Dogs Love Running!

Know Your Dog Walking Target Market

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

Know Your Dog Walking Target Market

I had the TV on in the background recently and a commercial caught my attention.  Actually, it wasn't really the commercial itself, but rather an interesting change to the commercial that I noticed.

Not that I really pay all that much attention to peanut butter TV ads, but I've become accustomed to hearing the tag line "choosy moms choose Jif" in Jif ads.  However, the other day, I saw this commercial (sorry, couldn't find a way to embed the video here, so the link is the best I could do) and heard something very different in the tag line.

This tag line was "choosy moms and dads choose Jif."  Hmmm, "dads" are now mentioned.  Kinda interesting.

I did some basic research and found a few "dads' rights" groups that have been put off by the omission of the word "dad" in the Jif commercial.  Perhaps Jif is now trying to be more inclusive in their marketing.

This is a good lesson to consider in your dog walking company's marketing:

  • are you accidentally (or purposefully) omitting a certain group(s) of people in your dog walking marketing strategy?  
  • are you serving a dog niche market effectively?
  • are you making people mad by not "including" them in your pet sitting marketing approach?
  • are there dog owners that would buy from you, but don't because you're not addressing them in your marketing?

You'll never make everyone happy, so don't try.  But consider who your target market is and how you're addressing them in your advertising.  Are you reaching everyone you can as effectively as you can?

The Secret to Growing a Huge Dog Walking Business

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

The Secret To Growing A HUGE Dog Walking Business

There's one big secret to growing your dog walking (or pet sitting) business to MAMMOTH size.  It also happens to be the same secret that helps you from "burning out" of this industry.  The secret is this:

  • Get staff members to help you.

Yep, that's it.

Pretty simple, right?  Sure, there's a learning curve to figuring out how to recruit, interview, weed out the weirdos, and manage your staff.  But, once you've got even just 2 or 3 trustworthy people you can depend on, your life as a dog walking business owner will become infinitely better!

We see people getting "burned out" after doing this business for a while because they're the ones doing all the visits.  They're working 7 days a week with crazy hours morning, afternoon, and evening. 

But if they just had people to help them, they'd like their business better and, because of that, probably be more enthusiastic and do a better job, too. 

Steps to finding people to help you:

  1. Get clear on what you want: is it to work fewer hours, have fewer hassles, not work on certain days, etc?
  2. Once you know what you want, write it all down.  Write out exactly what you want, why you want it that way and then memorize it.  
  3. With that in your head, go out and open your eyes and start looking for people.  Always be on the lookout for potential staff members when you're making pet visits, at the grocery store, at the gas station, visiting your local pet boutique, and everywhere else you go. 
  4. Make it so people can find you (and save you the work of having to find them):  make a page on your website where people can learn about your openings and apply, make flyers and post them around town at all the pet-related businesses, put an ad out on craig's list, and put the word out at the local humane society/shelter.
  5. Don't avoid hiring someone.  Instead, think of it as a way to make your life better. 

Having a few dependable staff members will be one of the best things you ever did for your business.  You may not get it exactly right with the first person you bring on, but stick with it.  It will be worth it in the long run.

With the Dogs Love Running! franchise, we show you exactly how to find, interview, and manage staff members that will be a loving and dependable part of your team. 

What Price Should I Charge for My Dog Walking Business Part 2

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

What Price Should I Charge For My Dog Walking Business? (part 2)

ou're wondering what price you should charge for your dog walking and pet sitting business, right?  Well, you've come to a great place.

First, you may want to read part one on how much to charge for your dog walking services where we discussed a pretty broad set of items you should think about.  After you've read that, come back to this article because it's a little more specific than that one because here we're going to talk specifically about considerations when charging by TIME (not by the service).

So, you've decided to charge by your TIME spent.  That means that regardless of what service you're doing, you're just charging by how much time you're spending with the client's pet.  Probably a good choice.

Consideration number one:

  • What are the "time" options your dog walking clients can choose from?

For example, how much time are you willing to offer to a client?  And are you going to have multiple options they can pick from?  Let's say you're willing to have a 15-minute block of time that someone can buy.  Will this block suit all your customer's needs?  Will some need more time or less?  If so, what other increments of time will you offer?  Maybe 10-minute increments (so you'll offer 15 minutes, 25, 35, 45, etc) or maybe 15-minute increments could be better (15, 30, 45, 60, etc)?  You probably want to consider what your actual service is that you're performing and how long it takes you to accomplish that task before you decide on the time blocks you'll offer people. 

