1. family and parenting
2. children
3. daycare and preschool

HOW TO START
YOUR OWN
DOGGY
DAYCARE
Detailed Report That Provides An Inside Look
At Opening and Operating Your Doggy Day Care
Center
BSG Publishing, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2007
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Starting a Doggy Daycare Syllabus
Disclaimers:
Income guarantees
Legal advice
-Regulatory Disclaimer
Information purposes only
Why doggy daycare?
Market Stability - There is a great need
Low investment opportunity
Great need 4.2 million dogs
Stay with your pets
-makes economical sense
-good Return on Investment
Income opportunity over $50,000 at home and over $100,000 with a center
Are you ready?
Being around pets everyday - stress and a plan
The impact on your family - what about me
The impact on your home - physical changes
Setting up your business
Working capital $500-$1000 for home
-working capital
-dog-proofing
-low cost advertising
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-food/nutrition
-cash positive business and advanced payments
Naming the business - Make it sound national
-branding
-create credibility with brand
Your image, business cards, logo, signage, ads
Incorporation v sole proprietor - liability explained
-Sole Proprietorships
-Corporations
-downsides
Taxes - what's deductable
-stay organized
-software
-other programs
Getting your home ready
-Emergency Numbers
-Emergency Services
Parking plans
Setting rules and expectations:
#1 Rules and expectations of owners:
• phone interview with owners
• Live interview with owner and dog
• Use an application
• List rules in writing and have owner sign
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The golden rule: hold firm on the rules and regulations as well as
consequences that you set, once you allow rule to be broken by a owner or
child with no consequences expect more rules to be broken.
#2 Rules for you:
Documentation – is your responsibility to keep up with documentation for
both owners and children
• signed in sign out sheet
• late pickup for
• Late arrival form
Employees:
People that you know that don’t work but have dogs are a good starting place
to try to find employees because they’re able to bring their dogs with them to
work. Try not to hire just one person like this fulltime instead hire two or
three part time so that you have more options in case you would ever need
help.
• Student Newspapers
• Craig’s List
• Trial periods
• 90 day trial.
Advertising and Marketing:
Avoid radio and TV ads Most of your clients will live within five miles of your
location you should focus your marketing efforts there.
3 Advertising Methods
1) Print advertising
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• Avoid the large newspapers that are distributed to the major
metropolitan area. Focus instead on newspapers that are distributed
only in your city or town.
• List company info a newspaper ad
• List benefits certifications certificates training in the newspaper ad
• Write a headline that tells what you had offered to benefit for the client
and why the client should trust you possibly the cost
• the main focus of the ad should be the message not Logos are pictures
• Make sure to include things like limited space available and call to apply
2) Online advertising
• Craig’s list
B. Google Adwords
C. Flyers and print material
• 3 x 5 Card
3) Flyer with tear of numbers to distribute on messages at the grocery store
and other community areas
4) bandits signs – WWW.MrYardsigns.com
5) door hangers – one mile circle around your home
HAVE A WAITING LIST NEVER STOP ADVERTISING
After the phone Rings:
A.
Phone Interview:
• Ask The Owners:
• About their dog
• What they are looking for in a daycare
• What hours they are looking for
• If their dog is house trained or crate trained
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B.
Tell the owner:
• About your disciplinary policies
• Your fees
• That you require a signed contract agreement
• The activities you perform
• Any certifications or license that you hold
Keeping Records:
A.
Set budget
• At 10% your final budget
• Stick to your budget
• Dog’s record sheet
• All contact and health and so who’s allowed to pick up dogs
B.
Vaccination Records
C.
Transportation permission form
• Emergency transportation forms
• Always carry forms with you when leaving the dog day care center with
a dog.
What To Charge:
A.
Survey your area
• Call centers within ten miles of your location
• Chart average cost
• Charge 110% of the average
• Can’t sell prices in reverse
• Don’t use the cost plus model
B.
Define the benefits that you want up front
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• Decide how much paid time off you want and be up front about it with
your clients
• Planned to have to pay for your own health insurance
• The upfront about payment rules such as when payments are due in
penalties for late payments
• Monthly billing –one month in advance
• Weekly billing – two weeks in advance
Daily Operations:
A.
Hours
B.
Feeding
C.
Exercise
D.
Extras
E.
