The Blogs I Read Everyday - What Are You Reading?

Filed Under My Pet Business, Pet Business Tips | 3 Comments

It’s woofwednesday at twitter today - a day where pet people recommend to others people on twitter that are interesting and worth following. If you are interested in connecting with more pet people on twitter do a search for woofwednesday and you’ll find lots of new contacts.  Of course I’d also love you to connect with me while you are there - http://www.twitter.com/daniellechonody

So as a spinoff from woofwednesday I wanted to share with you some blogs that I love. I have a list of blogs that I visit everyday because they always have great tips and interesting advice. Some are pet related and some are just about internet marketing.   Here is my list:

PetSitUSA  - http://www.petsitusa.com/blog

PetBusinessVA - http://www.petbusinessva.com

7 Lucky Dogs - http://www.7luckydogs.net

Alice Seba - http://www.aliceseba.com

Clicknewz - http://www.clicknewz.com

Entrepreneurs Journey - http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Take a look at these and see if you like them.  I’d love to hear from you about the blogs that you love and visit regularly.  Please share them with us so we can connect with other great bloggers (of course if you have your own blog please tell us about it!).

Graduation Day for New Pet Tech Instructors

Filed Under My Pet Business | 6 Comments

Pet Tech Graduation DayToday I graduated as a Pet Tech Petsaver instructor. Here is the graduation class of the February 2009! See me there on the left next to Thom “The Pet Safety Guy” Somes.

It has been a great 3 days here in Orlando and met some terrific folks - 4 other pet sitters, a manager of a doggie day care centre (in DFW!), and a dog training business owner.  We all walk away from this class with some much more knowledge of pet first aid and wellness - that we are now empowered to pass on to other pet lovers and pet care professionals.

The Pet Tech Petsaver program is very comprehensive program and covers:

Restraining and Muzzling, Primary Pet Assessment, Pet CPR and rescue breathing, Choking Management, Bleeding Protocols, Poisoning, Heat and Cold Injuries, Bites and Stings, Snout to Tail Wellness Assessment, Dental Care for Pets, and Caring for Your Senior Pet-izen.

I believe that every pet owner should know this information.  Pets are members of our family and we all want them to be a part of our family for as long as possible.  Taking this course will allow pet owners to not only be able to act quickly and confidently in an emergency situation, but also help them to understand how they can improve their pets health, improve their quality of life, and extend the length of their life by applying pet wellness principles.

As soon as I return to DFW next week I will be scheduling my first class.  If you live in the area please leave a comment if you are interested in attending so that I can email you with the time and date of the class.  Wherever you live - you can find a local Pet Tech instructor by using the locator at www.pettech.net.

Next I’m off to the Pet Sitters International Quest Annual conference. I’ll have more updates and photos for you later this week!

Swap Coupons To Attract More Pet Sitting Clients

Filed Under My Pet Business, Pet Sitting Business Tips | 2 Comments

Marketing MondayLaunching a coupon swap has been a task on my marketing to do list for a long long time! I’m glad to say it’s finally of the ground (because of my wonderful VA Laura) and I have my first swap set up with a poop scooping business in my local area - DFW Scooopers.

The concept of this swap is that I give out coupons advertising the poop scoopers to all my pet sitting customers and they give out coupons advertising my pet sitting service to all their poop scooping customers.  Each of us have a special offer for the other businesses clients that can be obtained by presenting the coupon.

I am printing the coupons off today and will mail to Randy at DFW Scooper tomorrow for him to distribute to his clients with his February invoices.

Here is a copy of the coupon that DFW Scoopers will be giving out to their clients.

Pet Sitting Coupon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To organize your own coupon swap you’ll need to take these action steps:

1. Design an attractive and professional looking coupon as a sample to send to prospective coupon partners

2. Write a letter of introduction that describes your business and how you propose the coupon swap will work.  Describe the benefits of the swap for their business and invite them to participate with you in a swap.  Explain that you will set up the coupons and print and deliver the first batch to them so that the process is very easy for them.

3. Put together a list of local pet business who would make good swap partners. I sent mine out to groomers, dog trainers, pet boutique food and accessory stores, poop scoopers, and dog day care centers. You could also send to veterinarians and pet boarding facilities. Make a list of their contact names, email address, phone number and physical addresses.