Consideration number two:

  • Are you going to charge a flat fee for your time or will the price vary? 

For example, will you have higher prices for weekend and super early/late visits or will all your visits be exactly the same price?  You can make more by charging for "premium" times (which are those times that you probably don't want to work) although perhaps clients may get confused by your pricing chart if there are a gazillion different prices for all times of the day.  If you're going to charge different prices for different times of the day, make sure to keep it easy for a potential client to understand.  Ever gone to a website and couldn't figure out how much the product cost so you just left and bought it elsewhere?  That could happen to you if customers can't easily understand how much your walking and sitting services are.   

Consideration number three:

  • Will you have "holiday" rates for your time?

Aside from weekend or morning/evening premiums, will you charge more on holidays?  You can probably get away with this pretty easily because most people understand that they're going to have to pay a little more for someone to come on Christmas Day or Thanksgiving.

Consideration number four:

  • Where are you spending your time that you're charging for? 

Do your clients live in a crowded city or a sprawling suburb?  The answer to that can have a big impact on how much you want to charge.  If you live in a big city and lots of your clients are all near each other (or maybe even in the same building), you're spending your time a lot more efficiently than someone in a suburb ever could.  If all it takes you to get from one client to another is a 90 second elevator ride, you can fit in a lot more clients than if it's taking you a 15-minute drive to get from one client to the next on the other side of that suburban town.  If you can get from one client to the next in a matter of seconds, perhaps you can play the price game a little more and charge less because you can make it up in volume.  On the other hand, a suburban dog walker might not be able to have low prices because they just don't have the ability to fit in enough dogs in a day to make the lower prices work.

Consideration number 5:

  • What's your time worth?

If all you're charging is $10 for an hour of your time, think about all the things you could be doing in that hour.  Is $10 worth it (or $15 or $25 or whatever it is you're charging for that time)?  Could you be making better use of your time in the office building the business?  In which case, you could/should hire some staff.  Or, perhaps you're perfectly content with what you're doing and it's working great.  Or, maybe your time is worth more than you're making and you need to get a job somewhere else.

What price to charge for your dog walking and sitting business is impossible to say without factoring these 5 items in (as well as many other variables).  So, think about it and let us know what you ended up charging via the comment boxes below.  We'd love to know what you decided and how you got to that decision.

Goals for Dog Walkers

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

Goals For Dog Walkers

Happy 2011!

Can you believe it's here already?  Time flies, huh?

If you're a dog walker or pet sitter, now (yes, right now) is the time to get your plans for the new year in order.  Yes, it's going to take a little time to figure out what you want for this year, but that time will be worth it.

Unfortunately, a lot of people spend the time and effort to figure out their goals, but then forget what they thought of.

That's why the #1 thing you should do now (yes, right now) is:

  • write your goals down.  on paper.  so you can see them.  every day.

I know, I know - you've heard this all before. 

But, have you actually done it?  If not, give it a try.

Ask yourself about these goals:

  • Am I doing what I want each day, week, month?
  • How happy am I doing what I'm doing?
  • What can I learn that would help me the most?
  • What do I know I need to improve and how can I take action on getting better?
  • Are my finances the way I want them?
  • Are my clients as happy as they could be?
  • Are my team members as engaged as they should be?
  • What's the #1 biggest thing I want to change in 2011?

That quick list should get you started on thinking about your goals.  Put in even just a little time thinking about these questions and then make sure to write down your answers.

You may just find that it actually helps you. 

The Advantage Your Dog Walking Service Has Over Others

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

The Advantage Your Dog Walking Service Has Over Others.

What does your dog walking service do that's different from others?  What advantage is there for a customer in using you over someone else?  To be fancy about it, what is your unique selling proposition?

If you don't have an answer to this, you should probably stop and think of an answer before you talk to a single new prospective customer.  If you don't, you might be losing that new customer needlessly.

The spark for this article was a conversation I had with a company yesterday (not related to the pet industry).  Keep in mind that this is a company that I'm contacting about being a customer of for many years to come with potentially tens of thousands of dollars that I'd be spending with them (if not a whole lot more).  After getting a few basic details from them, I asked a pretty common question:  "Why should I buy from you instead of someone else?"

