How One Pet Lover Took Her Passion For Pets and United An Entire State with Woofalong / Ep. 21

In this episode of "Bella In Your Business", Bella talks with Darcy Graham,  creator of WOOFALONG.com. The site, which shows you the dog-friendly restaurants, stores, parks, trails and events in Colorado, was launched earlier this year and is already looking to expand. Bella and Darcy discuss: The frustration that was the impetus for the site. How Darcy compiled the list of locations. What types of publicity Darcy has managed to get for the site already and how she did it. The engagements her site has gathered so far and how she has gotten it to grow. Her extensive use of social media. What she has planned for the upcoming version 2 of the site. The plans for expansion to other cities. The potential opportunities on WOOFALONG.COM for business owners. You can find more information about WOOFALONG.COM at, where else,http://www.woofalong.com Subscribe To The Show: Transcript: This is episode 21 of Bella in Your Business. 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. I'm your host, Bella Vasta with Jump Consulting, and today I'm really excited to be joined by Darcy Graham from Woofalong. Darcy, how are you? I'm doing well, thank you. How are you today? I am so good, thank you for joining me today. We met a while ago—you used to actually be a pet sitting client of mine. We found out we also had some mutual friends, and you lived here in Arizona, and since then, you've been on quite the fun journey. You moved up to Colorado, right? With your dogs and built a barn and have horses. Yeah, I was in Arizona for 14 years and made my way back to my home state of Colorado, so it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And so what is your four-legged count right now? Tell me about all the pets that you have. Oh gosh. Let's see. We have four horses, we have two dogs, we have four chickens, two rabbits, and two cats. Oh my goodness, we have a lot of critters. That's incredible. When you moved up there, I was looking for a bookkeeper—and that’s what you do by trade—and so you really helped me and you've helped a lot of other pet sitters, which is really cool. So anyone listening today, if you’re in the market for a bookkeeper, Darcy not only is an amazing bookkeeper but an animal lover too, so you’ve got both of those things going for you. But when you moved up to Colorado, explain to me how your passion kind of took over and how this, what Woofalong is, and how it all started. Give us the background, set the stage for us. My day job really is small business consulting, which includes bookkeeping, so really anything related to small businesses—I help from bookkeeping to marketing and everything in between. My passion is small businesses, and since I now am independent and work for myself, that gave me more time to pursue my own interests. And that’s how Woofalong came about—developing a resource for dog lovers to find dog-friendly businesses and activities. Having a dog that I take everywhere with me, that was kind of a pain point—finding a current resource for places that allowed you to bring your dog. So at the beginning of this year, I really got serious about developing Woofalong. I started building the actual website in March and launched at the end of June. It’s been fun to pursue a project that I’m really passionate about. And you know, I just love following you online because not only do you have amazing pictures and a Bernese Mountain Dog that is so photogenic, but you have very interesting things. Like, I’m not even in Colorado, and I want to know what adventures you’ve been on or what kind of places you have up there. And I’m envious of how pet-friendly it is around there. I hear what you’re saying about Googling and looking for places to take your pet, and so many of them are outdated or maybe the places are closed. So how did you start gathering that list? Has it been you all by yourself, or do you have like an army of informants out there? No, it’s actually just been me. I pretty much sacrificed sleep for a good six months. I’m really fortunate, and part of the timing was coming back to my home state of Colorado because it is such a dog-friendly state. Everyone has pets here and everyone’s really active, so it was a perfect place to launch Woofalong because I have so much material. Like you said, we are on activities at least once or twice a week that I can blog about and talk about on the site. But yeah, it really was just down-and-dirty research as far as finding the first—I think I launched with about a thousand locations—and that was 100% my research. From there, we were fortunate enough to get some great exposure. We ended up being on 9 News here in Denver, and I think at this stage, I’ve been on 10 radio stations doing spots, and it was literally just word of mouth and excitement, which was amazing. I had added a “Submit Content” page to the site where our fans and users could submit their location. Since we launched, I’ve continued to research. Weekly I’m adding new locations that I find, but I also have all these awesome people who are supporting me, who are submitting their favorite locations. I think we’re probably—I have to do a count—12 or 1300 locations now. That gives me chills. It’s incredible. I think it’s a true testament to how things grow organically when you’re providing value to your community. If you go to your website right now, woofalong.com, as a viewer, I could go into restaurants and breweries. If that’s not my fancy—if I don’t like to eat or drink (who doesn’t?)