Bella In Your Business: Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Podcast

Today, we're answering a question I get all the time - how does blogging help me get pet sitting clients? Although we've talked about how important blogging is, we've never really dived into the strategy behind how it actually works!

Biggest Takeaway You Don’t Want To Miss

In this day and age it isn’t about creating more and more content but using the content you do have and spreading it as far as you can. Blogs are super for repurposing, or what my friend Brian Fanzo calls “upcycling”. And at the end of the day, your customers will always have the same questions. They will get their answers, one way or another. If your blog keeps coming up to answer their questions it will subconsciously show them that you are a trusted local expert. That you care enough to make your marketing shine, that must be a great indication of your work ethic. The very thing they are hiring you for!

Show Highlights

What’s the premise behind blogging to get clients? [5:00]

What is upcycling? [8:00]

How do I schedule my upcycled content? [9:30]

How do I share my content on different channels? [13:00]

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale

Blog Post: jumpconsulting.net/get-pet-sitting-clients/

Agora Pulse: jumpconsulting.net/agora-pulse

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript:

This is episode 136 of Bella in Your Business. Before we get started with today's episode, I want to know are you burnt out trying to hire employees or maybe you want to hire employees, but you're just terrified of that boogeyman that does not exist in the closet. Well, this episode is sponsored by my free three-part webinar series, Jump and Scale Your Business, and I would love to see you there. It's a must-have to attend if you want staff, you want to grow, you feel like you're held hostage, or you have high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net/scale. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella's got your chute. Let's jump.

Hi everyone, good morning. Bella Vasta with Jump Consulting. If this is your first time on this podcast or seeing me, I am a pet business consultant, an author, a podcast host, and a Facebook strategist. I want to get into a question today, and that's something that I've actually gotten a lot, and I really want to break it down. So it's basically, how does blogging help me get clients? We've talked numerous times about the types of blogs you could write, why you should blog, what you should blog about, and how you should promote it. We talked about all this stuff, but never once have we really talked into the strategy of how it actually gets you clients.

Because a lot of people are out there right now blogging and they're blogging just to blog. They've got someone they pay five or ten bucks to write a blog or write whatever they want. But there's no real strategy behind it, and what that's like is it's like you're a lightweight and you're going into the heavyweight boxing ring trying to win the champion — and it's just not going to work. So what you need to do is that lightweight arena is your local area.

A lot of times I see people making the biggest mistakes where they start blogging, but they don't actually include their local area anywhere in their blog and they don't promote their blog. So what they actually did was just write an international blog that is competing against all of the world. So let's get into it. I've helped so many people do this. I've done it for my own pet sitting company. I've done it for my coaching company, Jump Consulting. It's why you can use us as the Google for the pet industry. We've got over 350 blogs, over 130 podcasts, and like over 200 videos. I basically dedicated my life to answering all of your questions. All you gotta do is use the search feature.

I want you to think about your business the same way. Educational marketing is something that's really big these days. So let me tell you a story. When I first started coaching about this blogging thing, I had this friend, Mark Seibel, with Doggy Steps Dog Training. He’d been going on and on, but he wasn’t really getting enough business that he wanted. So we actually sat down together and I taught him this blogging strategy. The results were he raised his rates. Why? Because he needed to stop the flow of people coming into his business. That's how successful it was. It was so successful because he used this strategy and he got more clients. He had the decision to make — either raise his rates to stop the flow or hire people so he could keep all these people coming in.

I've also brought you the story on my YouTube channel of this cool guy who was about to go bankrupt and didn’t even have money to pay his employees. He turned that around into an international, worldwide-known company that now doesn’t just service his local area — it’s around the whole country. It's called River Pools and Spas, and it's my good friend Marcus Sheridan. Marcus taught this thing called The Big Five. It’s something you need to look up, but it works. It’s helped me in both my businesses and everyone else’s.

Another example is Kate McQuillan from Pet Sitters Ireland. She’s incredible. She’s one of my good friends. She also teaches blogging, and her and I really got around Marcus about the same time. Kate teaches people how to do that too — using The Big Five and creating awesome, relevant content. I've also told you about Mike Alton — another really good resource. He’s the Blogan Brute, and he’s fantastic. He has so many guides and step-by-step instructions that I use to create SOPs.

All of these different thought leaders in the blog sphere are people you really need to understand because their techniques can help you get pet sitting and dog walking clients. Now, here's the premise behind it: we Google everything. If you're wondering what the school schedule is, or what the bump is on your arm that's purple and blue, you're going to Google it. Or even better, people are voice-texting — “Hey Google, tell me where the nearest Joanne’s is. Hey Google, tell me where the nearest dentist is.” So we are either typing or voicing into Google for everything. And don’t fool yourself — people are doing that for pet sitters, dog walkers, kennels, boarders, trainers.

Now maybe you say, “Bella, I'm a dog walker or pet sitter, I'm not a boarding facility.” You still need to be typing and writing about that boarding facility because if I voice-text and the first thing that comes up is a pet sitting company talking about boarding — you got me. You got my curiosity. I'm going to Google to get the information, and I got news for you — nobody else is doing this.

The way it helps you get clients is that it builds credibility. It builds educational marketing. People start knowing you, liking you, trusting you, and seeing you as a local thought leader — someone they can turn to as a resource. Maybe your services aren’t exactly right for them, but they still know they can go to you, and that knowledge is power.

The things that we’re going to blog about are things like: how much does it cost? “How much does pet sitting cost in Scottsdale?” If I was Googling for pet sitting in Scottsdale and that article came up, I’m going to click on it. Let me tell you another story. Sarah El-Sharbini up in Toronto went nuts with her website. She put a blog about “How much does pet sitting cost in Toronto?” and it's her number one blog.

How about comparisons — “What’s the difference between kenneling my dog and having a pet sitter?” Or, “Why should I not trust pet sitters in Scottsdale?” I actually wrote a blog on that way back when — it was because Yelp was hiding reviews. I knew Yelp would come up for “reviews of Scottsdale pet sitters,” so I said, “Well, I want to come up too.” So I blogged strategically for it.

When you give people more things to see, and when we do a search and see sites like Rover or Wag or Sitter City, and then we see a local business, we give it more attention. So what is your business saying? Is it saying anything at all? Or are you just sitting there complaining that Rover and Wag are taking all your clients? Don’t do that.

When people are grateful to a brand, it leads to more revenue because people feel indebted to you. They feel excited that you’re actually there to help them. Remember that.

Now, another reason blogging gets people to you — I know every business owner is overwhelmed. Who here is sitting around saying, “Hey Bella, I got all this extra time”? You’re probably listening right now knowing you’re supposed to be doing something else. So here’s the thing — I want to give you more stuff to do. If you were to just write two blogs a month and upcycle them, you’d be far ahead of the game.

What’s upcycling? Listen to my friend Brian Fanzo from iSocialFans — he’s got a great diagram I linked in a blog. It shows how you create one piece of content and repurpose it. I’ll use myself as an example. I’m here explaining something, and I’ll rip this audio and put it on my podcast. I’ll make a one-minute video for Instagram, a ten-minute excerpt for LinkedIn, a 20-second video for Twitter, and upload the full video to YouTube. Then I’ll go through the comments, answer questions, and make this a blog post with show notes.

That’s seven pieces of content from one idea. Then the recycle part — I’ll schedule all this in my Agorapulse tool because Agorapulse is like the best thing since sliced bread. It’s about $500 a year, but it’s worth it because I can post across all social channels,...

Bobby Klinck is a lawyer, but he’s not your typical lawyer.

Sure, he went to Harvard Law School and worked prestigious law firms, but if you look at the big whiteboard in his office, you won’t see much about the law. It’s filled with tasks related to platform building, inbound marketing, and sales funnels. Bobby is a full-fledged online entrepreneur, whose area of expertise is the law. He helps other online entrepreneurs safeguard their online businesses.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

No two businesses are alike. That's why it's important to have a lawyer and a CPA that you can trust and understand. Don't just follow advice blindly. You want someone that can explain to you WHY they're making certain recommendations for you.

Show Highlights

What's the difference between an S-Corp & an LLC? [2:45]

What should we know legally-speaking about being an S-Corp vs. an LLC? [7:45]

Can you give us the run-down on partnerships and the legalities behind them? [11:45]

What does an LLP do? [13:00]

From a legal standpoint, can we uphold our service contracts through click-here-to-agree contracts? [17:15]

Where can our audience find Bobby online? [19:45]

Special Offer

Check out Bobby's free training site for online entrepreneurs, The Online Genius Academy:  www.youronlinegenius.com/academy.

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript:

This is episode 135 of Bella in Your Business.

This episode is brought to you by my free webinar Jump and Scale Your Business. It's my three-part training series all dedicated to finding and attracting the right kind of people that will scale your business. Did I mention it's free? Listen, you have to attend this if you want to grow your staff, you feel like you're being held hostage, you have high turnover, you feel burnt out, or you're just not seeing the results you want. Join me for this three-part free webinar series. Register now at jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you there.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready — Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump.

