any of the errands I was advertising for. Then I started getting people who wanted to know if I would walk their dog, watch their cats when they went out of town. So I made the switch from Athens Errands to Athens Pet Sitting.
Josh: So you’re getting started as a business owner really as, almost a side gig. Did you want to be a business owner before that? Did you know when you were younger?
Melinda: I did always want to be the boss. When I was growing up, my dad was an attorney and I would ask why he had to go into work. He’d tell me that it was because the judge says court starts at nine. So he had to be there at nine. And I said, “Well, I want to be the judge then.” I didn’t realize how that was such a big part of my drive until later… it was totally, “This is a thing I can get away with. I can do this little thing on the side and choose my own hours.”
I didn’t go into this expecting it to become anything bigger than my side-gig, an excuse to be able to stay home. But the 2007 housing crisis hit, my husband lost his job, and it was either we both get new jobs now or we take this side-gig seriously and make something out of it.
October he started looking for a new opportunity, and after discussion we made the decision to invest in ourselves and to make this into whatever it was going to be. We had no idea what it could be, at that time.
Josh: Have you built out your business model to handle some of the workload and especially the seasonality behind what you do?
Melinda: Now, 13 years later, we have systems in place and people that can handle anything that needs to be done. We don’t have to be here on a day to day basis. We try to step away from the business and all that freedom that we were searching for in the beginning has finally arrived. But it definitely was not part of the building years.
We had very little freedom and it was tied to when someone else wants you to work. You have plans with your friends. Some client wants to go to the Lake and hang out. You cancel with your friend and you say, “Yes, of course, I’m available to be here for you while you go to the Lake, I’ll take care of your pets. I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Chad: So do you believe now it takes those 10 years to build and grow your business properly? Or do you believe if you had implemented systems quicker, it could have been different?
Melinda: I definitely think it could have been quicker. I do see value in putting in at least a good year of full seasons; seeing how a whole year runs, how it is going to be to give up weekend after weekend after weekend.
You should know what it’s like before you ask someone else who’s now working for you to make that same sacrifice.
Chad: How did you transition into getting more customers or building a business from a side gig to both needing to support your family through this business?
Melinda: First, we had very little debt. I’m not sure if we even had car payments, we would have had a mortgage, but beyond that we just didn’t live beyond our means. While he still had his job, we lived on and saved money out of his income. So we had a nest egg at that point. We didn’t have to worry about the next meal.
Both of our families taught us to spend less than we make. Both of our families also provided for us to go to college. Because of that, we were able to graduate with no student debt, which is a huge leg up. I wouldn’t call it luck. I would say it was hard work, but it wasn’t hard work on our part.
It was hard work from the generation before us who taught us to continue that way.
Josh: So you have a little bit of money saved up. You have very little debt. You put yourself in a position where your monthly expenses aren’t drastically unaffordable. And now you’re both committed to the pet sitting business. How do you grow it? What happened?
Melinda: I remember we went to an event at the University of Georgia vet school and got a potential client who lived 30 minutes away from us who wanted her dog walked every day. So my 6’1” husband bought himself a Honda Rebel motorcycle that got 70 miles to the gallon and commuted to her house with that five days a week to make it a profitable income source. She was one of our first consistent clients.
We also started knocking on doors. I would get a little baggy, have my business cards and a dog treat, and I’d leave them on people’s front porches. My baby and I were walking around anyway, we needed to be outside. We needed something to do. And then we started just getting calls.
Josh: I think about what happens a lot of times, especially in today’s day and age of social media… People think, “Oh, I’m going to start a business. I’ll make a Facebook page. Loads of people will just come there and they’ll call me or email me or they’ll message me.” And that doesn’t happen. That’s the recipe for failure.
You guys built a website, but you also started going to events. You were walking around with your baby and dropping off handwritten cards. What were the other things that you did to go out and get business instead of sitting back and waiting for business to come to you?
Melinda: We carried cards with us everywhere. Every little community board had our card on it. Every vet office had a visit from us with some homemade cookies or something else that didn’t cost us anything. We did community events that were free. We knocked on doors.
I’m not a super outgoing person, but this was about feeding the family. This was about building something that was our own.
Every single day we thought, “this is never going to work. This is not a thing that people with degrees from the University of Georgia business school do with their lives. This is crazy. What, when are we going to get real jobs? When are we going to go out and do something important and valuable and helpful and make some money? And well, until that happens, we better hustle and make this happen. This is what we’re doing right now. This is what has to continue.”
Josh: Was there a certain revenue you wanted to get to before you hired a team member or was it just a workload situation? How did you make the decision to hire the first person?
Melinda: If there was an event that we absolutely could not say no to. That is when we would find a good person to fill in for us. It was definitely not, “Hey, let’s bring on a team member.” It was, “There is a wedding. I have to go to this wedding. We’ve got to have someone else work.” Because the idea of saying no to a client that needed us, that never occurred to us.
Chad: What is your team now? I mean, how many people do you have?
Melinda: We have 19 sitters. Everyone is an independent contractor, and they get to choose when they work. Some work practically full time and some work one or two hours a week.
