246: Finding Balance in Your Pet Resort

0:00Everything in your pet resort has a balance, a yin and a yang, and if you or part of your business is out of balance it can cause tremendous problems and really affect your ability to profit and grow. So let's see if we can fix that right now. It's time to become the Overdog. All you dog businesses get ready to level up. This is the Overdog Podcast. Reheating is my friend. How are you? Yep, that's your buddy Fern here ready for another podcast and I think I have a special treat for you today because I think I see someone coming in. To look who it is, stop and buy the podcast, it's everyone's favorite friend Kelly Dodds

1:02from next level leadership academy popping in to share some quick tips with us about change management which I'll be honest with you Kelly, I don't completely understand what that means. So I'm pretty excited for you to kind of tell me about it. Thanks for stopping back. You know, you're a no stranger to this show, everyone knows you, but how you doing? I'm doing absolutely fantastic and I appreciate being back on again. You know, this is one of my, I guess, buy, buy, you know, probably what twice a year stopped. Yeah, you just when you think you're done, I pull you back in. Hey, hey, absolutely love it because it's a wonderful platform and it definitely gives a lot of information to some people that really need it and don't want to feel like they're alone in this industry, so it's absolutely awesome. And so the one of the reasons I'm very excited that you're here today is just dealing with our clients. I don't know what it is about this time of year or I don't know, just this, I think

2:06it's just a recurring thing in general is there's a lot of kind of issues with staffing and management and stuff and that's why, you know, I value your input on this and see you really are kind of, this is like your real house and stuff. So let's talk to me. What is change management? What does it mean? Why do we care about it? Talk, you got to educate me here. So change management is really kind of stopping the us versus them cycle. So when you're trying to implement price changes, I mean, it's this time of year people either started them January 1st, February 1st, or like us, we're putting our price changes through our facility, Mars 1st, and you even have your, you know, your standard employees at your facility that are like, are you sure you want to do that? Like our customers are going to be upset, you get that, you get that, you get the resistance. And really what I found is that you need to have a resistance decoder ring, that's kind

3:08of really quirky, but it's really, it's really what I've found that you kind of need because a lot of, most 30 years, you get angry when you get the resistance versus actually trying to understand why they're resisting. And it's a lot of times you think it's just because they don't want to. It's too much work. Just out of the real house, when in reality, it kind of comes down to two different things. It's either logistical or it's emotional, you know, sometimes it could be that, you know, it takes away too much time. And it's not that they're complaining about the clock. It's that they're really just afraid logistically that they're going to be incompetent learning the new thing that you're doing, or trying to explain to a client why we did the price changes because they know they're the ones up front. They're going to be dealing with all those questions. The other part of it is more so, like, the emotional where it's just, they're safe in

4:12their routines. They're safe in what happens. It's not the fact that they like necessarily their routines, but they're just safe in their routines. So when you start throwing something at them that's going to throw them off, they're going to have resistance to it. So it's really how you have to decode what they're saying to you in a different way. And trying to really get down to the knit and grit as to why they're resistant. And when you do that, you're, you break kind of through the barrier where you can get the, the buy-in from them to not only help implement, but what the really great part is, it really opens more so the creativity and ingenuity that can come from that and help maybe make the policy procedure, how you're going to deliver the price changes, whatever it is that you're doing, maybe 10 times better than you originally thought you were going to, because you now have their buy-in. So it's really something that I think a lot of people don't think of in that way, that

5:18it's more so that they're like, okay, they're just putting up walls, they're being difficult, they just don't want to do, they don't want to have to do the extra work. And in reality, it's, there's other ways or other things that are holding them back. And it's where you've got to really decode that to be a better leader, a better manager, or even if you're an owner that's running your facility, better at being able to have those conversations and decode those emotions with your staff. Yeah, there's two things that I, that, you know, that just hit me as you're saying all that, like, one is like, I've, I've constantly said how, you know, customers don't like change, even if it's for the better, and, you know, so you're going to get resistance and pushback. But I never really kind of focused that, that the staff have the same, like it's human nature, you know, so the staff is going through the same thing. So it requires us to understand that and take some care to overcome some of that. And this goes into like the second thing I really think is important is that anything