4. Send out an email to these contacts with your letter of invitation and your sample coupon.

5. Follow up by phone if you do not hear from contacts within a week.

6.  If still unsuccessful contacting partners, mail out a copy of you letter and coupon.

7. When you make contact and partner is interested  - organize to meet by phone to tell each other more about your businesses and establish a relationship.

8. Get partners logo and special coupon offer.

9. Customize design of coupon and email to partner for approval

10. Print coupons and deliver to partner

11. Send coupons with their offer to your pet sitting clients.12. Keep in touch with your new partners and measure effectiveness of your coupon swap

13. Why not suggest working together on other marketing campaigns or organization of a local pet event

I hope this has given you some ideas!  Let me know what you think and let me know if you have used any similar marketing methods in your business by leaving a comment.

Networking Groups and Pet Sitting Conferences

Filed Under My Pet Business, Pet Sitting Business Tips | 2 Comments

Talk Back TuesdayToday I finally booked my hotel and flights to get to the Pet Sitters International Annual Quest conference which is coming up soon - February 18th - 21st in Orlando Florida.  This will be my second Quest conference. I have skipped the last couple of years  - my last one was the conference in San Antonia at least two years ago. 

Quick Tip:  If you are planning to attend Quest and haven’t got tickets or hotel reservations yet - there are some good specials avaialble and much less expensive hotels in the area than the actually venue where the conference will be held.  I managed to get a flight from DFW for $200 with Travelocity on Air-Tran and a room for $54 per night that is about a mile walk from the conference hotel - at Extended Stay Deluxe.

The only other pet sitting conference that I have attended was the Cybersitters United in Las Vegas at the beginning of 2007. 

I love attending these conferences and it’s one of my goals to get to the more often. The reason I love them is because they are a great place to pick up new ideas and tips to make your marketing and business more efficient and  meet lots of other great people who share my love of pet sitting.

Some locations have local networking groups for pet sitters that meet regularly - once a month - have websites to promote pet sitting in their area and hold annual events.  Unfortunatly I am yet to find one in my area although there are a lot of sitters here in Euless Texas.  I keep wishing someone will start one up!  I know you are thinking - “why don’t you start one Danielle?” - I guess it’s just that I’m so time stretched with my day job, pet sitting, and family.  One day when I’m sitting full time I’ll be able to put the time into this kind of project.

So… for talkback Tuesday - tell me :

1) What pet sitter networking groups are you involved in?

2) Do you attend pet sitting conferences? (Are you going to PSI’s Quest in February?)

3) What do you get out of attending these conferences or networking groups?

Don’t feel like you have to answer all of these - you can just leave a comment and tell us about any one of them!  Leave your comment after this post so we can share info about conferences and groups!

Did Santa Bring You Any Tools for Your Pet Sitting Business?

Filed Under My Pet Business | 6 Comments

Talk Back TuesdayThis year I asked my husband for a new Pulse Smart Pen that I saw reviewed by Lynn Terry on her blog Clicknewz.com.  I was lucky and he found one for me (at the local Target!).

This pen is so cool - everything you write is automatically scanned by the pen so that when you connect it to your computer via USB it is uploaded as a scanned page of text that you can then email, or save as a file.  It will also record audio as you make notes and the audio is captured and linked to whatever you write. If you want to go back later while you are reading your notes - you can tap the pen on a word and it will start playing the audio that was recorded while you wrote that note!

I tried this out while listening to a recorded tele-seminar the other day and it was so easy. I just turned the pen on - tapped the recorded button on their notebook paper - and listened and wrote notes. It is all recorded on the pen if I want to go back later and refresh my mind on what was said. The only draw back is that you have to use the pen on special paper. The pen did come with a 100 page notebook and you can purchase new notebooks - 4 for $20 which seems pretty reasonable.

I want to put this to good use this year by giving you access to some of my notes and audio here at Working with Pets - just another gadget to let me share my ideas with you.

So - did Santa bring you anything that you are going to put to use in your business in 2009?  Leave a comment and tell me about it!

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