Bella: Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta and today I've got Bobby Klinck, who's a lawyer — but not your typical lawyer. I first heard Bobby on Amy Porterfield’s podcast Online Marketing Made Easy, and Bobby, you don’t know this, but I fell in love with you in the car listening to you because you did not sound like that typical lawyer. It was at that moment I shot a message to my virtual assistant and said, “You need to get this man on our show. The pet sitters and dog walkers of the world need to hear from him.”

For those of you who don’t know Bobby, he went to Harvard Law School — I’m from Boston, so I love that — and worked at prestigious law firms. But if you look at the big whiteboard in his office, you won’t see much about law. It’s filled with tasks relating to platform building, inbound marketing, and sales funnels. Bobby is a full-fledged online entrepreneur whose area of expertise happens to be the law. He helps other online entrepreneurs safeguard themselves and their businesses. Usually, I wait till the end to say this, but go ahead and stalk him on his website, youronlinegenius.com. It’s fun, informative, and full of resources to get you familiar with the voice you’re about to hear. So without further ado, Bobby, welcome to the show.

Bobby: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm glad you fell in love with me listening to me on Amy’s podcast. One of the things Amy has said about me is that I try to make this stuff fun and not intimidating because I know the legal stuff can be daunting and seem impenetrable. So I try to make it not that way.

Bella: Yeah, and you're definitely in one of those industries where I think business owners just want to be an ostrich and stick their heads in the sand and pretend like it doesn’t exist. But it’s something that we all need to know enough about so that we can protect ourselves. That’s why I’m glad that you’re here today. One of the biggest questions I hear around your field is: what’s the difference between an LLC and an S-Corp from the legal standpoint? Can you break this down for us — how we decide which we should be and all that?

Bobby: An S-Corp is not actually a different kind of legal entity. It’s something you do with the IRS — it has to do with how you’re taxed and how you’re treated as a business. Often you’re deciding whether you’re going to be a standard pass-through LLC or an LLC with what’s called an S-Corp election. The fundamental difference is that when you’re an LLC without the S-Corp, everything that happens in your business just gets reported on your personal tax return. You pay your income tax, but also self-employment taxes — things like FICA, Social Security, Medicare — on 100% of the profits in the business, whether you take them or not.

An S-Corp, on the other hand, creates a slightly different situation. Your corporation or LLC will have to file a tax return — not pay taxes, but file one — and you have to pay yourself through normal payroll, like an employee. The business has to file with the IRS and, if you have a state taxing authority, with the state. You pay yourself what’s called a reasonable salary and pay full taxes on that. But any profit above that, you pay income tax only — not the Social Security and Medicare taxes.

There are pros and cons. It’s a balancing act. You really ought to talk to a CPA to make the final decision. Generally, if you’re in a service industry — like pet sitting or dog walking — and you’re all by yourself, there’s probably not much advantage to being an S-Corp. Because of that “reasonable salary” requirement, if 100% of your profit is from your own effort, your reasonable salary is probably close to your profit.

Bella: So if any of our listeners are on that cusp of switching from solopreneur to entrepreneur — when they’re about to bring on staff and no longer responsible for 100% of the revenue — that’s the time to start talking about an S-Corp?

Bobby: That’s right. At that point, part of the money you make isn’t from your direct efforts, so your salary isn’t 100% of the revenue. You can pay yourself like a manager and then have profits coming in from your employees’ work. That’s where you can save — about 13% in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Once you hire an employee, you’ll already be running payroll, so adding yourself isn’t much harder.

Bella: That’s amazing. Do you see how simplistic this is? We talk about this in our Facebook groups and run amok. My best advice is to go to your CPA, have them do it both ways, and see what saves you money.

Bobby: Make sure you understand what your CPA is saying. I’ve seen people form an S-Corp just because someone told them to, without understanding why — and then not even pay themselves properly. Make sure you understand the reasoning behind it.

Bella: You have to know enough to not be dangerous for yourself.

Bobby: Exactly.

Bella: Switching to your area of expertise — is there anything we should know on the legal side between having an LLC and an S-Corp?

Bobby: Not really. If you’re in business and serious about it — not a hobby — you should form some kind of entity, usually an LLC. What it does is create an additional person in the eyes of the law — there’s you and there’s the LLC. That means the LLC signs contracts. For example, my law firm LLC signs leases — not me personally. If the firm goes belly-up, they can sue the LLC, not me. That’s the protection you get.

But an LLC isn’t a silver bullet. You’ll always be personally liable for your own actions. So if you’re a pet sitter and you destroy someone’s house, they can sue you personally. Where the LLC helps is with employees — if they mess up, they can only sue the company, not you personally. That protects your home, car, and personal assets. Partnerships, on the other hand, don’t protect you. You’re on the hook for everything your partner does.

Bella: So the LLC creates another entity to help build that barrier. But if you’re personally doing the act, you can still be personally liable.

Bobby: Exactly.

Bella: Another important topic that comes up a lot — partnerships. Sometimes between friends or couples. What kind of legalities do we need to preserve the relationship and protect ourselves long-term?

Bobby: There’s a saying I love: “The only ship that won’t float is a partnership.” Partnerships outside of law or medicine have a bad track record. They can destroy relationships. From a legal perspective, unless you form what’s called a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), don’t form a partnership. Form an LLC with multiple members. It gives you liability protection.

An LLP is similar to an LLC — it limits liability. A standard partnership makes you personally liable for everything, including what your partner does. So, form an LLC. Then have a rock-solid written agreement in place from the start. Address what happens if someone dies, becomes disabled, doesn’t perform, or develops problems. You work that out at the beginning — calmly, before disputes happen.

If you’re 50-50, have a buy-sell agreement. It sets up how to handle deadlock. The traditional method is the “Russian roulette” model — one person names a price, and the other decides whether to buy or sell at that price. It forces fairness. Hopefully, it never comes to that, but it’s important to plan for it.

Bella: I love that — knowing what to do in the end. You’re not going to take this business to your grave....

Rebekah Radice is the founder of RadiantLA, a digital marketing training and development company, International Keynote Speaker, creator of the PREP Performance Method, and the author of, “Social Media Mastery: A Comprehensive Guide to Strategic Growth.”

With over 20 years of experience, Rebekah has trained thousands of growth-driven leaders on her PREP™ Performance Method.

Through this four-step process, entrepreneurs to enterprise get the skills, systems, and processes necessary to improve social media engagement, generate quality leads, turn conversations into conversions, and increase revenue.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss:

Being authentic on social media is more important than ever in order to use social selling to cultivate our audience. We can leverage social media to gain new clientele by telling stories and just sharing what goes on in our lives in the day-to-day. Social media might be the first place people find you, the last, or somewhere in between - but it is crucial nonetheless.

Show Highlights

What's the difference between social media, social selling, & social networking? [2:30]

How can we use social media to create new customers? [10:00]

Do you think that social media for service-based businesses is a first-line or second-line of 'attack'? [15:00]

What ONE social media site drives the most amount of traffic, generally? [19:30]

Where can our listeners find you online? [21:00]

Special Offer

Get your FREE download for The Social Selling Blueprint - The 4 Step Process To Using Social Selling Successfully In Your Business. Learn how to convert your social media audience into clicks, subscribers, and sales. Download here: https://rebekahradice.com/socialselling/

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale

Rebekah's Website: rebekahradice.com

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript:

This is episode 134 of Bella in Your Business. Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I've got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It's called Jump and Scale and it's free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to your business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you inside.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready. Bella’s got your chute. Let's jump.

Bella: Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta and today I've got a delight for you. From the moment I met Rebekah, I was excited. She is just someone who you want to be your gal pal, but not only that, she’s incredibly knowledgeable. Rebekah Radice is the founder of Radiant LA, a digital marketing training and development company. She's an international keynote speaker, a woman after my own heart, creating the PREP Performance Model and the author of Social Media Mastery, a comprehensive guide of strategic growth. With over 20 years of experience, Rebekah has trained thousands of growth-driven leaders on her PREP Performance Method. Through this four-step process, entrepreneurs and enterprises get the skills, systems, and processes necessary to improve social media engagement, attract quality leads, turn conversations into conversions, and increase revenue. Without further ado, welcome, Rebekah. Thank you for being here.

Rebekah: My goodness, I'm so excited anytime I get to chat with you. So we have a whole audience full of pet sitters and dog walkers that are just—well, the industry is exploding, and they are scaling their businesses at rapid rates. We’re going from easily a hundred thousand all the way up to seven-figure businesses, and they are really trying to separate and differentiate themselves. I’m excited to have you on today because we don’t get to talk too much about branding and how it really changes on social media, because I think we're just all trying to not be afraid of social media, let alone actually portray the same type of brand out there. So what's the difference between social media, social selling, and social networking? Let's start with that basic foundation.

Rebekah: It's a great question, and I love your audience and what you're doing, and I can totally attest to the growth. I live in the LA area, and we have dog walkers everywhere. Whether you work at the studios—because I'm right around the corner from Disney and Warner Brothers—a lot of people just can't get away. It’s such a wonderful feeling to know, as a Chihuahua mama myself, that you've got somebody coming in that you totally trust, that understands your pets, understands the environment, and can really reduce that stress too. For us, that’s such a big piece of it. High-stress dogs don’t like to be left alone, so I think it's just such a wonderful thing that we have the ability. I don’t remember another time in history when we had people like that who could take that stress out of our lives too—of “Crap, I can’t run home for lunch; what am I going to do?”—and have somebody come in and take care of that part of your family.