6:21you roll out will not be successful without staff buying first before you try to communicate it to the customers. If the staff really aren't comfortable and maybe even excited about it, it's never going to translate that to the actual customers. So how do we do that? Like, like, how can we instead of just like kind of throwing this on the staff and kind of then being reactive? Like, how do we set something like we have something we're changing in the business? Like, how do we make it go as smooth as possible with the staff? So when we do anything, we always, we have quarterly staff meetings. If we have changes that are going to be happening before the quarterly staff meetings, then we usually have smaller meeting groups that we have with them to let them know, you know, the changes that we're looking at doing or possibly doing, we usually try to go more from we're looking at possibly doing this. What input do you have? And we currently also have an employee advocate. So this is somebody that is non-management.

7:22She's just one of our reception leads that we notice that people kind of go to heart just in general to have, you know, conversations with. And we will put out to her like we're looking to want to, you know, change how we do things in the yard or, you know, we were implementing the price changes. When you go and you talk to them every week, you know, find out what their thoughts are. How do they think we should approach it? How do they think we should address it with our clientele? Or how should we, you know, change how we're doing the incentive program? That alone having just that advocate, they're more, more apt to want to speak to them. But then we're getting the feedback and then we're taking that as our management group. And then now taking it to a staff meeting and it really just, again, it opens the buy-in because it shows we listened. And then it gets them to be really more creative because now, since they're all in a group

8:22together, they're bouncing ideas off of each other. And we're just scribbling and going, we're so excited because we're getting all this feedback. And we're not having to do it all ourselves because as we know as leadership, we've already got a lot on our plate. So if we can spread and delegate this out and also know we're getting the buy-in to make it a lot easier on us when we do send it out, again, it's a huge game changer. And when you have those that put up that resistance still, you know, you've got to make sure that you're not arguing, you're not saying just do it, which I still hear some people saying to this day. And not just in this industry, I have cohorts in retail, I hear still doing this too. And I'm like, oh God, no, please don't do that. You got to put that, you got to, again, remember, just kind of put that decoder ring on. And you know, what's the one thing you're afraid of that will change for the worst if we do this? That will get to the root cause of why they have the resistance, why they're afraid of doing what they want to do.

9:24And it shows that you're willing to let them voice their fear, that resistance melts because then they finally feel like they're being cruelly heard, not hearing what you want to hear. That's just the big, the big difference and why we do the meetings the way we do. And I think it would be really important to, you know, explain, you know, instead of just doling out orders of this is what we're doing, explaining the why, like, you know, cause a lot of times they don't understand why this has to happen, why are we changing things? So just, you know, from, cause they don't see all this stuff that's happening on the management side or the owner side of things, like we're making these changes, it's not just arbitrary. There's reasons why this is why this is what we're needing to make these changes. This is what is going to hopefully become of it and stuff, letting them understand it instead of just seeing that my job is going to be more difficult as I start to figure this out. Yeah. And it's really big because, you know, you can do why it has to be the right why.

10:28That's the other thing that people don't seem to realize because sometimes when you list out why is it and if it's because, you know, we're revenues down or they don't want to hear that. They could care less. Yeah. They don't want to hear that. It's got to be the right why and the benefit that it will have to everybody as a whole for them to then really say, okay, this makes sense. So again, that why has to be right, correct, it has to be correct as well. Yeah. That's definitely important because everyone is just thinking immediately, the staff is like, okay, how is this impacting me? Like, you know, in my job right now, like, what does this mean for me? That's what everyone, of course, is going to be thinking. So seeing what it means for them and then also how it fits in the big picture of the business. So they understand, you know, it's also beyond just their role in it, I think. Talk to me a little bit about, I'm intrigued about the employee advocate position. Like, is like, what comes with that? Is there any other responsibilities?