Conflicts
Additional Income:
A. Three ways to increase your income
• Increase your customers
• Get customers to spend more money with you more often
• Offer additional services
B. Eight additional services to offer to your client base
• Family meals
A. Don’t overcharge
B. Don’t offer drinks
C. Keep it simple
D. Stay away from perishable items
• Owners night – Boarding overnight and weekends
• Offer Friday and Saturday night’s sleep-over’s
• Charged $40.00 to $50.00 per dog
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• Offer this service to friends and family of the dogs that are in your
center
a.
Photos
• Have pictured a once or twice a year
• Partner with a local photographer
• Typically for charters offer a 50/50 split on photos ordered
b.
Dry cleaning and laundry drop-off service
Partner with eight local dry cleaners
Become a drop-off center
They usually pay 30% to 40% commission to you
That’s $20.00 to $30.00 per week per owner that chooses to take advantage of
this service
c.
Dog Training Classes
• Partner with local providers
• Split the fees
• Take stress off while dogs are in lessons
d. Drop in dogs
• Charging a premium
g. Other opportunities
Serious Issues:
A. Pet abuse and neglect
• Unexplained injuries
• Owners to overreact when questioned about unexplained issues with
their pet
Resources Guide
A. List of forms, pamphlets, and information that you can utilize.
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INTRODUCTION
Hi! Welcome to our course entitled “How to Start Your Own Daycare Center.”
First, we have to get the lawyer stuff out of the way and make a few
disclaimers.
1.) Income guarantees or statements. When we talk about how much
money you can make in this business, it is incredibly variable. I may tell
stories of people I know that have made a lot or stories of people I know that
have made little. The point is that we don’t make any guarantees as to how
much income you’re going to make or how you’re going to make it. A lot of
that will depend on your actions and what you do.
If we’re telling a story about someone earning a particular income,
which is for information purposes only and does not mean that you’re going to
make that much money or that you’re going to make that little money. You
may make a whole lot more. You may make less.
2.) Because the business of doggy daycare centers is regulated state by
state, there are a lot of variables in the legalities of what goes on in the various
states. Again, this is for information purposes only. You should consult an
attorney regarding any legal issues. We’re not giving you any legal advice here.
We’re not going to be giving legal advice today. If you have a legal question,
you should consult your local attorney or the local government agencies in
your area.
Again, this is for information purposes only and is not intended to be
direct business advice by any licensed professional.
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WHY DOGGY DAYCARE?
Well, there are a lot of good reasons to start a Doggy Day Care Center.
I’ll give you the three biggest ones that I know of. In dealing with and talking
to people that are in this business, these are the three answers that come up
the majority of the time.
1.) The Doggy Daycare Business is HOT.
Entrepreneur Magazine just classified the doggy daycare business as
one of the best start-upS out there. Americans spent 43 BILLION dollars on
their pets last year. The bottom line is that Americans are in love with their
pets. They treat them like members of the family. Conscious pet owners who
work or families where both people work feel bad about leaving their dogs at
home alone all day long. In some cases the dogs may act out by tearing up the
owner’s house or belongings and there are a certain number of owners who do
not feel comfortable leaving their dogs in crates all day long. That’s where
doggy daycare comes in.
2.) Its a super-stable business.
Being in different businesses over the last few years, it’s amazing to see
how businesses change. Things go up and things go down. The doggy daycare
business is an extremely stable business. There are currently over 8 million
pets in the United States of America. That’s kind of an older number so I’m
sure it’s probably more than that now.
There’s an incredible need for doggy daycare. There tend to be less
doggy daycare centers than there are dogs owners that want to use them. It’s
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an interesting business in that it’s not a difficult one to get started in. One of
the tough parts—and we’re going to talk about that a little later—is how you
make a really good income.
A lot of doggy daycare center providers make an okay living when they
could be making a really substantial income. That’s really what this course is
about. It’s more about the tweaks and the twists of this business so that you
can pick up the extra money that’s going to push you over the top and make
this an extraordinary income for you as long as your serious and you do what
we tell you.
3.) Its an easy sale.
You don’t have to be a super salesperson or even a super marketer to be
in this business. If you know the general rules of thumb, you can generate a lot
of business here without spending a whole lot of money.
4.) The investment to be in this business is relatively low (if you start a home
based business), especially depending upon the point that you choose to start.
If you’re starting a home doggy daycare, the investment is extremely
low. It’s as little as a few hundred dollars. If you’re starting a commercial
doggy daycare facility then obviously it’s considerably more, perhaps in the
thousands or tens of thousands. Nonetheless, your return on this investment
is extremely high typically, if you can run an efficient operation. We’re going
to help you with that.