The answer was:

"Well there's really no reason to go with us over the big guys". 

I literally laughed out loud and asked the guy if that was really his final answer.  He replied with "well, we're quite a bit smaller than those other guys so I guess you'll maybe get more personalized service from us."

OK, now we're at least getting somewhere.

Needless to say, this guy was not selling up a storm with me (or probably with anyone else).  It was a shame, too, because the more I talked with him, the less interested I became. 

All because he failed business 101:  being able to tell the customer why they should buy from you. 

In your dog walking or pet sitting business, why should customers buy from you?  Is it price?  Quality?  Convenience?  Availability?  Or something else?  We'd love to know what you think it is and why customers love you. 

How to Start a Dog Walking Company Part 1

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

How to start a dog walking company (part 1)

So you're thinking of starting a dog walking company, huh?  Well, you're probably wondering where to begin. 

The good news is that being a dog walker is not rocket science.  The bad news is that, like anything, being truly great can be really hard.  There may be a lot items that you never even thought of to do or would be necessary.  But without considering those things - and if you can't do them very well - you may have a hard time being successful.

So, with that said, let's talk about the #1 thing that you need to think of first.  Without an answer to this first question, you'll have very little direction on where to take your business and how to get there.

The first question is... drum roll please...

"What makes you special?"

Yep, that's it.  What makes you, as a dog walker, special?  This is Busines 101 and, yet, it's this first step that many people forget about.

Here are the 3 basic things that can make a company special (there are more, but this is the basic framework that you can start with for now):

  1. Are you continually the least expensive option? (Walmart)
  2. Are you continually the most reliable and "customer service" oriented? (Amazon, Zappos)
  3. Do you continually offer a unique, hard-to-get, and/or innovative product? (Apple Computer)

This should get you thinking for now. 

Subscribe to our blog feed and keep an eye out for "part 2" when we discuss why trying to be more than just one of the above 3 options doesn't work... 

Your Dog Walking Comfort Forecast

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

Your Dog Walking Comfort Forecast

Dogs are really important to a lot of people.  How important?  Well, so important that AccuWeather.com now has a "dog walking comfort forecast".  Awesome!

To check your Dog Walking Comfort Forecast, go to accuweather.com, add your city/state, then click on the "outdoor" tab at the far right of the page.  A drop down box should appear and you can click on "outdoor living."  Up should pop a box looking something like this:

You can see that it shows you the general weather forecast and then a bar graph of how "comfortable" your walk should be.  

If you've been wondering if you should get into the dog walking business, I think this is pretty solid proof that people love their animals and take dog walking very seriously.  

 

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Thinking of starting a dog walking business?  Learn about costly mistakes in our free report:  The Top 12 Mistakes To Avoid When Starting a New Pet Business.  Download it now.

Buying a Dog Walking Franchise vs Doing it Yourself a Comparison

Comparing and contrasting why you might want to join a dog walking or pet sitting franchise versus why you would "do it yourself" is a big topic.  A book could probably be written on all the things you might want to think about.  But, to keep it brief, let's look at two of the biggest things we think you'd want to consider:

  • Your pure, natural entrepreneurial drive
  • Your appetite for risk (aka: losing it all)

No matter if you invest in a pet franchise or start it up yourself, we'd consider you an entrepreneur and congratulate you for taking the road less traveled.  Where we see a difference in "levels of entrepreneurial drive" is in how much you love the challenge of facing the problems you're sure to encounter when you start something completely unique.  So...

You might want to do it on your own if:

If you have a passion to constantly reinvent the wheel, even when the wheel works perfectly fine as it is, then there isn't ANY franchise that will be a good fit for you.  You're probably born to do it on  your own.  A franchise's rules and guidelines will probably drive you crazy and make you feel constrained.

If you love running into a brick wall head first and think it's fun to figure out how to climb over it, doing it yourself is for you. 

If you dig thinking through problems and enjoy the process of always trying to build a better mousetrap, you'd be better off starting something on your own.  The process of inventing as you go is part of what makes this route fun.

Some people love finding themselves in a deep hole and having no clue how to get out.  Figuring out a solution usually takes a lot of time, money, patience, and effort.

