Episode 2: Blogging To 1700 Hits In One Day and Delegating Your Business

Learn how to be so relevant in your blogging strategy that you can draw 10 times the average hits your website may get a day through the steps that Bella walks you through. Also, hear how delegation in your business, could help reduce your burnout and help you achieve your goals faster including a personal story from Bella on Father's Day. Transcript: 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 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. Hey everybody, this is Bella Vasta jumping here with you on episode two of Bella in Your Business. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I have a packed session for you and I hope to motivate you, inspire you, and challenge you as always. I'm going to talk about the recap of the awesome Power Petsitter series we just had, how to create a howling event in your community, how I was able to get 1,714 hits on my website in just one day, and I'm going to tell you exactly how you can try to do the same thing. I'm also going to talk to you today about delegation and also share another personal story about my forever-ending pregnancy journey that seems to be going on right now. Last week I had the pleasure of being the speaker for the Power Petsitter series. For all of you who don't know, Power Petsitter does an amazing thing for all of their users. Every single month they have a speaker come in for free to all of their members on all different kinds of topics. The topic I spoke about was really exciting, at least for me, and I put together a whole PowerPoint presentation, did it on Google Hangout, and it's all actually there for you to watch in retrospect if you want to. Just head on over to my Google Plus channel, to Bella Vasta, and click on the YouTube and you can watch it. It was a good hour long. I shared lots of resources, endless videos, lots of pictures, even things like all the invitations that I would hand out in the dog parks or at local venues that were participating. There is no shortage of ideas. We talked about everything from dog walking clubs all the way to pet fashion shows and everything in between because you guys can do whatever kind of event you want. There's also a class that I've taught that goes along with that. It's kind of like the sister class to it. It's called the Nine Elements to Have a Howling Event, and you can find that on JumpConsulting.net by clicking on the services tab. It was a really fun time, and people really enjoyed it. At the end, I actually had a sign-up for all the resources if you wanted. I think I provided three pages of just resources so that you could get ideas of all the things I've done over the years. I really wanted to give you a good view of what you can do because these events really bring the community together, give you free advertising, and help you start to build and maintain relationships, which are just so important as we all know. This week there was a very tragic accident that happened here in Gilbert, Arizona, and I use the word accident lightly. I personally don't believe that these people who own this kennel facility called Green Acres really intended on anything happening because as pet lovers, you know it's very hard to be anything but loving and really wanting to help the pets. But this is a huge lesson in so many different ways that I was really racking my brain to try to figure out. Let me back up for those of you who don't know. There was this kennel and it was what I call a hobby kennel. It was basically a home where they had a separate structure that was ten by ten. It was a laundry room off the side of their house. The owners of the home and the business, and again, I use that word lightly as a business, left on vacation and left the home and over twenty dogs to their twenty-one-year-old daughter and her boyfriend, who happens to be the son of a senator here in Arizona or a representative, not quite sure, but that really doesn't matter. Apparently, the story changed many times. There's an investigation going on through the sheriff's office right now to try to figure out what did happen. One of the main stories is that there was an air conditioning unit inside this laundry area, which was ten by ten. There was an air conditioning unit in the window with a cord that went down to plug in. Apparently, the dogs — this is a cageless facility — were all in this ten by ten room overnight, and they chewed through the wire. The company first tried to tell everyone the next day that the dogs ran away, which was their first mistake because they started lying about it. Then the story changed that they were electrocuted, and then it was that it was heat overexhaustion because the air conditioning went out and the dogs overheated. That night it was only eighty degrees. Here in Arizona, that’s actually mild — no humidity, dry. So while not ideal, it's not sweltering. The whole story is really fishy and who knows if we’ll ever truly know what happened. Some people there who have lost their dogs have gotten together and ordered autopsies on the dogs’ bodies. It's just terrible. But the big thing is that it’s all over the news — morning, afternoon, evening, and late night. It’s in all the papers. People are rabid when it comes to this story. The problem is that in Arizona, the only way to get a boarding kennel license is to go down to the state, pay them seventy-five dollars, and you have a license. It’s that easy. And let’s face it, they’re not really checking up on these places. So really, any Joe Schmo could go out, grab a license, and that’s it. And if you don’t get a license, the fine for not having one is twenty-five dollars. There’s no regulation on how many pets you can have, no restrictions or barrier standards. Just by looking at the pictures, this house had a chain-link fence maybe six feet high, probably more like four or five. That’s the only barrier separating the dogs in this yard from the outside world. That alone tells you it’s not a professional company. To make matters worse, the owner of the company actually went out holding one of her foster children — I guess she has eight or nine of them — yelling at the media, calling them names and telling them they’re making her look bad. It was a PR nightmare. It’s on YouTube, and within one day it had over twelve thousand views. Talk about a way not to handle a situation. It was a horrible tragedy that was just compounded by the way that this person chose to try to fix, and I use that word lightly, the situation. So what I decided to do was write a blog because there’s this horrible tragedy that happened, but the thing that really got to me is that all of these people were saying, “I don’t trust boarding facilities; that’s why I don’t leave my pets with anybody.” All this fear that we as professional pet sitters hear people tell us on a daily basis — they’re scared to leave their pets, they don’t know if they can trust us, they don’t know if they’ll have peace of mind. Imagine all of these families — there’s no way they’re ever going to leave their pets anytime soon with anybody or go on vacation. So I was racking my brain trying to figure out what can we do as a professional pet sitting community to try to educate the population. I don’t think we really understand that the public doesn’t know the difference between a hobbyist and a professional. And if there’s one thing that you can take away from this podcast today, it’s that I encourage you all to get on your blog and start writing, not just once, but multiple times in all different ways to educate the public on the difference between hobbyists and professionals. Because this business that I also looked up in our state records isn’t even registered as a business, yet it’s being touted by the media as a kennel business and giving our industry a bad reputation. The timing was incredible because Fourth of July was coming up the next week, one of the busiest times for us. I sat down and wrote a blog called “The Six Lessons We Can Learn from the Green Acre Gilbert Tragedy.” I outlined the differences between hobbyists and professionals and other lessons. Then I went to the Facebook group that had thousands of people gathered for this cause, and I started commenting as my company page, linking to my article to help educate people. I approached it from an educational standpoint — giving something of value to the community. I also found the writers of local articles and emailed them personally: “Hey, I loved your story on the Green Acre tragedy. I’d love to help educate the public on lessons we can learn moving forward, especially with the holiday weekend coming up.” A few replied — maybe I’d get quoted, maybe not — but I was trying. I wanted to show the news that while they couldn’t keep repeating the same story, they could pivot to an educational angle about how to safely find care. In one day, that blog got 1,714 hits. My site normally gets 200–300. It spiked because I was relevant, offering information, helping people, and giving them something good to read. I’m not saying take advantage of horrible situations — I’m saying open your eyes to what’s going on in your community and find ways to educate. If nothing bad happens in your area, that’s fine. Write about something good — like “The Five Things You Might Have Missed at the Pet Expo....