—shops and businesses. There’s a dog sitting in a home people cart, dog parks, hikes and trails, upcoming events, and attractions. That truly covers everything. You describe exactly how you can provide value to people and their pets on this website, and it’s just incredible. How did you get all of that publicity? Did you do that yourself as well? I have some really awesome friends, first of all, that were super passionate about the idea. Part of the other reason I wanted to go ahead and build this was seeing my friends having the same frustrations because they’re also dog lovers. They couldn’t wait for me to get this built because they wanted to use it. So a lot of that was literally just friends saying, “Hey, look at this site,” and the word spreading. I released this at the end of June as a beta site and didn’t expect things to take off the way they did. Obviously, I was absolutely thrilled. I definitely got my proof of concept right away. So we’re working on version two. Version two will be primarily a feature enhancement. Right now, if you go into restaurants and breweries, it’s well organized—you can jump from city to city—but we want to make it even easier for people to find locations. Version two will have filtering and sorting and location, so if you’re out and about and at the dog park one day and decide, “You know what, I’m hungry, let’s find a patio nearby,” you can use Woofalong to find the nearest location. It’ll make it easier for people to be out there with their pets. That’s so cool—it’s like a navigation with its nose to the ground, sniffing out the next treat in the neighborhood. Exactly. Sniffing out the next treat. I love it. I know you’re really big on Instagram and Facebook. Tell me about how that started, how it grew, and if you have it, can you share with us some of your numbers and insights—your reach and engagement and how you’ve gotten that to grow. What strategies have you used? As we all know, in this day and age, social media is everything. And I was actually just telling another entrepreneur friend that I can see when I’ve neglected my social media because my analytics reflect that. It really is all about putting out the content. With any marketing and promoting, it’s trial and error. I’ve learned what people like to see and what gets the traffic. Right now we just reached 721 likes on Facebook and about 300 followers on Instagram. It’s growing daily. In the beginning, a lot of my awesome friends and family were sharing, but there’s a really incredible feeling when you stop recognizing names. That’s when you see, “Okay, this is working organically.” I do a lot of boosting on Facebook. The nice thing is it doesn’t have to be a ton of money. I’m completely self-funded, so I obviously don’t have the budget to put thousands of dollars into social media marketing. But when I post a new blog post or when I’m putting out something that I think is really valuable for the audience, I’ll do a $5 or $10 boost here and there, and that’s really helped grow my social media even on a small budget. Anybody starting out should give that a try and test different campaigns to see what works. The boosting of your posts is something that a lot of small business owners can employ on a small budget. You post new content, it might not hit everyone, but if you spend $5 or $10 for a day or two, you drive more people back to your website. People assume everyone wants to know what they post, but in reality, nobody cares—you have to make them care. You’re very timely. For example, you talk about local dog events, Colorado hikes, and seasonal posts like “Colorado Dog-Friendly Fall Foliage Hikes.” You take subcategories and make it valuable and timely, which really stands out. Are you going to be expanding into other cities? And are you writing all of it, or do you have a writer? I do everything. Now, I’m fortunate to have a mother who’s a published author, so I can go to her. I often write blog posts at three in the morning, so the next day I’ll have her edit it because I’m so busy. But I do this 100% myself. It can be done. People that have a business idea—jump in and do it, especially if it’s something you’re passionate about. You were talking about the categories and how I drill down to fall foliage hike