Bella: Yeah, it really just started in the late nineties, and even when I got in the industry in 2002, we were still trying to educate everybody. But the rapid rate—believe me—Rover and Wag have come onto the scene and spent billions of dollars on advertising and have really helped educate the world that people can come in and care for your pets. As such, everything’s getting really saturated, and everybody is a pet sitter now or a dog walker. It’s pretty hard online because we often get devalued since we sometimes don’t do a good job of explaining that professional level.

Rebekah: To your question, you know, just the different ways that we're using social media—you really can. You can elevate awareness around your brand. You can elevate awareness around the whole pet sitting industry where a lot of people still aren’t aware that that’s a thing. Education, first and foremost, is a terrific way to use social media because social media is creating that conversation. It’s conversations like you and I are having on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, and then we’re able to take that into a conversation like this.

So for that pet sitter that’s maybe running a Facebook page or has a Twitter or Instagram account and they’re using it to create awareness, it’s just starting with a conversation. A lot of times it’s talking about: what are those frequently asked questions? What do people need to know to hire you to do what you do? What are their fears, their concerns? What keeps them from pulling the trigger or from picking up the phone and calling you? Answer those things using social media, and when you do, you start to naturally move them into that social sales opportunity. They are ready and willing to hire you because you’ve built credibility, created authority within the space, educated them, shared your ideas, and explained your thought process and how you care for animals. You’re stripping away myths, misconceptions, and concerns, creating a natural progression instead of that push-pull feeling we tend to have with social media.

Bella: I love it. And I think you could speak on this too—having that journalistic mind when you go about your day. When things come across your desk or you hang up the phone from that person you just helped—maybe their grandmother passed away, and they need a pet sitter and aren’t sure who to trust—it’s turning real-life examples into stories using a journalistic mind to tell those stories on social media so that it isn’t that push and pull you just mentioned.

Rebekah: Yeah, and what a terrific example, too, because that situation happens every single day in so many different ways where we have those moments of crisis or urgency. We have to find somebody—and who do we look to? We look to the people telling stories, making their business relatable, and putting emotion into their work. I would make sure you have a way to capture those moments—as you’re running around, having conversations, have a note-taking app where you categorize things: questions, solutions, fears, concerns, whatever the category might be. Keep a running catalog, then get those into a calendar system if you’re creating content daily.

Think about your buckets of content—maybe three different ones: educational, inspirational, and motivational. Start to drop those ideas into those categories and plug them into a calendar. For example, you might share educational content on Mondays, inspirational on Tuesdays, and a how-to on Wednesdays—like “What to do if your dog is choking.” Think about the key takeaway from each post, then create a system and process that takes the heavy lifting off of you.

Bella: I love that. And I think those buckets really help take away the anxiety of “What do I post?” If you make a conscious effort and say, “I have these five topics and I’ll post about three a week,” you take the pressure off. Maybe you give a dog a treat with your thumb tucked in so your fingers don’t get nipped—and you realize, that’s something you can share in a ‘Did You Know?’ bucket.

I want you guys to really think about and write down some ideas—pause this podcast right now if you can and think about common themes. The cool thing about this, and this will move us to our next topic, is how to find new customers for our business with social media. I’d assume one of those buckets could be “I want

Becki founded her business, Prefurred Pet Care Services, in 2016 after an incredibly difficult period of personal change and loss. Her hobby quickly became serious, and Prefurred is now an award-winning business employing 13 people!

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

The way that we respond to life, not react to it, determines what happens to you now and in your future. We have to make the lives that we want, and not just wait for it to fall into our laps.

Show Highlights

Who Is Becki Davis? [2:20]

What happened with one of your IC's? [3:20]

What was it about the Employee Quickstart & Bosses In Charge Mastermind that helped you? [5:45]

What's the difference between a regular pet sitter Facebook group & the Bosses In Charge Mastermind? [7:45]

What did your business look like in December of 2017 and what was the big goal you set for yourself in January of 2018? [10:30]

How did being able to look back at all the progress you made over the past year make you feel? [13:15]

What advice do you have for other pet business owners that want to transform their business, but aren't sure how? [15:50]

Tell us your story about when you were waiting tables and you learned that the restaurant was closing. [18:00]

Links

Jump & Scale: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Becki's Success Story: /success-story/

Becki's Website: Prefurredpetcareservices.com/blog

Jump Consulting Mastermind: /mastermind

Use coupon code "BECKID25" for $25 off your Mastermind subscription!

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Transcript:

This is episode 133 of Bella in Your Business. Before we get started with today's episode, I want to know: are you burnt out trying to hire employees? Or maybe you want to hire employees but you're just terrified of that boogeyman that does not exist in the closet. Well, this episode is sponsored by my free three-part webinar series, Jump and Scale Your Business, and I would love to see you there. It's a must-attend if you want staff, you want to grow, you feel like you're held hostage, or you have high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net/scale.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready—Bella's got your chute. Let's jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I've got a special treat for you. Becki founded her business, Preferred Pet Care Services, in 2016 after an incredibly difficult period of personal change and loss. Her hobby quickly became a serious business, and Preferred Pet Care is now an award-winning business enjoying 13 employees. I can’t even believe this because every time I talk to you, you've grown more and more. She is one of the strongest people I know and has been an inspiration not only to myself but to many other fellow masterminders and pet sitters all around the country. I've watched Becki completely transform herself and her business every single year, and I'm just so excited to have her on today to help motivate and inspire all of our listeners.

Becki, welcome to the show.

Hi, Bella. Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely. You are truly someone that a lot of people should look up to and aspire to be, not just because of what you've been able to build but because of how fast it's been. In just two years you've achieved so much, but during that time, you've also had a lot of personal stuff going on that you never let stop you.

Now that being said, I know we were just talking before we started, and you said, “Frazzled, that everything’s going around”—and that’s just life, right? But the thing that I love about you is that you don’t let that hold you down. So why don’t you tell our listeners, for those who don’t know you, a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the industry?

Sure. So I am Becki. I started my business, Preferred Pet Care Services, here in Central Pennsylvania. We’re based around the Harrisburg area. I actually started my business in my hometown, which was a really exciting thing since my mom and her family have lived there for generations. That’s definitely something that’s helped me out. We started with just me, and quickly—about six months of me being solo full-time—I realized I needed help. I really couldn’t do it all by myself.

I sort of took the easy way out and hired a couple of ICs, and about five months after that, I wanted to transition them because it just wasn’t exactly what I wanted for my business. I had a really bad experience with one of them, which I was really fortunate didn’t tank my entire business.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

So it really showed me basically that the sitter I had—I’m pretty sure she didn’t do the overnight. She didn’t stay at the house at all. She had left the dogs for like sixteen hours on the first day. And the client’s toddler had been in the bed with them the night before they left, so they found toddler toys in the bed where my sitter was supposed to sleep. So probably no way that she did. I was really lucky that I was already in the Employee Quick Start and had already decided that this was a change I wanted to make for my business, but that really lit a fire under me. I saw just how much liability it opens you up to—not being able to track where these people are and not being able to guarantee that they’re doing what my client is paying me for.

So we switched to employees, and then I was terrified to hire. I switched two of my ICs to employees and was fortunate that they stayed. I tried to keep going, just the three of us for a little bit, but it really was just way too much. We were all super burnt out. So we started hiring—and hiring was a whole other shift and fear-inducing thing: “How do I know these are the right people? How can I be sure?”

I just had to keep rolling with it because I knew eventually it would sort out. I think a lot of building my business has been a lot of failure. It’s been a lot of challenges and a lot of needing to keep going, continually looking at your process. If something’s not working, change it. That’s where the mastermind has been so helpful for me.

Before we get there, though, I want to back you up just a little bit. You mentioned the Employee Quick Start, and some people listening might not know what that is. That’s kind of when you and I first connected because we did the pop-up group of the Bosses in Charge Employee Quick Start program. All those questions you were saying—how do I trust someone, how do I know it’s going to happen—and your relationship becoming BFFs with failure was really pivotal in that time period, right?

Yes, it’s so true.

What was it about the Employee Quick Start that helped you, and how would you describe it to our listeners in your own words?

Especially doing the Bosses in Charge as the mini-mastermind, it gave me this whole community of support. I finally didn’t feel isolated anymore in my business. Owning a small business for me to that point had felt so isolating. I felt like I had nowhere to go when I had these questions or when something didn’t work. How would I fix it? How could I figure it out? My family was so tired of hearing me complain about work stuff at this point, for sure.

I think my mom is more thankful for the mastermind and for Bosses in Charge than I am. But it gave me that foundation. It gave me somewhere to turn. It gave me that community. When things got hard and things didn’t work out—because that’s life, right?—the more we grow, the more we take on. Things shift. But it’s always about addressing issues as they come up and facing challenges. It gave me that outlet, so much encouragement and inspiration, and knowing that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only pet sitting business owner who had gone through these struggles. There were other people I could ask and follow their journeys as well and learn alongside people who supported and held me accountable.