These same people are also generally OK with the possiblity that they won't figure out a solution.  Or, at least won't figure out a solution before they run out of money or time.  They are willing to accept the fact that they might lose everything they put into the business.  They're willing to lose it all.  Yes, all of it. 

Now, on the other hand...

You might want to join a franchise if:

If you don't have the time, money, inclination, or patience to make lots of expensive mistakes and learn as you go, then joining a dog walking franchise could be a much better option for you. 

Any GREAT franchise, no matter what industry they're in, gives you the proven processes and procedures to get you rolling in the right direction on day one.  A GREAT franchise gives you the templates to avoid mistakes and do the right thing immediately.

Now, before we go any further, we have to mention that we're not going to generalize about all pet franchises.  There are lots of them and they're all different.  Some may be a fit for you and some might not.  Instead, we're going to stick to what we know and give you details specifically about how Dogs Love Running! works.

So, assuming the franchise route sounds better to you than the risk of reinventing the wheel, then what can we specifically give you?

To begin with, this business is not rocket science.  However, it's WAY, WAY, WAY more sophisticated than most people would expect.  If you're looking to build a full-time business with lots of clients and a full roster of staff members, then our sophistication will come in very handy. 

Not only do we help in getting you started in the right direction, but you'll also get continual support.  Inevitably, you'll have questions on what to do in certain situations.  That's when you call us.  That's when being with our franchise is worth it.  One of those situations is when to do certain types of marketing and the biggest marketing question we hear is:

"how do you get clients?"

We have the answer to that.  And our marketing knowledge is another reason to join our franchise.

On marketing "experiments" alone (before we were a franchise company and were just doing it by ourselves), we wasted a ton more money just on things that didn't work than what our entire franchise fee is.  We can save you thousands in trial and error.  Even if you're a marketing person yourself already, do you know specifically what works for this type of business?  We do.  That's what we can help you with. 

Don't forget about all the money you will cost yourself in lost time trying to figure things out in all areas of the business, not just marketing.  There's a lot to know.

So, in summary:

If you already know how to run a pet business or would enjoy taking the time to figure out what you don't know, starting on your own might be the way to go. 

But, if you don't have a few years and tens of thousands of dollars to play around with while you figure out how to scale things up beyond yourself and 1 or 2 staff members, we could be the right choice instead.

There's a lot more we think you'd want to know about the differences in starting on your own vs. joining up with us.  Contact us and we can talk about it.  

How to Finance Fund and Pay for a Dog Walking Pet Franchise

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

How To Finance, Fund, And Pay For A Dog Walking Pet Franchise

Congratulations, you've found a great dog walking franchise that you'd like to join!  You've investigated everything and are ready to commit to it.  Only one thing remains...

how to finance and pay for your new pet franchise?

Let's first clarify that this article will talk about how to pay for a lower-cost franchise such as a dog walking and/or pet sitting or a dog training business.  What we're NOT talking about is a doggy daycare, pooper-scooper, or pet retail store where you'll typically have a higher investment to cover vehicles and/or physical property and inventory.

A typical dog running/walking/sitting franchise is generally going to require an investment of somewhere between about $12,000 and $25,000 to get started and cover operational costs for a few months.  Even if you needed to get 100% of those funds from someone else, this is considered a relatively small loan for a business, especially for a legitimate franchise (there are plenty of "business opportunities" that cost less, but many of these are suspect at best and outright scams at worst).

So for that amount of money, what's the best place to get your initial investment?  Answer:  Your own wallet.

Yep, that may not be the answer a lot of people want to hear, but your own funds are really the best place to find your start-up capital.

But what if you don't have it (or not all of it, anyway)?  The next best place is...

Friends and Family. 

With a loan from friends or family, you're probably going to get a better "deal" than you would from a lending institution.  You should expect to still pay interest on your loan, but hopefully you'll get a better rate and more flexible repayment terms.  Getting money from them (assuming they have it and want to lend it) is also going to be a lot easier than going through the whole application and interview process with a bank.  On the downside, what happens if something goes wrong and you're having difficulty making payments?  Are you willing to cloud your personal relationship with this person over money?

Next up... an Angel Investor.