11:29Is does that come with like a different, like position or is it just a title? Like, how did that position come about and what is it in town? So she's been with us, oh God. I think she's been with us about two years. She, you know, came in as a reception lead and now she's also, also our customer care experts. So she's the one that does like extra followups with our clients and things like that when she's not up at the reception desk. But it was just one where we were like, we need to have this person that's a go between between us and management, because I've seen it all through my career where, yes, you'll have, you know, people that are more comfortable with other leaders than, you know, than me, which is perfectly fine. You know, if you're not comfortable, I get it on the end. I'll be all on the big scary person, fine, I get it. So you have those that are comfortable coming to me, coming to my assistant, coming to my HR person or my yard manager, but then you have some that just won't do it at all. And they're the ones that we've found across the years.

12:30And in my experience in general, they're the ones that will hold things until it explodes and they quit because they forget that they should be, you know, that they have the outlet to come and explain what, how they feel or what's going on or fixing an issue. And they just don't, because for some other reason, they have a resistance to coming to your leadership team. And sometimes it's just fear, it's, you know, that hierarchy that they're fearful of. Sometimes it's just, you know, them as a person being anxious. So if they can go to somebody that's a peer that they know will listen without in their mind judgment, they're more apt to say things. And so that's why we implemented the employee advocate. And she literally, she got a 50 cents bump, so it wasn't a whole pack of a lot because we're not asking her to do this hours and hours every day. She just goes around, you know, each shift that she's there and she's a college student

13:31so she has weird schedule. She works some days double and then, you know, she's off. But she'll just go around and talk to people, find out how things are going and sometimes there'll be topics that we are letting, telling her that we want her to go and ask. And other times it's just a pulse, you know, check on the pulse of the business and how everybody's doing. And then she meets with my assistant general manager every Friday, goes through all the notes that she has and then on Monday, every Monday, we have her management meeting. We go through those and decide what we need to address then or if we need to have it in a small group, meaning kind of stuff from there. So it's really helpful because it keeps everybody, especially the team feeling like they're being heard and nobody's feeling like they're being left out or we don't feel like people are being left behind to the point where we may lose them because they don't have an outlet to go to, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think it sits and it's brilliant and just how big is your team? How big is your staff?

14:3120. 20. All right. It's technically be 25, but it's 20. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you mean, yeah, you have all those people, all those moving parts, especially when people are working different shifts and stuff and yeah, it's intimidating sometimes to have to go because I remember I used to do consulting where I would go and train staff and how to handle the dogs and stuff and I would go on site and I'd be there all day. By the end of the day, I always like to meet with the staff without management and just talk to them. And after I built some rapport with them, they told me they unloaded like a whole bunch of stuff on me that was the owner had no idea because they were intimidated to come to the owner and they were like little things that could be easily fixed, like if they just told somebody, but they just didn't feel comfortable. So they would just prove to me there how a position like that is so valuable because you know, the owner's like, I didn't know any of this was going on. Like, you know, I thought they were totally happy with everything and they just had these

15:32minor little things, you know, that they just felt intimidated to come to management with. So I definitely think it's a cool role and I hope a lot of other people implement that because I think it can make a real big difference. That's awesome stuff. Now, Kelly, why don't you tell everyone who's not familiar with kind of the stuff you do at the next level leadership academy and the kind of training that you do to help managers and staff? So basically, I am the leadership training that I feel has been missing in not only our industry, but just in industries as a whole where the managers or upcoming managers or even owners that have never been managers and let's change the word for managers to leaders because that's really what we're looking for here is getting them in that owner's mindset where I hear all the time owners saying they want to get out of their business, but they don't have somebody that's able to do that for them or owners that want to

16:36stay in their business, but haven't been able to or haven't had that leadership experience to really know how to get like we're talking about the buy-in from their staff. I'm that kind of person. I'm the person that will help your management team because again, it's not your owners that are there. I mean, open up about what their struggles are and how to help them, and you know, we have a video, I don't want to call it a library anymore, I'm going to call it a video academy that they can go through and it's extensive, I mean there's four components, main components and then it's broken down into a lot from there, but the reason I want to call it an academy is because it's almost like a college course because there's homework that you have to do because it's really making sure that these people are not just watching the video, taking a couple quiz and walking away, it's that they're implementing the tools and tips that I've given them to go make their work life better and make their teams better,

