Episode 8: How To Break Through From A $40K to $100K Pet Sitting Business.

Matt asks the question: Hi Bella, I guess [my question]  would be some actionable best practices for breaking thru that wall in business. IE. Going from a 40,000 pet sitting business to a 100,000 + business. Without further ado, here is your answer all laid out: You have to think of a car with an engine. In order to get up to those higher speeds the engine needs to be efficient. The way a business works when making 40K typically isn’t going to be the same way when it is making 100K In Order To Have a Breakthrough, You Must Control Areas Of Your Business So It Doesn't Control You. Control is a big part of it. It rarely every happens just because. You have to be intentional about it. You have to control every aspect of your business and make decisions that line up with your 100K goal. Each decision that comes into your business you have to ask yourself, “Will this help me get closer or further away from it?”Here are some areas where you can control the outcome and put in place systems that will help you achieve the system that it takes to take it to a six figure business. As a warning, I want to say that the biggest difference between a 40K business and 100K business is that the more volume that comes in, the less of EVERYTHING a business owner can do. They can’t possibly do it all anymore because there is too much to do. Those that attempt end up being burnt out of not good at a lot because they are stretched too thin. This, is where creating systems comes into play and learning how to control them. Here are areas that you can control and create systems for: Control the marketing. Control the leads and sales process Control the follow up. Control the sitters schedules Control the quality Learn to delegate more. small and big tasks. website, graphics, social media, It is like that car that is coasting along the freeway. You can let your foot off the gas. Someone else can take the steering wheel. 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 to high turnover. Signing up is as easy as going to jumpconsulting.net forward slash scale. That's jumpconsulting.net forward slash 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. Hello, this is Bella Vasta and you are listening to Bella in Your Business. It is a podcast for business owners in the pet industry where I hope to inspire, motivate and challenge you with each episode. Before we get started, I would be honored if you would subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or SoundCloud and leave a comment, like or heart on either of them. Today, we're going to talk about how to break through from a $40,000 a year business to a $100,000 a year business in your pet sitting business. That's a lot of businesses. This question comes from Matt Frazier and he submitted it on my Jump Consulting Facebook page. You too could find that just simply by going to facebook.com backslash jump consulting. He says, hi Bella. I guess it would be some actionable best practices for breaking through the wall in business, i.e. going from a $40,000 business to a hundred thousand plus business. Well, I think this is a really super great question and I see a lot of people on that cusp. I kind of think back to myself when I was there. And you know, you're just really trying to get over that hump and push forward. You're at a breaking point and depending on your pricing structure and strategy, sometimes you're actually looking to hire people between 40,000 to a hundred thousand dollars. And this we're talking about what your business makes, of course. It's really exciting. It's a very exciting thing. It's kind of starting to take it to the next level. You've decided that you are able to have a business going. It's going really well. You're making money. Maybe you can't even believe that you're making money doing something that you love, but inevitably you're going to become burnt out because at the end of the day, it's just you. So in order to reach that hundred thousand dollar, I'm not going to say anything's impossible, but I think it's safe to assume that the majority of people in order to be bringing in a hundred thousand dollars on your business, will most likely have to have one to two people helping them out. So in order to make that jump from 40 to 100,000, there's gonna be some things that we're gonna have to talk about here. If you've listened to anything that I've ever coached or taught, you know that I love to talk in analogies. So I want you to think about a car with an engine. In order for it to get up to a higher speed, the engine needs to be efficient. The way a business works when making $40,000 a year typically isn't going to be the same way when it's making $100,000 a year. For any of you who understand how stick shift works or a manual car, you cannot be going 100 miles on the freeway. Well, I guess you can't do that to begin with, but for argumentative sake, you can't be going 100 miles an hour on the freeway in second gear because you'll burn out your engine. For those of you who don't know stick shift, and I didn't until I had my Mini Cooper Convertible a couple years back, with each gear that you bring it up from 1 to 5, your speed goes higher and higher. You can do a really high speed in second gear, but what happens is your RPMs end up in the red, so your engine's going to burn out. In order to take some pressure off your engine and ultimately a car you're gonna want to kick it up a gear kick it up a notch and that's kind of where that saying comes from so you really if you're gonna be going you know a hundred miles an hour you need to be in fifth gear and we've got to work our way up there from second gear, third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear. So basically what I'm trying to get across is that we've got to control this. This isn't just like I wanted you a hundred miles an hour in second gear because unless you make the proper changes, your engine is going to burn out and guess who's the engine? You. So control is a big part of it. Your business growing really rarely ever happens and is sustainable for just because you have to be intentional about it. You have to control every aspect of your business and make decisions that line up with your $100,000 a year goals. Each decision that comes into your business, you'll have to ask yourself, will this help me get closer or further away from my goal? You guys, this is life changing. And I remember the first time someone told me this. And I always use the Yellow Pages example. At the time, people were calling up asking if you wanted to advertise in the Yellow Pages. It sounds so obsolete now, doesn't it? But, you know, it was like $500 a year and they said, oh my gosh, we're going to get you out to 100,000 people and all of this stuff, you know. And I used to say to people, well, number one, is that part of your marketing plan? Number two, those 100,000 people, do you service them all or is it really only like 5,000 of those people? And number three, where do your people find you? Are they actually looking through the phone book? Do they even have a phone book or is it in the trash? Or do they look online? So that's a really great illustration for when you're looking to get up to $100,000, you're going to have all of these decisions to make along the way. And unless you have like a litmus test to like put it up against, you're going to be very confused on which way to go. And you might make a lot of bad decisions. And you know what? It's inevitable. We're not perfect. We have all made and will make lots of bad decisions. But it really matters how we turn those bad decisions into lessons and how we choose to take it on with us. Are we carrying it around like baggage like, ho, hum me, I made a mistake and I can't do that again and I just don't know how. Or are we more like, yeah, I made that mistake, never making that again. I'm gonna learn from it and I'm gonna do it better and different the next time. That mindset is so crucial in getting from this 40,000 to this 100,000. So I want to talk more about areas where you can control the outcome and put in place systems that will help you achieve that system and take it to a six figure business. As a warning, I want to say that the biggest difference between a 40K and a 100K business is the more volume that comes in, the less of everything a business owner can do. They can't possibly do it all anymore because there's just too much to do. Those that attempt to do all of it and be everything to everyone end up being burnt out. They end up regretting their business, regretting their life, and just not really being happy. I know because I see them all the time online. It's basically they've stretched themselves too thin. Oftentimes you can really picture these people because they're saying things like, my husband doesn't get to see me and he doesn't like my business because he says I work all the time. Or I really am resentful of this pet sit because I want to make it to my kids baseball game and they just can't. So this is where systems come into play and learning how to control your business. Here are the areas you can control and I'm going to touch upon some systems for the sake of time. I can't really go through all the how-to's, but I'm going to give you a lot of good food for thought. So if you're walking a dog right now or doing laundry or driving,...