Behind the Scenes at PPP – Part 1

I run a successful 6 figure Pet Sitting and Dog Walking business in Omaha, Nebraska. I live in North Carolina. You’re probably wondering how I pull this off without constant travel back and forth between states (which I don’t do). I thought I’d spend some time today giving you a peak behind the scenes of my own pet sitting business, Preferred Pet Partners. This will be a two parter. Today I’ll talk about the processes behind the scenes. In part II I’ll talk about the people behind the scenes.

Everyone who manages a business remotely has a slightly different story but I believe the key to doing it successfully is the same across the board. My own story is that I was living in Omaha Nebraska, working at a corporate job. I’d been in corporate for nearly 30 years by that time and I knew I wanted to do something with more meaning. I launched Preferred Pet Partners (PPP) in Omaha in 2017. As with many new businesses, I was a solopreneur for about 6 months. At the time I was also still working my 9-5 corporate job. It was stressful, exhausting and amazing but that’s a different story. My expertise is in process building and people management so I set about putting robust processes in place almost immediately. 

From day one I knew I wanted to hire people to provide my services. I didn’t know exactly how long I would also be in the field but I did know that the more time I spent in the field the less time I would be spending working on the business. This was a powerful motivator for me to get out of the field as much as possible early on.

I also knew that my husband and I didn’t want to retire in Omaha. Don’t get me wrong, Omaha is a lovely place but we had dreams of living in the mountains or by the sea and Omaha is short of both. In 2018, we made a pact to move in 2020. We didn’t know where, we just knew we were going. We spent the next 18 months researching and visiting potential retirement locations before we settled on Asheville, North Carolina. In September 2020, mid pandemic we got in the car and moved our lives and our 3 cats halfway across the country to the Appalachian Mountains.

I had process and people knowledge and a looming deadline to light a fire under me. Every cloud has a silver lining. The pandemic was a giant cloud but the silver lining was that it gave the collective world a chance to step back, re-evaluate and prepare.

So prepare I did, I spent most of 2020 honing my business and people. When we moved to NC in September of 2020, I was nervous but confident that I had built a strong foundation. I’m a strong believer in documenting your processes and I knew that if the processes were strong, even if I had turnover, I could recover quickly. As it turned out the pandemic was a time of high turnover so my systems have been battle tested! 

So how does my business work behind the scenes? In a word, if you haven’t guessed it already, processes! Here is probably a good point to mention that processes are not the same thing as policies. A policy is a course or principle of action adopted by a business. For example, a policy would be your refund or cancellation rules. A process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. We’re going to talk about processes.

There are many processes that drive my business but here are the top 3;

#1 Employee onboarding – I believe strongly that starting an employee out on the right foot leads to loyalty and longevity. Every employee goes through a two-part orientation with me, the owner of the company. While some business owners can and do outsource or delegate this to others I’ve chosen to hang onto this duty. It’s a great chance for me to instill our company culture for new employees and make sure they have the information they need to succeed.

#2 Meet and Greets – In my business, pet sitting and dog walking, the meet and greet is often our first live contact with a potential new client. This is the best chance to form a terrific first impression and create a client for life. Our meet and greet process is critical to forming this bond. It also ensures that no matter which one of my employees is doing the meet and greet, my customers will still get the same great initial experience.

#3 Scheduling services – I would call this one of if not the most important process in our handbook. The reason being, this one touches both customers and employees. As your business grows this becomes more critical. On the customer side, you find yourself not being able to accommodate every customer request at the time they request. That’s understandable but you still want to meet the request as closely as possible to make your customer happy. On the employee side, when and where the employee is scheduled to work has a direct impact on their employee satisfaction and therefore their longevity with your company. Our process strives to meet both the employees and the customer’s needs.

Here’s a list of other processes. This isn’t an exhaustive list. You need to create the processes specific to your individual business but these are fairly generic and universal ones.

• Scheduling Employees
• Scheduling clients
• Ongoing employee training – classroom and field
• Record keeping for client data
• Meet and greet process
• Setting up new clients in your systems
• Setting up new employees in your systems
• Onboarding new employees
• Performing a service (pet care visit, groom, sale, etc.)
• How to pay employees
• How to report hours worked
• Invoicing

As a side note, I’ve always known that one day I would want to sell the business. A business that’s dependent on the owner to function is less valuable to buyers. I knew my business needed to be able to run without me or almost without me and the sooner I set it up to be self-sufficient the stronger it would be when it came time to sell. I’m loving what I do so I have no plans to sell anytime soon but this is the mindset I use every time I make any significant decision about the business. That’s what I’ve always worked toward. 

To there you have it, behind the scenes at Preferred Pet Partners is a network of documented processes that guide and drive everything we do!

Another great article you might enjoy

My Four Day Workweek

About Eliza

Eliza is the owner of two successful pet related businesses; Preferred Pet Partners, a pet sitting and dog walking company, and The Pet Business Coach, offering coaching and resources to aspiring or current pet related business entrepreneurs. She maintains two awesome blogs. One for pet parents https://preferredpetpartners.com/blog/ and one for pet business owners https://thepetbusinesscoach.dog/blog-page/.  Eliza also supports various animal rescue and shelter organizations. Eliza and her husband have a growing animal family including kitties, goats and chickens. Visit her websites: www.preferredpetpartners.com or www.thepetbusinesscoach.dog.