Episode 6: How To Deal With Negative Reviews

Ever see Jimmy Fallon do his "Mean Tweet" segment? This is what I want you to think of when you listen to Ep 6 of Bella In Your Business. There is so much negativity going on out there with pet sitters getting upset because someone wrote a negative review, told them their service was too much, said something "mean" to them, or just got their feelings hurt. I am here today to encourage you to be a DUCK and let it roll off your back. Seriously! What you let into your head becomes your reality. It helps feed the stinkin' thinkin' and I want to show you that no business ever failed because someone said something mean. We all will get negative reviews at some point in time. I even read what has been said about ME! Yes, me. Nothing online is private.... there are screen shots for everything. :( Here are some of the show notes for you to follow along: Kate McQuillian from Pawsome Media and her awesome graphics https://jumpconsulting.net/2015/04/02/how-to-get-more-engagement-on-your-facebook-posts/ Tax season https://jumpconsulting.net/2015/02/23/smaller-pet-sitting-staff-can-save-thousands-dollars/ Video with Erica and about negativity https://jumpconsulting.net/2015/04/08/how-to-respond-to-a-negative-review-online/ "It always has been your way or the highway Bella and you proved my point splendidly." "Very rude. Woman that I believe is the owner is very obnoxious and self-centered. You have to put up with constantly "I'm the best. Everyone wants to be like me. I'm so great people would pay double for pet sitting to be with my company but I decline" does anyone actually believe that? It's pretty disturbing!" "I can't believe she is a consultant, she was so nasty with me when I decided to try a session with her." "Bella = narcissist" What To Do When It Happens: Consider the source How To React Attitude and Reaction is everything Attitude is everything blog https://jumpconsulting.net/tag/attitude/ Seek Guidance From Those Who Do Love You. Think About All Good Feedback. Don’t let one negative comment ruin your whole day. Transcript: Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I've got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It's called Jump and Scale, and it's free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you inside. 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 jumpers, today's podcast is going to be really awesome and interesting. It's going to be very different, something that you don't always hear. And although we're going to be talking about the negative, I promise you there is a light at the end of the tunnel and a bright sunny day behind these clouds. So let's get started. Before we go any further, I would love to thank you for spending the time listening to me. Let me know where you're listening. Are you out walking the baby and the dog like I do? Are you driving around in the car? I do that too. Maybe while you're folding laundry? Again, I do that too. Maybe you're cleaning the house, taking a walk, going for a hike. Let me know where and when you're listening to the podcast. I'd love to know what you're doing while I am clogging up your earwaves. So in order to stay connected with me and never miss a podcast, I would be just so grateful if you would go over to iTunes or Stitcher and type in Bella Vasta or Bella in Your Business, the name of this podcast, and subscribe so that you can always have the latest and greatest episodes in your box. I have a couple of announcements that I want to go through. Tax season is here, of course. Taxes are due in just a few short days. How do you keep track of everything? Does your Power Pet Sitter or your online system connect with your QuickBooks? Does your QuickBooks have all the invoices, and do you keep up with it every single month? Putting in your expenses and your payables and all of the income and keeping track of your checks and credit cards and all those other forms of payment and method. Tax season used to be really horrible for me. I used to literally sit down in front of the TV and print out all of my statements, my bank statements, and I used to sit down with a bottle—or who am I kidding, two bottles—of wine and sit there for probably about five or six hours and work on it. I used to go through my bank statements and line by line, put it in a proper column, and sometimes I didn't even know what column it went into. Two or three hours into it, I just didn't even care; I just wanted to get it done, and it was horrible. You guys, I lost so many opportunities on expenses or putting things in the right column or getting the right things deducted or reimbursed because I never had a bookkeeper. When I got a bookkeeper, all of a sudden things just changed miraculously. Not to mention that at any point I could have an instant snapshot of my company for today, tomorrow, yesterday, last year, and even projected for next year. So if you don't do it already, if you're feeling the pains of going through taxes right now, I highly, highly suggest it. I also have a really valuable blog on how to save yourself money. Actually, I have two of them. One of them talks about having a bookkeeper, which I just mentioned, and the second one is about having a small staff. You see, you are paying federal unemployment tax on the first $7,000 for every single employee. So if you have 20 employees, you're paying up to $7,000 of that tax for 20 people. But if you have, say, eight people doing the work of those 20 because they work more instead of less, then you're only paying tax on that $7,000 for eight people. It's a drastic difference, you guys, and if my memory is correct, it's about $500 a person per year. So if you want to save money on taxes, you’ve got to really think about how lean your staff is, and that's my scoop on that. Another cool thing about taxes, if you don't know, you can be an LLC—which everybody should be, whether or not you have staff. It helps separate your business liability from your house. Or maybe you might say, well, I rent an apartment, I have a lease on my car, or I'm paying it off, I don't really have anything. The thing is, the way it was explained to me—and let me say this with a grain of salt, I am not advising you; this is my experience—it was told to me, “Bella, even if you don't have anything right now, somebody could attach themselves onto whatever you might make in the future.” And now that I have a house and a husband and a daughter and some assets, that's really important. But I don't want you guys to overlook it or not do your due diligence because it might not be the best or happiest thing for you to do in your business. Definitely become an LLC, talk to your advisors about it, and then also find out about filing as an S-Corp. It can save you lots and lots of money because the taxes are passed through the business to yourself. Take a look at it, please, please, please. Even if you're not feeling it in the pocket, I just want you guys to educate yourself on your business and know what your options are because education is powerful. The second announcement is that I just recently did this awesome short video with Kate McQuillan out of Ireland. Big shout-out to Kate. It seems as though I'm mentioning her every podcast, but she's just fantastic. She started Pawsome Media, and she has these great graphics that she's created. I mean, on her Facebook page alone for her pet sitting business, she gets in the triple digits for shares and likes. So yes please, I'd love some engagement. I bought all of her packages, and I'm using them and getting great engagement—more so than when I was trying to stumble through Canva on my own. So guys, I suggest you jump on over to pawsomemedia.com. Check out what she's got to offer. She's got a lot of different things on there. The one that I love the most are these graphics, and a bunch of pet sitters have already started buying them and using them, and they're getting great results as well. So check that out. Kate, thank you for your time on that and thank you for doing that for the industry. Nobody else is doing that, and it's so unique and it's so awesome because as we all know, our brand gives people an impression of us, and I want to make sure that that impression is a good one—not a “I don't have any money to pay a designer” one. So check her out, Pawsome Media—it's amazing. Alright, now the very last announcement: I also did a video with Erica, and this ties into today's topic. Erica Gomez is the owner of Wo Doggy, a pet sitting company. They, like almost all of us, got a very negative review on Yelp. It was their first two-star review, and it was their first review ever on Yelp. She is a fantastic speaker, very well-educated. I really love the interview that we did together. I would watch it over and over again, and I encourage you to check out the show notes here and jump on over to that as well. If you can't find the show notes, just Google “Erica negative review Jump Consulting” and it should come up on Google. There's a good outline on that article, and it tells you about what to do when you get a negative review, how to formulate a response. She tells her story about how they had a negative review, and they formulated the most incredible response. They get people calling frequently saying, “I saw your review on Yelp and I saw your response, and I was really impressed and I'd love to work with you.”