5.) You get to stay at home (if you start a home based center).
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That’s a really important thing to a lot of people. The ability to work
from home and have your dogs next to you all the time is extremely important
to a lot of people. Now for some of us, it would maybe drive us totally crazy to
work next to our dogs, children or significant other all day long. It just
depends on how you look at it. If you really want to spend quality time with
your dogs, and other people’s dogs, then it’s a great opportunity.
It’s an opportunity to have a family business, to stay home with your
kids (if you have them), and pets and be involved in the daily raising of your
children while earning a fulltime income.
6.) You can make great money.
We’ll talk about income now. The big reason that I would say people are
in this business is income opportunity. Oddly enough, I’ll tell you that most
people who get into this business don’t get into it to get rich. Most people get
into it because they love dogs or they just want to work from their home.
I will be the first to tell you that if you are not a person who enjoys being
around dogs all the time and just really loves dogs; this is a really bad idea.
You should decide right now that this is not for you and go find something else
to do because this is an encompassing business. Your life is going to be
consumed by dogs, at least during your daytime hours. That’s what you’re
going to do if you decide to be in the doggy daycare business, whether at home
or in a commercial facility.
You need to really have a love for dogs. That seems extremely obvious,
but I get people that call and I talk to from time to time. They say, “I just don’t
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know if I could be around dogs all day long.” Well ask yourself that question
right now because if you can’t, it’s just absolutely not for you.
Lastly, I would say in regard to that income opportunity I was talking
about earlier, it is fairly easy in this business to make a $20,000, $30,000, or
$40,000 a year income with a home doggy daycare. Now that varies from
state to state because some states have laws that really limit the number of
dogs you can have in a home dog daycare. A lot of times it’s based on the size
of your home, the size of your facility, and the number of people that work for
you. However, you might be one of the lucky ones. Some states really don’t
have many regulations for doggy daycares. That’s a variable from state to
state. That’s easy to find out. Local government agencies can provide help
with determining everything that is required.
Using the strategies that we’re going to lay out in this course, we’ll show
you that it’s relatively easy to add another $10,000, $20,000, or maybe
$30,000 to that income passively by just tweaking your business. That will
hopefully get you to an income of over $50,000 a year in a home doggy
daycare and well over $100,000 a year with a bigger commercial doggy
daycare facility.
Sometimes it’s a lot more. You may have been to these facilities where
they have 20 to 50 dogs. They’re generating potentially hundreds of thousands
dollars a year. Most people that own a facility like that don’t have one; they’ve
got several of them. You can kind of do the math. That’s when it turns into
BIG business.
You kind of have to decide if you want to be in the business of dog
daycare or if you want to be in the dog daycare business. Let me explain.
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There are two different kinds. If you like dogs and you want to make a good
income, as much as maybe a right-out-of-school lawyer or maybe even a
second-year lawyer, you can make that money in a home doggy daycare
business. If you want to get into the actual commercial doggy daycare facility
management business, that’s a big business. It’s a real business and it’s going
to take more staff. It’s going to take more investment. It’s riskier, but the
rewards can be very high. If you really enjoy this business and you’re really
good at it, you may consider that. However, I always suggest that you start
with a home dog daycare first.
Those are the main reasons I would tell you that people want to be in
the doggy daycare center business. I’d say that you should to ask yourself a
number of questions before you get started.
ARE YOU READY?
I always tell people that they really need to think about things like their
health. Do they have a lot of energy? Are they in good health? Can they keep
up with the dogs? Physically, this can be a demanding business and you need
to know that you’re in good shape for that.
You’re going to have to have the ability to make a point, to talk to the
dog owners about things sometimes that might not be comfortable to talk
about. If you’re just incredibly shy, you’re going to have to overcome some of
that shyness.
You need to be a calm person. That’s one of the big things that I see as a
common denominator among people who have successful doggy daycare
businesses. They are extremely calm. They can take any situation in stride.
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When you’re dealing with dogs every day you just can’t get upset about hardly
anything. If you do, the dogs react to it and pretty soon you’ll just be in a
hailstorm of overreacting and all sorts of emotions bouncing all over the place.
This may sound cliché, but, dogs are really a reflection of the people that
are around them. They see how owners act to situations and tend to mimic
that. If you’re calm, they’re going to be calm. If you’re high-strung and wound
up, they’re going to be high-strung and wound up. It’s important that you
know you can remain calm.