An "angel investor" is generally a person (or group of people) who makes investments in start-up companies with hopes of getting a return when that business takes off.  That return might be 15, 20, 25%, or more.  Generally speaking, an angel investor is probably going to be looking at bigger companies than what you want to start, but it never hurts to ask around and see if you can find someone who's interested in helping you.  Look for connections to these investors at the business department of local universities, at your local chamber of commerce, your local SCORE chapter, and through business networking groups.

How about a Home Equity Loan?

These loans are based on the the equity you have in your home.  It's basically the difference between what you owe and what the house is worth.  Rates are generally pretty good for this type of loan.  It's also a very flexible option because you have more control about when and how much money you take out.  The potential downside here is that you're putting your house on the line.  Now, if we were talking about a doggy daycare franchise that was going to cost you $300,000 to start up, we would not recommend a home equity loan because it would probably be too much risk in losing your home.  But, for a relatively small $10,000 - $20,000 loan, a home equity loan can be a good option for many people. 

Banks, Credit Unions, and the SBA, Oh My!

Don't forget about banks, credit unions, and the Small Business Administration.  Of these three, banks are typically thought of first, but may actually be your lowest chance for success.  They're often the most stringent in their review process, can be very picky, and have the worst "deal" for you.  Check out the SBA first.  They have a variety of loans and grants that you might be able to use for your franchise.  If nothing else, they have a ton of useful business information you can get for free.  And, if you're not familiar with Credit Unions, this may be a good alternative for you as opposed to a bank.  These are not-for-profit institutions that typically have a high focus on community development through business ventures.  They want to see businesses succeed in the community and sometimes have very attractive loan programs. 

Last, and probably least, Credit Cards.

Broadly speaking, we wouldn't endorse using credit cards to start up a business.  But because a dog walking/sitting franchise can be a very low-risk business to start, we'll add them to this list.  Don't put your franchise fee on a card that's costing you 24% interest because that's just dumb.  But, if you just need a few thousand dollars for supplies, marketing, or something like that (and don't have a high interest rate!), that magic plastic card could get you through.  Again, it's not our recommendation to use one, but in the right circumstance, it wouldn't be the end of the world to charge it. 

Starting your new dog walking franchise can be a ton of fun.  Don't let the lack of money hold you back because there ARE options out there to get funding.  Your commitment, combined with the relatively low risk of this type of business, can lead to a quick repayment of the loan, not to mention a lifetime of doing what you love for a living.

If you have any questions on getting the money to start a franchise, just contact us.  

What s an Exclusive Franchise Territory

Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals

What's An Exclusive Franchise Territory?

"Location, location, location." 

You've probably heard that phrase a lot and that's because picking the right location is the first rule in determining the potential success of many businesses.  And, when it comes to buying a franchise, this rule is no different.

Any great franchisor should help you figure out the best location for your business.  For example, our dog walking franchise does an extensive demographic research study of your local market to determine if your market has the "right" type of customers (some do and some don't) and, if so, where most of them are located.

An exclusive territory guarantees and entitles you to customers in a specific area. 

For example, a fast-food franchise that has non-exclusive territories may open 3 franchised locations all within a few square miles and potentially cannibalize sales from one another.  The franchisor benefits because all three locations are making sales.  However, each individual franchisee may be at a disadvantage due to losing customers who may go to another nearby location that they don't own.

A franchisor, like Dogs Love Running!, with exclusive territories wouldn't allow this to happen.  The "exclusive territory" is what protects the franchisee by prohibiting another location to open too close by or, as in the case of a service business like a dog walking franchise, prohibit customers from buying from certain franchisees that don't "own" the territory in which they live.

A common approach is for franchisees to own certain zip codes.  So, if two franchiees owned adjacent territories where one side of the street is one zip code and the other side of the street is another zip code, it makes it very easy to determine which franchisee gets which customer.  In fact, in a franchise with exclusive territories, it would typically be required that a franchisee refer over to another local franchisee an inquiry that came from a customer in that other franchisee's territory, even if the customer didn't contact that other franchisee first. 

Overall, the benefit to this type of "exclusive territory" system is that franchisees can develop a cooperative environment between themselves because they're not worried about an agressive franchisee that may be back-stabbing them just to get a customer, as could happen in a non-exclusive territory system.

If you're investigating franchises and want to know more about choosing a location, just contact us and we can give you some ideas. 

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