17:42but also have one-on-one consulting that I can do because sometimes, you know, these leaders and I know I wish I could have that business coach like owners have. Well, that's technically what I would be for your management team, just somebody that they could go to, vent, yes, but then also help them, give them the tools that they are seeking so that they can have work life balance, they can have a successful time at their business and not feel like they're being pulled in multiple directions. And then also just the power of the pack, it's, you know, a support group for really us as leaders, kind of like your rocket ship is for owners, they're a fern, the power of the pack is for the management team so that they can, again, realize they're not alone because, again, really, there's nothing out there for really just GMs and assistant managers. It's so that we know we're not alone, we all might have the same struggles and how can we help each other be able to survive in this industry going forward and

18:43stay around because I know that's a lot of what I hear, we were talking about it of, you know, how people are still losing staff even to, you know, very today and all the stuff that I help with helps you want to stay as the GM or the owner and not get burned out, but also your team to stay on board and not leave and then have to worry about hiring over and over again. So that's really what I'm about at the academy. Yeah, and it's just so important because like you just mentioned, like, everyone needs a really good general manager so that, you know, as an owner, you can step away and do the owner stuff and not feel like the place is going to fall apart without you, not feel like your customer care is going to suffer. And so everyone's looking for this position. It's like a unicorn to find, you know, someone like yourself to be able to do that because they need all these different skills. And the problem is they may find somebody but they just don't

19:43have the support. We're not equipping them. So that's why I'm excited about everything you're doing because you're going to help those general manager positions become strong pillars in the organization that's going to give the owners the flexibility and the freedom to do what they need to do. So it's awesome. Where can they find that? What's the web address? So it's a long one. So it's next level leadership academy.org as where you can go. Check out the website. It lists all the different, basically, memberships or levels that are available. And obviously, I also do a free consultation call just to be able to kind of go over because I want everybody understand everybody's business is different. What you're dealing with is different. So you might not, you may think you fit into one category, but it might be something else. And I'm really just trying to make sure that you're, you know, using your financial money responsibly because I get it. I'm the GM having to watch what trainings we do. So I'm trying to make sure I'm doing that for

20:48you guys too as the owners. But at the same time, making it so that it's worth it because then your business is going to grow. Your staff is going to remain happy. You're not going to have to spend money on hiring and there's different type of things. So that's really what I'm excited about with this academy. Awesome. Well, thank you for stopping in and sharing this information. It's always always a joy chatting with you and learning something every time. So thanks for stopping by. Thank you very much for and greatly appreciate it. Always love when friends of the show stop by. Special treat for you today. All right, before we get into talking about balance, I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Live Oak Bank. And if scaling your pet care business is on your mind, this is one sponsor you want to pay attention to. Live Oak Bank has been lending to pet care facilities since 2017, and they've built a dedicated team that's just focused specifically on this industry. And that means they understand your challenges, your timelines, and what it actually takes to grow a successful

21:51pet care business. They offer SBA loans from $10,000 all the way up to five million. And that's everything from startups to acquisitions to buildouts, commercial real estate equipment and working capital, whatever you need. And as America's premier SBA lender, they bring some serious experience to the table. So don't take it from me. I want you to go ahead over to live oak dot bank. That's live oak dot bank. And you'd shout out to live oak bank for supporting the podcast. And this episode is also sponsored by our friends at TWC Construction. And if building and expanding a pet care facility is on your radar, listen up. TWC is a national design build firm specializing in animal care facilities. And they understand that a great building isn't just about looks. It's about how your business actually operates. The flow, the safety, efficiency, dogs, owners,

22:53all of it. They guide you through a three step process of preliminary planning, architectural design and construction with full time supervision. During planning, they help with business projections, demographics, zoning, land use, equipment decisions, IT, and even cleaning solutions. So you're not guessing any way through these major decisions. They're also a second generation family owned company, which I love. And they have a deep experience. And they're balancing design budget and time. And they make this pride. The whole process is surprisingly enjoyable because they're just great people. So if you want to build smart and build it the right way, head over to TWC Inc. TWC I and C dot com. Thanks to both of them for sponsoring the show and being friends of Overdog. All right. Now let's start talking about balance in your pet resort. This is something that I think is underestimated. Maybe not talked about enough, but so critical to your success and long-term enjoyment of doing this. I think balance is something that all