You have to be steady-minded in the case of emergencies or anything
that’s related to really serious injuries that come up. If you’re in the doggy
daycare center business very long at all, you’re probably going to incur at least
some minor injuries to a dog or two. Accidents happen; things happen.
Hopefully you’ll never have to deal with a major emergency, but if you do, you
certainly have to have the ability to stay calm.
Playing with dogs—getting down on the floor, playing games, and
walking the dogs—is something you really need to enjoy. It’s not just saying,
“Yeah, I can do that.” You have to have the mindset that you enjoy doing that
sort of thing. You like seeing those bright puppy eyes. I’ll tell you that if you
take a deep breath and take your time, there is nothing more precious in the
world than that. Again, I think it’s a major reward of why someone would
want to be in the doggy daycare center business.
You need to ask yourself those questions before you get started.
Can you clean up after the dogs? Are you good at organizing? Are you
good at organizing in systems? Because as you go on through this course,
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you’re going to learn that systems are incredibly important. You’ve got to have
a really organized system for almost everything you do. If you don’t, with
several dogs around things get really chaotic. You’ll just hate your life in no
time. If you’re systemized, you’re going to do just fine.
I think those are the things I think you need to ask yourself before you
jump into the doggy daycare center business. It’s a wonderful business. The
demand is high. People really appreciate you. That, in and of itself, is worth
millions.
I’ve touched on the other previously, but I’ll reiterate. Stress and a plan
are the keys to this business for your own mental and physical well-being. You
need to be able to manage your stress level. If you don’t think that you can,
being around a lot of dogs is not a really good idea. Some people are better at
that than others. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means that maybe
you shouldn’t work with dogs every day.
I think that stress is directly tied to planning in this business. The
people that I know that are extremely successful in this business have a daily
plan. They have a routine. They know what they’re going to do at 7:00 in the
morning, 8:00 in the morning, 10:00 in the morning, noon, 12:30, 1:00, and
2:00; and the dogs know too. And that’s really important. Dogs thrive on
routine. You’ll be shocked. If you can get them on the plan that you don’t
deviate from, they’ll absolutely love it.
Scheduled meal times, scheduled drop-off times, proper pick-up times,
and documentation; we’re going to go through all those things in great detail
in this course. We’ll let you know exactly what you need to do there. I would
say that absolutely, before you ever take the first client on, have your plan
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refined. Have your forms in place, have your records in place, and really have
a structured business.
This is a business, whether you’re just watching a few dogs at home or
whether you’ve got a whole building full. You’re in the business of guarding
and caring for other people’s pets who they love. There probably is no more
serious business in the world than that, so you need to take it very seriously.
To avoid stress, you should plan almost every activity of your day out.
You’ll have a lot of fun, the dogs will have a lot of fun, and the stress really
isn’t that bad. In a lot of cases, it’s incredibly enjoyable.
Secondly, let’s talk about the impact on your family or as I like to call it,
the “what-about-me syndrome.”
There are going to be times when owners
don’t pick up their dogs on time and you’re going to miss dates with your
husband, wife, boy friend, or girlfriend. You aren’t always going to watch your
favorite TV show (start setting your TiVo Now) because something came up.
That’s going to happen. It’s a part of this business. That’s manageable and in
most cases avoidable. Occasionally, though, things are going to happen. So
you really need to sit down before you make the decision to move any farther
with this and have a family meeting to really lay out the expectations.
As I go through the whole course, I’m going to talk a lot about
expectations. If you can lay out the expectations to your family of what kind of
support that you’re going to need from them and what you expect from them,
then that’s going to make an enormous difference in your life. If they agree
with you, then you move forward. If they have concerns, you can address those
and then decide what the next best thing is to do.
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Be sure that you are conscious all the time that your family is going to
watch what you do and how you act. They’re going to probably at least want to
be treated equally. It’s a lot of giving by you. A good, supportive family is
worth its weight in gold, especially in this business. Just be aware of that.
Address it right up front. Tell them the expectations that you have for them.
Let them tell you the expectations they have for you and what they think they
can deal with and what they can’t deal with. This is a business that, unlike
other things, invades your home so to speak. It’s their home, too, so you really
need to have an understanding.
