Video

How To Make Great Looking Videos for Your Pet Business In No Time Flat

make yourself look great on video for pet sitters

It’s absolutely incredible how powerful the phones we carry around with us truly are.

The humorous part is that I bet using your phone as an actual phone is one of the least things you do with it!

Your phone is your lifeline, right?

It gives you one-click access to your to-do list, music, notebook, contacts, pictures, and immediate access to your social networks, and more.

As a pet business owner, you can practically manage your entire business from your phone.

Today’s post is going to show you how easy and valuable it is to shoot video from your phone, and make it work for your business.

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Hiring Staff for Your Pet Sitting Business? Why Background Checks Are a Must. [Video]

Law Books
If you hire pet sitters for your team, background checks are a must. See why and how it all works.

When you reach a certain point in your pet sitting business, you may find that bringing on pet sitters to join your team is a logical next move.

With that wonderful decision comes plenty of more wonderful responsibilities – all resting on your shoulders as business owner.

The very last thing you need happening is hiring the wrong person.

Aside from wasting your valuable time that you can’t afford to lose in the first place, hiring the wrong pet sitter for your team can get you in all sorts of legal battles.

This is one small reason it’s vital you do your due diligence at the start by legally performing a background check on all of your applicants.

You’ll sleep soundly at night, and your clients (and potential clients) will love you for it.

Thankfully we have Jason Waggoner on our side.

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Make Your WordPress Website More Secure With This One Easy Change

secure your WordPress website

How much do you rely on your website to keep your business successful?

And what would happen if an evil person hacked into your pet sitting website and made it inaccessible?

You and I both view our websites as vital to the health of our business. Keeping it healthy and online is a requirement, at the bare minimum.

Having a WordPress-powered website is one of the smartest things you can do to help your business grow (for reasons I’ll spell out in another article).

But with any website, security is a daily responsibility. For those using my WordPress-powered SEO Template, you do not need to worry about security or the change spelled out in the video below.

We have several daily actions in place that keep your site, and the server, safe and secure.

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Is Your Pet Sitting Contact Form Doing All It Can For You? [Video]

powerful thinker
If you can think it or dream it, it can be done.

ARTICLE OVERVIEW: Learn how to have your website contact form submissions sent to separate email accounts (to you and your team) based on what the potential client submits.

I’m sure you can relate: Since Day 1 of starting my pet sitting business, my website played an integral part to our overall success.

And more specifically, the fact that we had an embedded contact form in the sidebar across all pages also played a substantial role to our growth.

That become one of several ‘must haves’ I began preaching to pet sitters if they wanted to make small improvements to their current websites.

Naturally, when I began offering pet professionals a fully ‘done for you’ WordPress-powered SEO Template, a powerful embedded contact form was placed in the sidebar across all the pages.

RESOURCE: Read more about what’s included with your own WordPress website for pet sitters.

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3 Topics To Absolutely Help You Manage and Grow Your Business Better [Audio]

inside the mindDo you ever feel like your head is about to explode with all the thoughts, ideas, and conversations going on at once?

Yea, me too!

I happen to use the tool Evernote to document anything and everything I want to remember. This includes blog post topics, ideas, projects, notes, website resources, people I want to reach out to, to-do lists, etc.

What I found happening recently is that I have so many things just sitting in Evernote piling up (and essentially getting lost in the mix).

I figured I would fire up the mic and begin getting some of these topics out for you. Enjoy these 24 minutes during your day.

Full transcript follows, but the topics I discuss are:

-The 3 most useful tools you can use to gather email addresses from your website visitors.
-How beneficial is it to purchase additional domain names for your business?
-What makes Gmail so powerful as an integral part of your day-to-day sanity and success?

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Does Angie’s List Work for Gaining New Pet Sitting Clients?

listing optionsAs you have certainly seen in the recent past, many directory-style profile websites have popped up catering to our industry.

Sites such as Angie’s List, Care.com, DogVacay, Rover, and others are looking to be a viable resource to pet owners looking for reliable pet care.

I completely understand that the conversation here may be “these sites are nothing but filled with hobby sitters.”

But is that the case with Angie’s List?

And if that is the case, what does this mean for the future and direction of you and me (the professional pet sitter)?

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These Pet Sitters Will Be Joining Us in Vegas as Our Sponsor A Pet Sitter Winners

winner picOur 2nd Annual Pet Sitting Live Event and Conference is coming along nicer than I could have imagined – thanks, in part, to our incredible sponsors.

We created 2 programs this year to allow even more pet sitters to attend who otherwise could not because of financial restraint.

Personally, I created the Sponsor-A-Pet-Sitter program and the PetSittingOlogy Scholarship to help do all I can for those pet sitters who want to attend, but simply do not have the financial means at this time.

Plus, keep reading… we have great news for those pet sitters not selected who truly want to attend the conference, as our guest! (Watch video below.)

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Having Trouble Hiring Pet Sitters for your Team? There is a New Approach that May Work for You.

new approach to hiring
This other approach to hiring pet sitters for your team may be the answer.
If you’ve been in the industry for any length of time, at some point you get to a place where you are just working way too hard.

It’s time to hire.

The typical approach is to put the word out for pet sitters to join your team – either as ICs (independent contractors) or employees.

You may find yourself doing any of the following:

  • Placing an ad on Craigslist for potential applicants
  • Targeting local colleges for students
  • Finding housewives who want to make some extra money
  • Getting the word out to Vets in your area
  • Calling upon current clients who may make a good sitter
  • Bringing on retirees

Regardless of your success in any of these areas, there comes a time when you may find yourself with higher turnover than you’d like, and you need to go back to the drawing board to replenish your staff.

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If You Do Not Find Excitement and Inspiration from this Video, Something Is Wrong

Google Hangout screenshot
Watch us on this Google Hangout chatting about how to grow your pet sitting business.

Every successful business owner understands that they need to learn from others.

Whether it’s in the form of following their journey and reading their work, or having a mentor, success rarely happens without some influence of others.

Marcus Sheridan is someone outside of our industry who I personally follow, learn from and admire.

More importantly, the main reason I’m so excited to bring Marcus into our industry is because the way he succeeded is something that pet sitters can replicate.

Marcus began as a pool guy. He owned a pool company that installed fiberglass pools to his local community. He’s a local small business provider.

And so are pet sitters. While looking bankruptcy in the face, Marcus changed directions and used his website as his biggest form of marketing and now his pool company makes over $4 million a year!

The nuggets he provides in this insightful video can and should be used by pet sitters starting today.

Grab a pen and paper and take notes. He discussed things you can take action on right now to make huge progress. (Some pet sitters already have!)

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What’s Worse Than An Email Submission Landing in Spam and Not Knowing It? This is How to Prevent That.

file folder
Prevent important website contact submissions from landing in Spam.
What’s worse than finally getting a potential new client on the phone and hearing her say, “Did you get my email? I sent it in last week?”

How embarrassing and disappointing is that?

Especially if you never received it…

Knowing how hard you work to keep all your ducks in a row, the last thing you need is technology getting in the way.

At this point, you sheepishly (and frustratingly) check your email spam folder and, wouldn’t you know it, the woman’s email is right there.

Not good.

So outside of driving yourself crazy and remembering to check your spam folder every 2 hours, how can you prevent this from happening in the first place?

This is how!

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