23:59entrepreneurs struggle with. Me, definitely in particular, always fighting. It seems fighting, you know, between the different things. And that's the the keyword that you shouldn't be fighting it. And that's what balance is about is about creating like a harmony between all the areas of your business. That's what kind of like they call the yin and the yang of it. If you've ever heard the expression the yin and yang, it's two opposing forces that create harmony. And there's a lot of opposing forces as you try to run a business, specifically a pet care business. So they can sometimes be fighting with one another, which can make things very difficult and feel like you're always kind of like running underwater and having the stuff thrown at you. So if you're able to create balance, you will find that harmony and everything will be kind of a little bit a little bit better. Yinyang is not about perfection. It's about that dynamic balance. And we're going to talk about it in four major areas today. We're going to talk about it

24:59in your service and revenue mix. You're staffing and leadership, marketing and operations, and then your personal role and energy. Okay, we're going to diagnose any imbalances and show you how to restore that harmony. Sound good? All right. Let's dive into the first one, which is your revenue harmony. So let's talk about the problems. All right. I think many resorts accidentally like overbilled one particular service. So you'll be really like most of your revenue is like 80% boarding and then daycare is a little underdeveloped. Or maybe you're heavily into daycare, but you don't have any upsells or anything to go with that. Or you have maybe like a big grooming business without like the systems to support it. Or maybe your training is offered, but not really properly monetized. So we want to make sure that you have balance in your service mix. And in general, I always get nervous when I find pet resorts are reliant on one service

26:06revenue stream. Because you know, you never know what's going to happen. COVID showed us what could happen. If boarding was your only or main revenue stream in COVID, you were in big trouble. And many like places that were boarding only went out of business because they had no work for over a year or two years. All right. So we want to make sure that we're balancing things. You know, so with boarding, if you're boarding heavy, that's nice because it's high ticket. Usually big margins, but there's seasonal spikes. If you're daycare heavy, it's great. You have a curl recurring predictable income, which is, which is a good part of your service mix grooming and training. Those are kind of margin enhancers and help you differentiate a little bit. That's kind of how I think about it. But the key thing is having them all work together because they can complement each other very well. And one can lead, one service can lead into the other. And the goal is you want your, your clients using as many services as possible. So if you lean too heavy

27:06into boarding, you're going to have volatile revenue. If you're too heavy into daycare, you might have like a strain in volume and it's pretty low margin. If you have too many services, okay, that's not great either. Then it's like chaos. So you need kind of find your particular sweet spot. I don't think is, you know, the one right answer for everyone. So what I want to do is audit your revenue breakdown. What percentage is boarding versus daycare versus training versus grooming? First grooming. What what what what is the mix like? It's it's probably not going to be equal. You know, you're always going to have one of your main revenue streams. Usually that'll be boarding. That's okay. You just don't want to see it to be like 80 to 90% boarding, all right? 60% boarding is probably 60 to 70 is healthy. Even 70, I'd be a little nervous because again, that could go away. So you want to try to look at the other ones. Identify which service stabilizes cash flow, you know, so that you can balance it. The good news is this is, you know, the reason why I like you to have multiple services offered is because it's seasonal, you know, boarding will be

28:11busy in one time a year and that's when daycare will be slow and vice versa. So it's good to have that mix to create some like even revenue streams so you don't get those big spikes. Identify which services drive, you know, your margins the best and decide which, if any, needs strengthening, okay? Growth isn't about sometimes adding services. It's about balancing your ecosystem. So look at your individual resort and figure out where we can make some tweaks to add that balance. Okay, now we're going to shift over to staffing, all right? This is like a balance of structure versus flexibility, okay? So let's talk about some imbalance where we see some imbalance. Overstaffed and unprofitable, all right? That's when you feel like, you know, you're busy but not making money or you could be understaffed and burned out. I think we all have felt that. That's where, you know, the owner is you are covering a lot of shifts. You might have too many leaders, okay? Which is