Let me ask you another question. You talk about isolation and knowing that you’re not alone. Some listeners might be thinking, “Well, I have some Facebook groups I really like where we just go in and complain all the time, right? Misery loves company.” What’s the difference between a group like that and something like the Employee Quick Start or the mastermind?

The secret sauce is being solutions-oriented. In your group specifically, even in the Jump Consulting page and the I Own a Pet Sitting Company with Staff group, yes, we all need to vent. We all want to relate with other pet sitters and say, “Can you believe this client?” But the difference with Bosses in Charge and the Mastermind is the conversation turns quickly to, “What are you going to do about it?”

Yes, this sucks, and you’re right to feel the way you do, but how can we fix this? How can we change our processes? How can I make sure that in a week I’m not coming back here with the same problem again? It’s about figuring out how to fix those issues in our businesses, and that’s been total game-changing and eye-opening.

Something I appreciate is that as the coach or mentor of the group, I can come back and say, “Yo, Becki, how’s it going with this?” and track it. You don’t get offended that I’m checking in. There’s resolution to challenges. Sometimes the resolution is still a failure—it doesn’t work and it takes a few more tries—but the difference is that everybody wants to jump in and give opinions and solutions so you can learn from it.

That’s a huge part of how the mastermind has helped me grow my business. Instead of being stuck in problems,...

Stephanie Liu is an award-winning digital marketing strategist and live streaming expert. As an ad agency veteran, she spent the last decade and a half helping Fortune 500 companies go from unknown to unforgettable by using social media. As the host of Lights, Camera, Live®, she shines a spotlight on the best and brightest marketers in the industry. Her signature course Lights, Camera, Live is the only online interactive course that teaches you how to turn your ideas, skills, and experience into a captivating live stream.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

With the Internet and social media as a whole moving further and further away from written content, and closer to audiovisual content, live streaming has become a dominant marketing opportunity that you DON'T want to skip out on. When your audience has the chance to interact with you and your business in a raw, authentic, and live way - it can really build a meaningful relationship.

Show Highlights

Who Is Stephanie Liu? [1:00]

Why should business dive into live-streaming? [2:45]

What's the biggest mistake you see business owners make when live streaming? [5:30]

What is the snooze function on Facebook? [6:20]

How can we brand our live streams? [7:20]

What can we do to get our audience to watch our live streams? [10:00]

The Why/What/How/What-If Formula [11:25]

What are some advanced tips regarding live streaming? [14:45]

How can we take a live stream and repurpose it in different ways? [16:00]

Any final thoughts you'd like to share? [18:00]

Where can we connect with you online? [19:15]

Special Offer

Join Stephanie's Social Media Strategist Group: https://facebook.com/groups/smstrategist/. New members can request a copy of her free Facebook Live Workbook!

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: /scale/

Stephanie's Website: http://lightscameralive.com/

SwitcherGo App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/switcher-go/id1166849233?mt=8

BeLive: https://belive.tv/

Ecamm: https://www.ecamm.com/

Headliner: https://www.headliner.app/

Share The Show

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Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

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Transcript:

This is episode 132 of Bella in Your Business. This episode is brought to you by my free webinar, Jump and Scale Your Business. It's my three-part training series all dedicated to finding and attracting the right kind of people that will scale your business. Did I mention it's free? Listen, you have to attend this if you want to grow your staff, you feel like you're being held hostage, you have high turnover, you feel burnt out, or you're just not seeing the results you want. Join me for this three-part free webinar series. Register now at jumpconsulting.net/scale. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you there.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella's got your chute. Let's jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I've got Stephanie Liu with us. She is an award-winning digital marketing strategist and a live streaming expert. As an ad agency veteran, she's spent the last decade and a half helping Fortune 500 companies go from unknown to unforgettable by using social media. As a host of Lights Camera Live, she shines a spotlight on the best and brightest marketers in her industry, myself included as I was on her show. Her signature course, Lights Camera Live, is the only online interactive course that teaches you how to turn your ideas, skills, and experience into a captivating live stream. I am so excited to have her here today to help inspire pet sitters and dog walkers take what is such a cool profession online and show it to the world in a way that delights and inspires people to want to hitch their wagon, AKA open up their wallets and hire everybody to be their pet sitter and dog walker. So without further ado, welcome Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hey, hey, Bella. So happy to be here with you hanging out.

Bella: I am so excited. And I have to say that first, I think it was Chris Strub—he was on a couple of episodes ago—he was the one who first kind of introduced us. But you are just so delightful, so cheery, so happy. You're one of those people that just really loves to help people, and it shines through. I love watching you in the 360 Marketing Squad and all the things that you do because I learn so much from you. It’s always a great pleasure for me when I can highlight people like yourself to my community because you’ve been so helpful to me. I can only imagine what you’re going to do for them. So let’s start off—why should brands dive into live streaming? Because a lot of people are terrified of this.

Stephanie: Okay, well, let’s talk about the whole Facebook algorithm, right? A lot of the content that’s being pushed out there on your Facebook business page just isn’t being seen right now. So if you’re tired of being the best-kept secret in town, hello, the best way to do that is to start live streaming. Because here’s what we know—honestly, as soon as you hit the go live button, people are more likely to like, comment, and engage with you because they’re like, “Wait a second, I could actually engage with you in real time.” Once you have all of that social proof, think about it—you can then leverage that live stream, turn it into a Facebook ad, and start gaining clients in an instant. It’s amazing what live streaming can do.

Bella: That’s amazing. So as a dog walker or a pet sitter, something simple—this is that idea that I’ve mentioned on past shows, but I think it would be really fun. A lot of pet sitters do these things called lunchtime let-outs, where their job is to go during lunchtime and let the dog out to go to the bathroom. Now it’s kind of funny and maybe disgusting, but that shock and awe factor—if you were to go live and be like, “Hey, I’m taking bets for how long it’s going to take this dog to go to the bathroom—two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes?”—while that’s happening and you’re waiting, or you could set the camera up stationary and be out there saying “Go potty, go potty,” or be behind the camera. And then you just said, “Turn it into an ad.” That would be the most captivating ad—“Guess how long it took this dog to go to the bathroom. Don’t worry, we save your lunch break.” I’d stop just out of curiosity factor on my feed, right?

Stephanie: I think that would be hilarious. I also think if your listeners had some kind of strategy like, “I’m going to show you how to make your dog go potty in two minutes flat—this is my strategy,” people would tune in for that. They’d be like, “Wait, I want to know that because sometimes my dog takes forever!”

Bella: I love that. One of the reasons people are afraid of live streaming is because they’re afraid of making mistakes. What kind of mistakes do you see people make?

Stephanie: The worst one I see is people just hit the go live button without having a plan at all. They just go live to see what happens. The downside is that as soon as you go live, everyone gets a notification. People stop and watch because they’re intrigued, but if you’re rambling for five minutes, the next time you go live, they skip it. You don’t want that. You want to captivate and hook your audience right away.

Bella: You just mentioned “snooze.” Can you tell our audience what snooze is?

Stephanie: Oh my gosh, yes. Sometimes during election seasons, for instance, you might have someone constantly posting negativity. If you go to their post and click the dropdown arrow on the right-hand side, you can snooze them for 30 days. After that, Facebook will ask if you want to continue snoozing them. It’s like putting them in timeout.

Bella: I love it—it’s like Facebook timeout! So when we’re doing these lives, how can we brand them so people know we’re representing our company?

Stephanie: A couple of ways. If you go live on your smartphone, use an app called Switcher Go—it lets you put an image overlay, like your logo or even a “call me now” banner. It’s free. If you go live from your desktop, you can use BeLive.tv or my favorite, Ecamm.

Bella: Yes, Ecamm is my favorite too! Let me break this down a little more—one of our mastermind members, Pam, was terrified of video. She would record challenges wearing sunglasses in our private group. Six months later, she became a BeLive expert, hosting a Friday live show interviewing other pet service providers in her community. She went from terrified to being asked to broadcast live from local events. So you guys, take note—this is powerful.

Stephanie: That’s one of the best ways to keep your brand top of mind and tip of tongue—leverage live streaming, you guys.

Bella: Because no one else is doing it—it’s still disruptive! So how do you get people to show up live?

Stephanie: Build buzz beforehand, just like any event. Create a Facebook event, include a great image, list the key takeaways, and use my “Why, What, How, What If” formula. For example: “This is why you want to tune in today—because we’re talking about how to use live streaming for your pet sitting business. I’ll show you how to brand your show, and if you can’t watch live, that’s okay—you can catch the replay here.” That’s it—simple and effective.

Bella: I love that—it builds credibility too. You respect my time and tell me upfront why I should watch.

Stephanie: Exactly. Do it again midway through your broadcast so anyone joining late knows what’s going on. Give them a call to action—“Tag a friend who’d love these tips.” You only need three seconds of someone viewing to create a custom audience and leverage that in Facebook ads.

Bella: Love it....

