One thing is certain: nothing stays the same—in life or in business. When the economy takes a dip, business owners may panic and overreact, leading to long-term negative effects on the business. However, there are ways to navigate these challenges with grace and take actions that will help your business emerge more successful.

In today’s episode, Fern explains how you can take specific actions to strengthen your brand image in the public eye, improve your business operations, and create a foundation for explosive future growth.

If you really want your pet business to show up in online searches, you need to focus on search engine optimization (SEO). What stops most people from tackling this important business task is that it can be incredibly complex. We want to help you with bite-sized SEO tasks that can positively impact your business’s visibility in online searches.

In today’s episode, Fern explains exactly how to create location pages for your website that will help you rank in search results for your specific service area. He’ll cover how to set things up so that Google can easily find your page, as well as how to optimize your page to provide a great experience for visitors.

Too many pet businesses are only focusing on one or two marketing angles as they are promoting their business. This limited approach will only give you very short lived results. However, if you have a comprehensive marketing strategy that hits all levels of customer awareness and helps people know, like and trust your business, you will enjoy much greater and long lasting success. 

In this episode Fern goes over the top five marketing goals you need to be utilizing in your organic and paid marketing channels. You’ll also learn how you can implement campaigns other hit each one and how they work together to really maximize your efforts. 

One of the ways to create a positive relationship with your clients is using gift giving in your marketing plan. Surprising your clients with something special from time to time will increase their loyalty, encourage them to talk about your business and make them smile. 

Today we’ll go over some ways that you can give gifts to super charge your relationship with your customers. We’ll talk about when you should give gifts, how to do it and give you a lot of great ideas to get your gift-giving juices flowing. 

To build a business and brand that your staff, your customers, and everyone who comes in contact with your business understands and can get excited about, you need to start by creating your core values. Think of your core values as the DNA of your business. They will guide all your decisions and attract the people who are the perfect fit for you.

We’ll go over how you can create your core values and show you how they should be injected into your daily business operations to be effective. Once you understand how to put them into play, they can help every area of your business.

Whether you’re just beginning your journey on building your pet business or have an existing facility that you’re looking to expand upon, you’re going to need some money. For most, that will mean getting financing from a bank. To make that a pain-free and successful process you need to understand how it all works and what you need to do. 

To help with all that, I invited Claire and Jacqueline from Live Oak Bank back on the show to give you the honest truth on the options available to you and how to make your lending experience as smooth as can be. 

Running a pet business can be very overwhelming at times. With all the different things you need to do in your business and competition always on the rise, you can often feel like the odds are stacked against you - like you’re the underdog. The good news is that there’s never been more information and resources available to you. 

On today’s podcast episode Fern will go over 10 things you can focus on in your business that, if properly implemented, can transform you from the underdog to the Overdog in your market. 

If you want to keep your staff on the same page and get them working as a cohesive team, you’ll need to have some meetings. The problem is that if you’re not intentional about them, meetings can become inefficient wastes of time. However, if done right, your meetings can energize your staff and improve your overall business operations. 

This week, I invited on a few people to the podcast to share some tips and best practices for your meetings. You’ll hear from industry experts and coaches as well as pet business owners who have cracked the code on team meetings. 

If you want to create a pet business that excites, not only your dog customers, but the human clients that bring them, you need to focus on constantly improving your customer experience. Unfortunately the current pet business model doesn’t provide a lot of opportunities to engage people or allow them to have a much of an experience with your business at all.  

Allison Strauel of Skydance Pet Lodges joins the show today to share how her team dazzles their customers and creates memorable encounters that have really sparked the  growth of her business. 

Finding and keeping good staff is something that comes up again and again in this industry. The main reason that you’re not finding the fright people is that you’re not asking the right questions when you interview. 

In this episode you’ll learn how Natalie Kramer from Albany Pet Hotel switched to behavior based interview and how it totally changed the quality of of the people she hired and improved her company culture.