Chad: I love service industry businesses. They’re not capital intensive to start and you’re able to build them over time kind of based on the time you have to commit to it.
Melinda: I think the service industry is where it’s at. The level of service out there is so low that being available was all it took to set us apart in the beginning. It’s so easy to stand out with a good service. But my very favorite thing about a service business is definitely that it’s such low capital to start.
Once you learn the skill of building a team, communicating with clients, you can take that into any industry that you want.
You don’t have to start one service business and stay there like we did.
Josh: So you think under the model you have built the pet sitter business around, you can pick that up and apply it to a lot of different service industry businesses and build over time that same type of structure and level of success?
Melinda: Definitely. I definitely think that it can be done. I feel like the service industry gives you the opportunity to do it yourself. Learn how to do it, document, systematize, and document, then help others have an opportunity to do the same thing. You can become a leader of a team that does most of the work and you can jump back in and do what you want to do without having to be responsible for everything.
If you’re starting out, I would encourage you to start a business as a side hustle. If you put all your eggs in this basket and you expect all of your income to come from your own personal sales and service, it’s going to be really stressful.
Chad: If I’m an entrepreneur and I’m going to start sitting goldfish, how do I price my model? How did you learn to price your service?
Melinda: Early on, there were not other websites listed with prices that you could just compare and see what everyone else was doing. So I took what I was making in the nonprofit industry and my last job, that hourly rate. And I applied it to the amount of time that I would be spending with the client.
In the beginning, I would say start where you feel good about it, because if you can’t tell someone your price, you won’t be able to make any sales. If it embarrasses you to say it, it’s going to be a tough sell. And as you build, as you see the peace of mind that you’re providing for them, then you can build your own confidence and realize your worth.
You can ask for a little bit more because you’ve earned the right.
Chad: Do you feel it’s easier for a young entrepreneur to start a business now? Or do you feel like it was easier 15 years ago?
Melinda: I don’t think it was easier then or now. I think that you have to have some hustle, just like Josh said at the beginning, you cannot throw a website up and think without any investment people are going to come and ask to pay you. It’s not going to happen. You have to have some amount of hustle or some amount of investment.
Chad: What are the challenges you face now in business?
Melinda: There are always challenges when you’re dealing with animals. But if a client calls and they are unsatisfied, I don’t immediately assume that they’re about to fire me and go look for someone else. We’re going to come to a solution together and figure out what needs to be done.
I do think at first, “This is my fault and I need to fix it.” That’s my first inclination, but not in a self deprecating way, I just know that I can be responsible for this. I can fix this, whatever it is, it’s fixable. And we’re going to end up with a win-win.
Chad: That’s really cool because most business owners fall on one side or the other. Either they ask “Oh no, what did we do wrong, what can we do to fix it?” or they get defensive and refuse to accept any blame. And that’s awesome for young business owners to hear that you don’t have to immediately default one direction or the other.
You’re a very hands-on, put yourself in a situation to learn type of individual. Can you tell us how that has impacted your business?
Melinda: One thing that I do wish I could have done better in growing my business is creating a team environment, coming to an accountant earlier, hiring a webmaster earlier.
I didn’t really feel like I knew everything. I just felt like maybe I didn’t want to invest in other people’s services because I was cheap.
But I learned that every entrepreneur, even if they’re not in my industry, has so much that they learned in the time that they’re doing whatever it is that they’re doing. I can learn from them.
So I went to work for a real-estate office. I thought my business was maxed out. I went to work at this office… I had already read E-Myth. I thought I understood systems, but when I saw it in a place of business where everything was actually documented, from the way you spoke on the phone to someone to the you had a checklist for any activity, I realized I needed to take that back into my business and make sure that everything was documented and clear.
Josh: There’s a reason why most businesses fail. We’ve all heard the statistic that 80% fail in the first five years and another 80% in the next five years. I think it’s largely to do with not having the right financial guy on your team.
But it’s the same thing if you’re always trying to do everything yourself. If you have a business that needs a great website where the referrals and leads are going to be coming from, but you’re trying to be the guy designing your own website, that may be the time to release the sweat equity and go pay somebody to provide their expertise and that service.
Chad: Where do you go from here? What does the future hold for you and your husband and the business?
Melinda: What I would like to do next is continue to make this a happy place for my sitters to work. I don’t want them to be overwhelmed. I want them to have enough, make as much money as they want to make based on the time they want to give, and I want to continue to provide consistent, quality service to my clients.
I can’t imagine a traditional retirement. I want to teach other people how to have a profitable business.
Chad: If you met somebody starting out in the service industry and you could give them one piece of advice right now, what would it be?
Melinda: Sales have to come first and then perfection. If you can’t sell your service or your product, it really doesn’t matter how good it is. In the beginning you have to be able to make sales. You have to be able to talk confidently about what you have to offer, even if what you have to offer isn’t perfect yet, it’s better to get it out there. And get some experience with talking about prices.
You have to understand how to deal with people when they ask you for a discount, because they will always ask you for a discount and you need to be prepared for what to say.
Resources:
“The E-Myth” by Gino Wickman
Get in touch with Melinda on https://www.profitablepetsitter.com!
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