Dynamic. Engaging. Totally rad. These are a few words you might use to describe your latest Facebook video … but they also apply to Kelly Noble Mirabella, self-described social media geek and marketing consultant with Stellar Media Marketing.With more than 11 years of social media marketing experience—and more than a few wacky costumes—Kelly brings tricky social media concepts to life through her fun, clear and memorable social media training videos and classes.

Long before social media savvy was status quo, Kelly recognized how social media can take brand recognition, customer engagement, and marketing efforts to a radical new level. What’s more, Kelly has spent the past two years learning to build Facebook messenger bots (aka “chatbots”), and now teaches others how to build them with simple, entertaining and, sometimes, 80s-themed tutorials.

Today, she teaches entrepreneurs, small business owners, and working professionals how to use social media to improve their businesses and achieve their goals.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

Chatbots are some of the latest and greatest marketing technology that we have access to as business owners. They might seem complicated and daunting, but they really aren't! You don't need to be a programming or computer science expert to use one.

Show Highlights

What is a chatbot? [3:20]

What is the 24 + 1 rule? [6:00]

Are there things people should NOT do with chatbots? [7:00]

How do we get started with chatbots? [9:15]

What's the difference between emailing your client list vs. chatbots? [17:15]

Special Offer:

Subscribe to Kelly's YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/stellar247 and join her Chatbot Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/BabyGotBot/

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Kelly's Website: https://stellarmediamarketing.com/

Kelly's YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/stellar247

ManyChat: https://manychat.com/

Kelly's Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BabyGotBot/

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript:

This is episode 131 of Bella in Your Business. Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I've got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It's called Jump and Scale, and it's free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to your business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you inside.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready. Bella's got your chute. Let's jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I have got Kelly Noble Mirabella with me. I love saying her name. She has quickly become honestly like one of my Voxer besties. We talk all the time, and the girl is so knowledgeable when it comes to messenger bots. Don't get too scared, but she is here with us today to just give us the lowdown, the breakdown of bots 101. Kelly is dynamic, engaging, and totally rad. She's got a ton—a series of really short videos explaining how to do different things in chatbots to an 80s-style theme. Yes, I am talking about teased hair and neon shirts and everything. It's super cute. But she has this real knack for breaking the vernacular down into words and things that we can understand. Because if you're like me, message bots and all of these diagrams and arrows everywhere just kind of make you glaze over like a deer in headlights, right?

Kelly's been in social media marketing for more than 11 years. Her company is called Stellar Media Marketing, which, if you're watching the video to this, you're going to actually see that it's very stellar behind her, like the whole ecosystem. Nebula—that’s the word. And so she brings tricky social media concepts to life with her fun and clear, memorable social media training videos I was just telling you about. She has recognized how social media can take brand recognition, customer engagement, and marketing efforts to a radical new level. What's more, Kelly spent the last two years learning to build Facebook messengers, AKA bots, and now teaches others how to do them. So without further ado, welcome, Kelly.

Hi. Wow, that was a mouthful, Bella. You did well.

I did. I always like to add my own personal thing into it. So, Kelly, as you know, I represent a lot of small business owners, specifically pet sitters and dog walkers. I want to just come out of the gate here because, as business owners, we feel like, “My gosh, I have to jump on this. It's new. I have to do it. It's the newest thing.” You know, I hear all these stats that people open messenger bots better. So they jump into it, and what they end up doing is messing it—or effing it—up. So let's start off first with what a bot is and then the most common “don’t” that you see.

Kelly: Okay, cool. So a bot, or a chatbot—there are bad bots too, but we're talking about chatbots today—is basically an automated message system that's built by a human or artificial intelligence. Now don’t get it twisted. Most people automatically assume it’s all artificial intelligence, AKA AI. That is not true. In fact, 90% or more—I just made up that stat, but I’m assuming—the majority of chatbots that you see today are not AI. And the reason I know that is because it's very expensive and very techy to include artificial intelligence, and the tech is really not quite there yet unless you’re like Google.

So it's these messages that we can utilize. If you have Siri on your phone, Google Assistant on Android, or Alexa, those are all voice. So you've been using them for a while now. The ones that I prefer are Facebook Messenger chatbots, which are those messages that run through the Messenger platform from a Facebook business page. So that's the basics. If you're still confused, it's basically like an email automated system that you set up in the backend and then they see what happens from the frontend. But it's more engaging because it's not so one-sided, like push marketing with email. It’s more of a two-way street of engagement that you can build out—kind of a choose-your-own-adventure of messaging.

So what are some ways that you see business owners jump in and fail epically?

Kelly: The foundational thing about chatbots in Facebook is that you can’t just add people to your list. That’s a fail-safe. You can’t randomly add people the way you could (though shouldn’t) with an email list. In order to subscribe to someone’s chatbot, you have to send them a message. There are ways you can encourage that engagement, but you can’t force it.

There’s also the “24+1” rule. As soon as someone engages with your chatbot, you have 24 hours to send them a promotional message. Outside that, you can’t send a promotional message. You can send a non-promotional one—like a value post—but not something that leads to monetary gain. The “plus one” part means you can send one follow-up promotional message after the 24 hours, and then you’re done unless they engage again.

Bella: Is it good when I go to your Facebook page, or is it distracting for the bot to automatically pop up?

Kelly: I think it’s great practice. You can set it in your Facebook settings without third-party tools. It usually only pops up for people who haven’t engaged before. It’s like a call to action—wonderful, in my book.

The key, though, is foundational marketing: set expectations. Let people know if you’ll message daily, weekly, etc. Say, “Hey, do you want to subscribe to our daily deals?” or “You’ll get a weekly message on Thursdays.” That way, they know what to expect and won’t find your chatbot annoying.

Bella: So what I’ve heard then is: do not add people, do not be deceptive, set expectations, and follow the rules of Facebook.

Kelly: Yes—and basically, follow the golden rule: don’t treat people the way you don’t want to be treated.

Bella: Okay, so for people who are brand new, how do we get started?

Kelly: You don’t need to code. All you need is a tool like ManyChat or ChatFuel. I recommend ManyChat—it’s easy, plug-and-play, and starts at about $10/month. You could do a welcome chatbot, a FAQ chatbot, or even deliver a lead magnet. I’ve got tons of beginner videos on my Baby Got Bot YouTube channel.

Bella: So let me break this down in real terms for you guys. This bot could be as simple as popping up and saying, “Welcome! Do you have a dog, a cat, both, or other?” Depending on their answer, you guide them—like sending dog owners to your dog-walking page.

Kelly: Exactly. You can make it interactive and even fun—name your bot after your pet!

Bella: A lot of pet sitters have blogs or guides, like “Best Dog Walking Trails in Sacramento.” If they were to go live and talk about it, how could they use bots with that?

Kelly: That’s one of my favorite strategies. Go live—when people are in the moment—and use a keyword trigger, like “type WALK below.” Using ManyChat, anyone who comments “walk” gets an automatic message with your guide, coupon, or freebie. It’s instant engagement while they’re hot, not hours later when they’ve moved on.

Bella: I love that. You can even send an email reminder like, “Going live in 10 minutes—click here!” And then have the bot deliver your guide right in Messenger instead of making them fill out a form. That’s way less friction.

Kelly: Exactly. You can even ask for their email inside the chatb

Rob Balasabas is the Social Media & Community Manager at Thinkific. He manages the daily curation of Thinkific’s message on social media. You may also find him engaging with their private online community of over 14,000 (and growing) online course creators inside the “Thinkific Studio” Facebook Group.

Rob joined the Thinkific Team in 2016, as a Customer Champion where we worked closely with customers to get their Thinkific sites off the ground, and quickly making the leap into the Marketing Team in early 2018. You may see Rob talking about Thinkific, Online Courses, and Digital Marketing strategies on webinars, livestreams and podcasts. When he’s not doing that, you can find him in line at the local taco food truck outside the office or a local coffee shop sipping on a “double-double” :)

Biggest Takeaway

Who is Rob Balasabas? [2:00]

What is Thinkific? [3:45]

How can a pet sitting business owner use Thinkific for ongoing training for their staff? [8:45]

Can we use Thinkific as a marketing tool? [12:15]

Special Offer

When you sign up with Thinkific with Bella's affiliate link, you get a TON of bonuses like:

1 Month Free on the Thinkific Pro Plan

An on-boarding call with a Thinkific On-boarding Specialist

Premium Training Courses

Sign Up Here: https://bit.ly/2RwNBmc

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Rob's Website: https://socialclub.thinkific.com/

Thinkific: https://bit.ly/2RwNBmc

Thinkific Demo Video: https://www.facebook.com/groups/jumpmastermind/permalink/2162201460478145/

Transcript:

This is episode 130 of Bella in Your Business.

This episode is brought to you by my free webinar, Jump and Scale Your Business. It's my three-part training series all dedicated to finding and attracting the right kind of people that will scale your business. Did I mention it's free? Listen, you have to attend this if you want to grow your staff, you feel like you're being held hostage, you have high turnover, you feel burnt out, or you're just not seeing the results you want. Join me for this three-part free webinar series. Register now at jumpconsulting.net/scale. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you there.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready. Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I have a guy who’s quickly becoming one of my friends. You’re gonna know why later today. He’s been helping a lot of pet sitters and dog walkers almost inadvertently, and for free in a way—at least when it first starts. And this is gonna be an episode that, if you’re feeling like the hiring and onboarding process is a complete mess, you’re gonna wanna listen up.