29:13usually not the case, but it's possible. And if that is the case, you could have confusion with like no clarity at all. But if you have no leaders, then you the owner becomes a bottleneck, all right? So none of those are good. So if any of those sounded like they could be you, there's a good, there's a good sense that you might be out of balance here. So how do we find the in-and-the-yang of staffing? So first is structure, okay? But you can't, you can't really have a bigger staff, like if you have like one or two people, that's fine. As soon as you get bigger than that, and any multi-service pet resort, which is I guess most of you guys, you're going to have more than that. You need structure, and that includes SOPs, setting clear expectations with your staff, and making sure there's accountability. I think everyone has SOPs, even though some people just throw them in a folder and then in a desk somewhere, so they're not very useful. They may try to set expectations in the beginning, but I think the accountability, which is the problem. How do we, how do we keep our staff accountable over time? And the other piece of that is your culture,

30:17all right? And that, you know, that's all about trust, flexibility, and morale. So if you have too much structure, then you might be a little bit rigid, and you're going to have some turnover. But if you have too much flexibility, it leads to chaos. So that's where the balance of structure and flexibility is so important. When you lean too heavily on one side or the other, it really doesn't work. So what I want you to do is kind of define maybe three to five, like non-negotiable standards in your resort. You know, what is your guide? This is the musts in your resort. All right? And then everything else is to have some flexibility within reason. And ensure each shift has a clear decision maker. This is so important if you are not going to get called in for everything. Okay? Each shift needs to have a clear decision maker, someone that's going to, you know, that the staff can go to every single time. You know, you don't have any holes in that. And you, the owner, must stop being the emergency patch. All right? That you will never

31:20find the balance if you are always coming to the rescue. All right? If you're definitely constantly stepping in, it means your system's out of balance. All right. Moving over to marketing and operations. Okay? This is, you know, something I think a lot about. If you, you might, you might have some problems if you're all marketing and no systems. Or if you've got perfect operations, but no lead flow. All right? These are all kind of indications that you might be out of balance. So let's talk about the in and the yang of your marketing. So let's talk about kind of the yang, which is the growth energy. That's going to be your ads, your promotions, any expansions you're doing in any new services you're adding. That's all about growth. But then on the other side of that is retention. All right. That's follow-up systems, automation, review generation, client experience. You can't have one with the other. And this is something that I see all the time as people will reach out to us and want to, you know, want us to work with them to create all these

32:23ed campaigns. And I'm like, that's great. I know the campaign's work. I can get leads coming in. But if you don't have the follow-up systems, you're not taking good care of customers so you're retaining them. Those are big problems that need to be fixed first. You know, a lot of people think just turning on more ads and getting more leads will solve the problems. But if you're at a balanced marketing-wise and you're not balancing it with follow-up systems and retention, you know, it's really not going to do anything long-term. And that's something I see very, very common and you really do need both. So the way we can do this is a lot of times use automation and technology to help fill the gaps there. That's something that we do it over dog. You know, we have all kinds of follow-up texts and email follow-ups to help nurture leads and get them to the next step. So you utilize, you know, the technology that's out there. That'll help you, you know, balance things out a little bit. And then like predictable marketing reduces stress. If you don't know what you're going to do next month to market, it's not going to work all that

33:27well and it's really going to cause for a chaotic environment as you try to rush to put things together at the last minute. And then if that's the case, you really, you can't scale chaos. All right, that's simple. You cannot scale chaos. So the more things are thought out, the more kind of structure you have and you, things are predictable in your marketing plan. I think the more your results will be predictable. All right. So what I want you to think about is do you have automated follow-up for your leads and nurture for your existing customers? Okay. Are you measuring retention? That's probably one of the number one metrics you should be looking at is how long do you typically keep customers and try to improve and increase that all the time? We just did a big push for that here in Overdog. In fact, our whole focus last year was retention. It was just working on how do we make sure we're taking really good care of our clients and that they stay longer? And it's something we made great strides in, but it's something I don't think anybody's ever done with. Like you're