Today my guest is Rob, and Rob, help me pronounce your last name.

Rob: Balasabas.

You just gotta get the rhythm right and then you’ll nail it. I just know you’re the Rob of Thinkific because you are all over social media. You kill it on Instagram and you kill it on Facebook Lives. We just did one last week, but I’m so glad to finally have you on my podcast. It’s now first quarter 2019. I know everyone’s really interested in getting organized, and I wanted to have you on to kind of show them this awesome thing that a lot of pet sitters in the mastermind have already started doing with wild success. But before we get there—like that little teaser, you guys—Rob, why don’t you introduce yourself a little bit, tell us where you’re from, how long you’ve been with Thinkific, and your backstory.

Rob: Sure. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Super excited. Just like you, I’ve been seeing you all over social media and getting a lot of knowledge from you. My name’s Rob Balasabas. I’m with Thinkific. I’m on the marketing team, and my role here is social media and community management. It’s been a really fun ride. It’s been about two and a half years now since I first started here. I started on the support team actually just answering tickets and helping with onboarding and new course creators getting started.

I did that for about six months and then saw that nobody was really taking care of Instagram. It was just on autopilot. We were putting up blog post images as posts on Instagram, and it was growing organically. I talked to the VP of growth at the time and said, “Hey, if nobody’s doing it, I can do it. On my way out of the office, I’ll take care of it and engage with our audience there because it’s an opportunity for course creators or potential course creators.” Long story short, they said, “Instagram’s going really well. Do you want to do Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn?” So they moved me over to marketing. Before Thinkific, I worked in a digital marketing agency, building WordPress sites, doing SEO, audits, and paid ads. It was a small startup, but I learned a lot there about digital marketing.

That’s cool. So not like I’m interviewing you or anything, but that totally tells me a part of you that you’re loyal and stick it through with people and you’re not jumping around, which is kind of cool to know that we have a great contact with Thinkific. So why don’t you tell us what Thinkific is?

Rob: Thinkific is an online course platform. If you want to teach anything online, you would use our platform. If you want to do any type of training for staff or customers, that’s what you would use Thinkific for. We try to make it as easy as possible for people to create courses. You can also integrate with other tools to market and sell your courses, track student progress, run quizzes, and upload videos—all in one place.

So, for those of you listening, you’re like, “Well, I don’t do online courses, Bella, that’s you.” I want you to expand your mind a bit here. Something we tested on a couple of people and then rolled out in the mastermind—more people have started catching on to it—is this whole process of training and onboarding your new staff.

Rob, so that you know—and maybe for people listening who haven’t yet got staff—the typical traditional way of doing this is: a new pet sitter comes on board and we email them documents. A lot of documents. Then we expect them to understand it all. Maybe there’s a printed quiz they fill out and bring to orientation. But it’s just documents that get downloaded to their computer, which can get lost—or worse, repurposed if someone starts their own company.

What Thinkific has done for a lot of pet sitters is taken this and brought it to life. I did a video (we’ll link it in the show notes) showing how easy it is. Going back to what Rob mentioned about WordPress—it’s as simple as uploading a Word document. You can take your training manual and break it into modules. At the beginning of each module, record a one-minute video—nothing fancy. Just say, “Hey guys, this next section is about X. Pay attention to this part. I’m glad to have you learn this.” Then at the end, they can take a quiz.

Now, Rob, tell me how this software allows someone like a business owner to follow the process and see how much reading or quiz-taking someone’s doing.

Rob: Basically, when you go to thinkific.com, you’ll see how it looks. On the left-hand side, you have the outline for the course—video lessons, quizzes, PDFs, and text—all step by step. You can control the experience for your staff so they must finish lesson one before moving to lesson two. On the backend, you can track all progress. You’ll see, for example, that someone stopped at lesson three and hasn’t moved for a few days, so you can reach out. Or, if someone says they completed everything, you can verify whether they actually did.

That’s fantastic. An idea that came up while you were hanging out in the mastermind with us was to take this a step further. Pet sitters use software that clients often have questions about—like “How do I sign up?” or “How do I update my info?” You could set up a Thinkific course for your clients with short videos and step-by-step guides. It’s an easy way to deliver information, empower your clients, and cut down on admin time.

Another example is ongoing training. You mentioned drip campaigns—so how could a pet sitter use this for continued learning at 1, 3, 6, or 9 months in?

Rob: A drip lesson is where the content is pre-recorded but only released after a set time—say, a week or a month. You could use it for evaluations, follow-ups, or check-ins. It automates the process—staff get an email like, “Hey, it’s been a month. Here’s a quick survey.” You can also use it for clients—create short courses teaching pet owners how to use your systems, update billing, or even care tips for their pets. It becomes a centralized resource hub, saving time for everyone.

The reason this excites me—and I hope it’s clicking for you—is because once we have staff, we face challenges reminding them of policies or maintaining consistency. Thinkific helps preserve valuable content like training sessions, updates, or live meetings that would otherwise be lost. It streamlines education and empowers your team.

The best part? You can get started for free. The free plan includes three modules—enough for your employee manual. You can make the course private or use a free coupon code so it’s not public.

Rob, I love Thinkific. I love how your tool can revolutionize training and scaling for so many pet businesses. Do you have any other ideas or did I miss anything?

Rob: Just one more—use it as a marketing tool. Instead of giving away a free checklist PDF, create a free course. Teach potential clients something useful—like dog care or behavior tips—and show off your expertise. When they need a sitter, you’re top of mind.

Exactly! Or you could partner with a local behaviorist for a “What Does It Mean When My Cat Does This?” course. It’s a great marketing carrot—something no one else offers.

Rob: Totally....

Chris Strub is the first person to use live-streaming and Snapchat in all 50 U.S. states. He's also the author of 50 States, 100 Days: The Book, and is the CEO of I Am Here, LLC.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

Social media is more important now than ever and it truly is an aspect of your business that you don't want to ignore or write off completely. It can help you make meaningful connections and engage your with your core audience in an authentic way. The biggest mistake that business owners make is that they post on social media because they feel like they have too. It's important to be authentic and post relevant, quality content - otherwise people WILL see through it. Develop a strategy that you can commit to and see how it can take your business to new heights.

Show Highlights

Who is Chris Strub? [2:00]

Why should I incorporate a social media strategy into my business? [3:30]

What social media apps should pet sitting business owners be focusing on? [6:45]

How often should I be posting and engaging on social media? [11:30]

What do you say to people who think social media is a waste of time? [17:00]

Why do you prioritize attending live events? [19:45]

Special Offer

Join Chris's FREE Facebook Group, SocialWithStrub, where you can share ideas and strategies about social media for your brand. Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SocialWithStrub/

Links

Chris's Blog: http://givingdayguy.com

Chris's Websites:  www.teamstrub.com and www.socialwithstrub.com

Jump & Scale Webinar: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Chris's Article: http://www.teamstrub.com/single-post/FemaleSpeakers

Share The Show

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Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

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Transcript:

This is episode 129 of Bella in Your Business. Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I've got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It's called Jump and Scale and it's free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to your business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you inside.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready—Bella's got your chute. Let's jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I've got another friend with me. So glad that I get to call all these people my friends. Chris Strub is with us, and if you don't know him, you are going to know him by the end of this today. Chris is the first person to use live stream and Snapchat in all 50 states. He's the author of 50 States, 100 Days: The Book, and he's the CEO of I Am Here. Chris is a very giving person. He does a lot of giving days around the country with nonprofits and is just an all-around real, genuine person. Today, he's going to be here to talk to us about a lot of different social media topics. Without further ado, Chris Strub, welcome to the show.

Chris: Bella, it's such a pleasure to be back. I'm going to pretend like we screwed up the audio on the last one just so that we could talk again because I love it.

Bella: I love it. So Chris, why don’t you give us a little bit more of a background of who you are, where you're coming to us from, and your backstory?

Chris: Sure. I recently moved here this month to Greenville, South Carolina, but I'm originally from New York. I went to school in Binghamton, so if you see the green hat that I wear all the time, that's my alma mater, Binghamton University. I quit my job up there in 2014 to road trip around the country to all 48 states. That led to the trip that you mentioned in 2015, where I worked with different nonprofits in all 50 states in 100 days, which led to the book, which I'm very proud of. That book has led to my career as a solopreneur, getting a chance to travel around the country and go to social media events like Social Media Week Lima, where you and I met earlier this year. I’ve also spoken in Denver, Wichita, San Francisco, and Texas. My passion really is working with nonprofits. This week I launched a new blog series called givingdayguy.com, where I'm focusing on helping organizations with their giving day plans. And we're recording right after Giving Tuesday, where on Facebook they raised more than $125 million for nonprofits just in one day, which is pretty incredible.

Bella: That is incredible. Wow. That’s really awesome. This is probably coming out the first quarter of 2019, so I’m sure your blog is well underway. What was that URL again?

Chris: givingdayguy.com.

Bella: Very cool. So let’s talk social media in general. What’s the best advantage of actually incorporating a social media strategy into my business?

Chris: I think the biggest advantage is keeping up with the people who value your business and value their relationship with you. Let’s use you and me as an example—we met in Lima, Ohio earlier this year, but we’ve been able to keep in constant contact through different social media channels. We watch each other’s Instagram stories, live streams, and tweet to each other. So we’re able to maintain a relationship that’s valuable to both of our businesses. You can apply that same thought process to whatever business you’re in—whether it’s the pet walking business or something else. Your customers are looking for ways to keep in touch with you outside of the time that they’re spending actually in your business or with their pets. We know people spend an enormous amount of time on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so it’s critical for your business to have a presence there—not just to market your services, but to maintain a two-way line of communication with your customers so that when they do need to buy, you’re top of mind.

Bella: I love that. And you’re right—our relationship is largely digital, but we’ve been able to get to know and support each other. I want to encourage business owners listening today not to just think of social media as a tool for clients to get to know you, but also for you to get to know your clients and other community leaders. Don’t be afraid to share their stuff. Too often we think we live in a silo and can’t follow the mayor or an awesome realtor who’s putting out great content. People see that and will want to do it for you too.

Chris: A lot of people get caught up in all the new changes happening on social media, but really, business hasn’t changed—it’s still about relationship building. It’s about who you know and how well you know them. So if I’m trying to build a relationship with someone and they’re sharing about their life on social, when we meet in person, we already have common ground. That’s the power of social media—it bridges those gaps.

Bella: Exactly. Think about the veterinarian clinic you’re trying to build a relationship with. You can start connecting online before walking in the door. That ice-breaking can happen virtually. It’s a great way to build relationships and get in the back door.

Chris: Totally agree.

Bella: So what apps should pet sitters be focusing on? There are so many out there. Should we do all of them?

Chris: Probably not. My big focus this year has been Instagram Stories. I love to describe Stories as a happy medium between live streaming and permanent posts. You can point the camera at yourself and create content on the go. For dog walkers, it’s a great opportunity to connect while you’re out working—show real life. Stories only last 24 hours, but they keep you top of mind that whole time. People might not scroll back to see old posts, but if they see your Story circle lit up, they’ll tap it. It’s immediate and intimate.

Bella: I love that, and I want to challenge pet sitters to not just post photos of pets. Show your human side—talk about what you’re doing, what challenges you’re solving, what makes you excited. Show the behind-the-scenes. That builds trust.

Chris: Exactly. When people see you—your face, your voice—they connect with you. You’re not just another pet sitter. They trust you with their pets, their home, and their money. Stories let you show who you are. Think like a fan, think like a customer.

Bella: So how often should they be posting?

Chris: You can never provide too much value. Don’t post just to post. Post quality content that provides value. Watch your Stories and ask—am I getting bored? Be intentional. There’s no fixed rule; it depends on your capacity to create consistent, valuable content.

Bella: There’s so much material out there—pet sitters get asked questions daily. Think like a journalist. And your Story doesn’t have to be all day long; it can be one hour with a beginning, middle, and end. Just share something interesting about your day.

Chris: Yes—and as Marcus Sheridan says, “They ask, you answer.” Base your content around questions your clients ask. Write them down and answer them on video. That’s what people are searching for.

Bella: Brilliant. And remember, you can upcycle Stories—download them and reuse them on Facebook, YouTube, or your website. If you show a shy cat coming out from under the bed, that can be a perfect example for your services page. It shows what you do in action.

Chris: Exactly. And always encourage your clients to connect with you on social media. Don’t be afraid to say, “Hey, are you on Instagram? Let’s connect right now.”

Bella: Perfect. So what do you say to people who think social media is a waste of time?

...

April is a dog mom of 2 that just recently left corporate America to run her daycare and boarding business, Rocky's Retreat. Rocky's offers a boutique experience that allows dogs to thrive.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss:

There's never going to be "perfect time" to leave your corporate job to become a full-time small business owner. There will always be another hiccup or another goal you want to hit before taking the plunge. April's advice? Acknowledge your fear but don't suppress it. Oftentimes doing something scared can be the kick-in-the-pants you need to propel yourself to greatness!

Show Highlights

Who is April Cox? [1:45]

What was your intention for the business when you purchased it? [2:20]

What is your relationship with fear? [3:40]

Can you describe your goal for leaving Corporate America? [7:00]

How did you learn to be a caretaker for other people's dogs as opposed to caring for your own? [9:00]

In what ways did your life change when you left Corporate America? [10:20]

What's your advice for someone that wants to leave their full-time job to focus on their business, but hasn't been able to bring themselves to do it yet? [12:00]

What attracted you to buy Rocky's Retreat? [14:00]

Special Offer

Get a free gift for signing up to April's email list at www.rockysretreat.com. She sends out great info like tips and recipes!

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

April's Website: http://rockysretreat.com

Share The Show

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Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript:

This is episode 128 of Bella in Your Business. It’s a must-have attend if you want staff, you want to grow, you feel like you’re held hostage, or you have too high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net/scale. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I’ve actually got a fellow colleague of mine here. I have got April Cox with me, and she is a dog mom of two, recently left corporate America to run her daycare and boarding business, Rocky’s Retreat. Rocky’s is a boutique experience that allows dogs to thrive, led by the amazing April. April’s also a mastermind member who I’ve just been watching her journey. She’s been kicking so much butt and having fun while doing it. Her outlook and her mindset are so inspiring that I wanted to have her on today. So April, thanks for taking some time to sit down and chat with us.

April: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Bella: Yeah. So April, for those of the listeners who might not know who you are, could you give us a brief introduction?

April: You know, I’ve always been an animal lover and I’ve always been an entrepreneur since I was a little girl, like I had a lemonade stand and I was always just coming up with something to do on my own. So when I figured out that the two could kind of meld, it was kind of perfect. Rocky’s Retreat was actually founded in 2011. The previous owners sold the business, and I stumbled across it in July of 2017 and made the decision that this is where I was going to go with my life. And so a couple of months of paperwork later and I became the new owner of Rocky’s Retreat.

Bella: I love it. What were the things that you were looking for when you started the business? Like what was your intention for it?

April: Really just to do something that brings me joy. In the beginning of my career in corporate America, I was doing all the things I was supposed to do—making money and moving up and being promoted and taking on more responsibility—but it just never really made my heart happy. It made my checkbook happy.

Bella: I think a lot of people can relate to that. We do things because we’re supposed to. These are the next steps. Even from kids, I think we have all these expectations placed on us, right? And so we just start going through this path of, I have to complete school, I have to go to college, I have to get a good job, I have to have—and before you know it, you’re living your life for someone else. Sounds like that’s kind of what you were like—stop. I want to do something that makes me happy.

April: Yeah. It was a little scary to think about it because there’s a lot of safety in having a steady paycheck and benefits and all of that. But I just, I almost felt like every day that I went into the cubicle, another part of my soul was dying.

Bella: I feel the same exact way. I’ve actually tried to get a couple of remote offices so that I’m not working at home. And every time I go there, I just feel the same way. I feel like it’s taking part of my soul. It’s tough. You also mentioned fear. You’re kind of afraid to go off and venture there. Can you tell us more about how you would describe your relationship with fear and what you do with that when it comes in? Because I think that’s a big part of an entrepreneurial journey.

April: Yeah, fear played a big part of it for a really long time, which is probably why I didn’t do something much sooner. I had a conversation with a girlfriend probably about four or five years ago. And once I hit 40, the desire to really go do my own thing started growing and growing and growing. Because it’s like, okay, I only have about 20, 25 more years left to work. So a girlfriend of mine said that she was really surprised I wasn’t already doing my own thing. And she said that you could just tell it’s in me. And so that really resonated with me. That was probably one of the conversations that really started getting me down the path of dealing with the fear of it—that other people saw in me that I didn’t belong in the cubicle.

Bella: Powerful.

April: Yeah, and so I just started really dealing with it and I just started making plans. I’m a planner. Five years ago I had changed jobs and I had a huge spreadsheet with the pros and cons and all of that. So I just really started planning and acknowledging the fear. I still have fear every day, and me leaving the cubicle—anybody who was even remotely connected to me on social saw how excited I was.

Bella: I did.

April: It was funny, I had so many people that reached out to me that were just genuinely excited for me. It was fun. But it literally went back and forth from one day I was excited, the next day I was terrified. I was like, I can’t do this, I’m not going to do this. What am I, crazy? So I think just kind of acknowledging your fear and not trying to just put it away, because if you put it away, it’s just going to keep building and building. And then it’s something giant that you have to deal with. Whereas if you kind of deal with it on a daily basis and work through what it is. And it’s different for everybody. Some people like to write stuff down, some people like to plan, some people want to go do yoga. It’s just different ways for people. But yeah, I think you really have to deal with it.