34:28always trying to, you know, improve retention. And do you know what your monthly lead targets are? Like how many daycare evaluations a month are you looking for? All right. You know, we've got to know your numbers. And are you marketing intentionally or a little bit reactively? You want to try to get more on the retention, the intentional side of things. All right. Now let's talk about you, the owner. All right. How can you create balance in your life? This is where most imbalance starts actually because everything begins and ends with you, the senior leader of this organization. Okay. This is everything goes down from you. So if I see there's usually some sort of imbalance in the pet resort, it usually is starting at the top and the ripple effects are going down. You know, sometimes, you know, growth can increase stress and doesn't give you the freedom that you're looking for. And then maybe your personal life starts shrinking. A lot of times the owner

35:29is the CEO, also the general manager, the HR, the sales, the social media, and you're trying to do too much. So usually I see there's like two extremes and that is the owner that's trying to control everything or the owner that kind of is advocate everything. Like I want to be absentee. Neither works. You need a healthy balance, especially in the beginning as you're building your team. So here is what I think is a healthy balance for you. You as the owner, you should only operate on the highest value roles. You shouldn't be stepping in to cover shifts and stuff. You need to do clear CEO time. And you just set that aside in your schedule weekly and protect it. Meaning nobody can go in there. You cannot put an appointment there. You can have somebody call you in. And you have clear off duty time weekly. Like where the staff is not going to bother you. You are off the grid. So you can focus on only CEO stuff. All right. So I want you to ask yourself, what should

36:32only you be doing? Okay. No one else can do this just as you. Are you doing that? And let's make that a priority. And what are you doing out of habit that maybe you should be doing? And where in your business are you the bottleneck? Like everything stops because they're waiting for you. Okay. That's a bad sign too. All right. So that's one of the things we do here at Overdog. We kind of exist to remove the imbalance and take the marketing off your hands so you can grow and focus on the big picture priorities. That's kind of like one of my main goals with our clients is trying to give them the space to do that stuff. You know, this balance stuff is pretty important to me because I think yes growing a business is important and we got to focus on it and we're going to do it. But it can't come at your happiness or mental health. It is critically important and it should be a priority actually more so than the business. You know, you don't want to create a business that's killing you. All right. So what I'd like you to do is to do a balance audit. All right. So what I

37:38want you to do is in those, you know, kind of four areas. I want you to rate yourself from one to 10. So start with your service mix. How's that balance looking? One being it's great. 10 being, I mean, one being it's not so good. It's actually quite bad and 10 being. It's awesome. How about your staffing structure? How would you rate yourself from one to 10? Next, you're marketing and lastly, your personal kind of workload. Score each of those and the lowest score is maybe where you should focus next and then pick one in balance and do something intentional to try to fix it. Take actions and then move to the next one. Okay. And constantly keep revisiting these. All right. Growth without balance just equals burnout every single time. Okay. So imbalance doesn't mean equality. Like it doesn't mean everything has to be 50. 50. It just means everything is aligned with

38:41you and your business. Every person and every business is going to be a little difference. It's, you know, think of your business as an ecosystem. All right. How is everything fitting together? And it should be in living in harmony, not fighting in at odds with one another. That's what an ecosystem is. Everything is kind of symbiotic where we're all helping each other out. Like so all your systems are helping each other out. All your staff should be helping each other out. If it's not in harmony, that's when you don't have that ecosystem and it's kind of your business parts are fighting each other. And then small corrections can actually create massive stability over time. Right. You don't need more chaos. I know you know that. What you need is more harmony. So if all this stuff is sounding like you need it, I want you to prioritize it and take some time. And hey, if marketing is one of your imbalances and your bottleneck, that's what we do here. So reach out to me and I'd love to schedule a call and see if it makes sense for us to work

39:42together. We can help you in that area. But either way, we want to try to always have some sort of yin and yang in your life and in your balance. And if you have that harmony, everything is happier. Everything moves smoother. There's less stress. And you'll have more success because of it. All right. There you have it. It was good to see you or hear you or you hear me. Something like that. I don't know. Good to spend this time with you. Have a great rest of the day. Work on balance. And I'll see you here. We'll see you. If you'd like some help with your own pet business, head over to OverdogDigital.com and check out some of our programs. We can help you with everything from website design to full marketing packages, to full coaching, to staff training, anything and everything to help you move your pet business forward.