Bella: I think it’s really neat how you had so many different sounding boards in your life, whether it was social media or that friend you talked about. I think all of us, it’s a really important lesson that we can’t do anything alone and we all deal with fear and self-doubt. And we need those sounding boards in our life to reflect back to us and be like, wow, I’m surprised you don’t have your own thing yet. And you’re like, really?

April: Well, yeah, and knowing that people believe in us is also really powerful too, right? Yeah. My last day in corporate again, because everybody knew, I got a message on Facebook from somebody that I had worked with in my previous job. So I probably hadn’t worked with her in five years, six years. She moved out of state. And I got this message from her of just how inspiring it was and how happy she was for me. And that wasn’t the only message like that I got, but having that support and knowing that other people are excited for you, it really helps too. Just letting everybody know what your intentions are kind of builds that crowd for you. And that can help you with the fear too.

Bella: That’s so cool. So you said you’re a planner and you did all the spreadsheets and stuff. Talk to me, and I’m thinking about the people that are actually working a corporate job or another job wanting to go full time in this pet industry that is just ridiculously booming every year, right? Tell me for you personally, what was your goal for leaving the corporate? Like, what did you feel like you needed to have in place in order to walk away? Was it just a certain time or was it something tangible or was it just you were over it?

April: I did want something. I guess the tangible for me more was really understanding the business and understanding the daily flow. So I went through pretty much almost a whole year of working both my full-time job and owning the business. So I had a good idea of when it’s slow, when it’s busy, when do I need to be prepared. Like obviously next week is Thanksgiving week. It’s a crazy week for us—all hands on deck. So it was just really understanding what my busy times were, what my slow times were, getting to know my customers. And I just felt it was the time because this is a very touchy-feely business. Pets are people’s babies and they want to trust you with them. And if they don’t see you all the time, they’re not going to have that trust in you. So I just really needed to be able to put my hands more on the business and just be able to really be there, develop my team, and just grow the business. The business is great and profitable,...

At Viral Ideas, Dave Feinman creates to Inspire. He believes everyone has the right to be fulfilled, in shared creativity, and in the power of defining your why. Dave shares this message through the creative process of making videos.

Biggest Takeaway You Don't Want To Miss

When we talk about the three types of videos, we have awareness videos, consideration videos, and decision videos. Each of these types has a different format, aim, and result when marketing our businesses. For each of these types of videos, we want to market them on our Facebook business pages, our Facebook personal profiles, and the big one - YouTube. By creating these different types of videos and promoting them in different areas, we can maximize our video marketing efforts for our businesses.

Show Highlights:

Who Is Dave Feinman? [1:30]

What are the three types of videos we should be creating? [2:30]

Where do we promote our videos? [5:30]

Can a small pet sitting company get on the first page of Google? [8:00]

What's the third kind of video we should be using? [9:00]

How can we use Facebook Ads and the Facebook Pixel? [13:00]

How do we promote our videos on YouTube? [15:00]

Can we get the same kind of SEO if we only use Facebook? Or do we need to use YouTube? [16:00]

What's the third place we should be posting our videos? [18:00]

What is the correct order to post and promote our videos? [20:15]

Links

Jump & Scale Webinar: https://jumpconsulting.net/scale

Dave's Website: http://viralideasmarketing.com/

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

Click this link – Bella In Your Business

Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork

Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section

Click on ‘Write a Review’

 

Transcript:

This is episode 127 of Bella in Your Business. This episode is brought to you by my free webinar, Jump and Scale Your Business. It’s my three-part training series all dedicated to finding and attracting the right kind of people that will scale your business. Did I mention it’s free? Listen, you have to attend this if you want to grow your staff, you feel like you’re being held hostage, you have high turnover, you feel burnt out, or you’re just not seeing the results you want. Join me for this three-part free webinar series. Register now at jumpconsulting.net/scale. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale. I’ll see you there.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready. Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump.

Welcome everybody to Bella in Your Business. I’m your host, Bella Vasta, with Jump Consulting. Today, I actually have a good friend who’s been on the podcast before. His name is Dave Feinman, and he is from Viral Ideas. Dave, how are you today? I am doing amazing. It’s a hot day here in Philadelphia, but it’s going awesome. That’s so cool. So Dave, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about Viral Marketing and what you do. You’ve been on the podcast before, and we had so much fun, and people loved it so much that I needed to bring you back on and talk about what we’re going to talk about today. I’ll tell you in a minute, but Dave, tell everyone a little bit more about who you are. So we did this podcast before, and we’re trying to get this one in the works to go deeper into some of these topics.

Just a little bit of my background: I run a company called Viral Ideas. We do video marketing for social media and online use. We focus on really kind of helping companies build their brand using video marketing, which I know a lot of the people that you work with and the people in your network—that’s something that they’re really looking at doing these days. So hopefully, we can give you guys some nuggets of information that will help you grow your business. That’s so cool, Dave. Yeah, we all know that video is definitely the way of the future. People would actually rather watch things than read things now, right? We’re so captivated by it, but it’s also something that a lot of business owners have trouble with. We’re like, what should we create? How should we promote it if we actually promote it after we create it? And there’s all this craziness. So we want to break it down today for you guys and basically tell you what you should be creating and how and where you should promote it to benefit your business. And we are going to bullet point the crap out of the next half hour here. So we’re going to just bring it straight to you. There’s not going to be any strategy like, what should I do? We’re going to tell you exactly what to do. So buckle up because we are about to jump out of this airplane, and it is going to be fun. So Dave, I’m going to start it with you. What three types of videos should we create?

Dave: Basically, it’s three different stages of the marketing funnel from a broad perspective—the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision phase of the process. At each stage of the funnel, as you think about video for your business, you want to make sure you’re creating different videos within the facets of those stages. So let’s start with the awareness stage because that’s the beginning when someone’s getting to know you. We see basically two main ways that people are creating videos within the awareness stage, and that’s the foundation video—that’s like an about-us video that’s showing who you are, why you do what you do, which the “why” is particularly important—and also getting into a little bit about the services you might offer and maybe different clients that you have. Another type of video within the awareness stage is a video series. So this might be something like we’re creating right now. It’s a live video. This is an awareness-type video. It might be something that people are seeing for the first time.

He’s actually talking about jumping out of a plane. We actually made a skydiving video for one of our clients where we threw a bunch of people out of the plane. I saw that. That was amazing. And I was all over that because of, you know, Jump Consulting and all. You’ve jumped out of a plane too, right? I have. Yeah, that’s why it’s called Jump Consulting. Do you do it frequently? No, I did it once. It’s actually a funny story. It was in my twenties when I was dating everyone on Match.com, and one of the guys I dated had already gone skydiving eleven times, and he was going his twelfth time that weekend. I was like, oh, that’s cool. And when you’re twenty with no family, you pretty much do anything. He’s like, do you want to come with me? And I said, yeah, but I need a video. And so he’s like, okay, we’ll get you a video. And I was like, all right, let’s jump. I don’t know if I would actually do it now that I’m thirty-six with a husband and a child and a lot to lose, but I don’t know. Sometimes you’ve got to do that. For my birthday, we’re actually taking about eleven friends skydiving, so that’s going to be a fun video that we’re going to put together. You have to video that stuff, right?

A series could be, for example, a skydiving video, something about your business. In the pet sitting world, this could be maybe the “pet of the day.” You could do a quick one-minute video about the pet that you’re with that day and kind of bring some personality into it and show people that you’re really going to take care of their animal. So it could be something simple or something really well-produced, but it’s just getting people to know you a little bit in the beginning stages of the funnel. Got it. Yeah, like a good series could even be just like a highlight of all of your employees. You could do it at your next employee meeting—you could do like a minute video of everybody and then release them one a week over eight weeks or something. It could be every Tuesday or every Wednesday—“Hey, I want to highlight our newest employee.” That’s a very easy way to do it and also repurpose it on your website as part of their biographies. Exactly.

Bella: That’s awesome. So that was the awareness stage. What comes next?

Dave: The next stage is consideration. So, consideration is when someone’s learning about your business, they’re considering you against competitors or considering whether they should even hire someone for what you do. There are a couple of things you could do here. One would be testimonial videos. These are my favorite because your clients can tell your story better than you can tell your story. You could also have client interviews where you go back and forth and really showcase the experience of what it’s like to work with you. You could also have behind-the-scenes videos, which show your process—maybe how your staff is trained, or how you keep pets safe, or what a day looks like in your business.

Bella: I love that. I feel like this stage is where a lot of pet sitters and dog walkers forget to show proof. They post cute dogs or say, “We love pets!” but that doesn’t show anything unique. A client testimonial video could show a real person saying, “I never worry about my dog when I’m away because I know they love him like I do.” That’s so powerful.

Dave: Exactly. And people trust people. When you hear someone else saying it, it’s way more believable. Even a quick 15-second clip from a happy client filmed on your phone works. It doesn’t need to be perfect—just authentic.

Bella: Totally. I always tell people, “Done is better than perfect.” And even if it’s not a polished production, it’s better to have something that shows your real customers talking about how you helped them.

Dave: Right. The goal is to make it easy for new customers to see themselves in the story. You can even ask them simple questions like, “What made you nervous before hiring us? How do you feel now?” That’s all you need for great soundbites.

Bella: That’s so true....