Third, let’s talk about the impact on your home (if starting a home
daycare) that people forget. Pet Proofing a house is a big deal. When you’re
going to start a home doggy daycare center business, you’re really going to
have to look at how to pet proof your house. Again, in great detail we will
discuss that further in the course. You need to do that with the help of your
family because if you go in and start making radical changes in the house
without discussing it with anybody else, they’re not going to be able to find
where things are, they’re not going to be able to get to certain things that they
need.
Obviously, things like chemicals have to be locked away and you have to
move things off the floors. A lot of things have to be done. Precautions have
to be made that aren’t typically made in your home on a day-to-day basis.
You’re going to have to make sure that everybody agrees with those. You make
changes that they can live with. More importantly, make sure that everybody
knows the changes. A lot of confusion goes on when you get ready to prepare
a house because people that are living there want to find the laundry
detergent, for example, and it’s not where it used to be any longer. It’s now
under lock and key and you don’t even know where or why.
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Again, if you help your family to know what’s going on, especially if you
can get them involved, that’s really important. You can’t be in the home doggie
daycare business by yourself. You make your family aware of what’s going on.
That’s one way of being successful in this business. If you can get your family
involved so that they’re willing to help you at least a little bit, it’s a really great
thing.
Just be aware that you are going to have to change your home a little
bit. Your family is going to have to be aware of everything that’s going on and
be okay with it. You just really need to have your plan settled. You probably
really won’t have a lot of problems. Those are the three readiness states.
Certain things for the home I’ll touch on just real briefly. It’s a really
great idea to have a fenced yard. Dogs like to play outdoors. You’ll find that
you’ll want to get the dogs out of your house from time to time to kind of
maintain it. You have to make sure that the zoning in your area allows you to
have a home doggy daycare center. A few areas won’t. You need to take care of
that. You need to have a fenced area for the dogs to run in so they can not get
out. You never want to have to explain to an owner that you lost their dog.
If you think the neighbors aren’t going to notice, your new business,
you’re wrong. They probably are going to notice pet owners coming in and out,
driving in and out, and dropping off dogs. The traffic itself is noticeable by
neighbors. Most of the time, there is an exception for home daycare
businesses in most neighborhoods and they can usually be used for doggy
daycares as well. Just be sure to check your local ordinances on that issue.
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Where it’s possible, tiled floors are a good idea. We’re going to talk
about gates and things that keep dogs off of upper levels. There are all sorts of
things and we’ll get into those in great detail. Just be sure that you know
you’re going to have to make a few changes. If you prepare for it up front, it’s
going to be so much easier than trying to go back and fix things after the fact,
after there’s already a problem.
So if you’re ready for all that, if you’ve made up your mind that this is
the business for you, then it’s time to move on.
Remember, the family factor plays a large role in this equation. It really
does, especially in the home doggy daycare business. There are all kinds of
people in this business. There are single moms in this business; a lot of them,
actually. It’s one of the few ways that a single mom can make a substantial
income without having a major burden of out side childcare.
Some of the best home doggy daycare centers I’ve ever seen have been
ones that have large families. There is a large family involvement and it just
makes for a wonderful environment for the dogs.
Hopefully everyone who has this course and is serious about doing this
will take this advice and have a sit-down with their family. It is a really good
idea. I started to touch on getting your home ready. I have got a lot to talk
about there. Before we go there, though, why don’t we talk about setting up
your business? I think that would be a really important step before you even
start spending money to modify or change your home at all.
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SETTING UP YOUR BUSINESS
When you begin to set up your business, there are a couple of points
that we’re going to hit on. The first thing most people ask is, “How much
money is this going to cost? What’s the working capital that’s needed to make
this business work?”
That’s one of the really “great news” things about the home doggy
daycare business. Unlike a lot of businesses that require tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars to get started, I’ve seen tons of home doggy daycare
centers start for less than $1,000. Sometimes it’s less than $500. It kind of
depends on what has to be done to your house to get it prepared.
You can start with just a couple of dogs. In some states, you might not
even be required to get a license until you have a certain amount of dogs.
Don’t take that as legal advice. Again, like we said at the beginning, every state
is different.
So before you do anything check with your local county clerk’s
office to determining what kind (if any) licenses or permits that you are
required to have.
You can usually earn your way up. If you’re really into this business, you
might do some pet sitting to earn the money to get started. There’s almost no
reason why someone can’t get the money to start a doggy daycare business.
For home, the average is probably $500 or $1,000 in working capital to really
get you started to open the door on your doggy daycare center.
The majority of that is going to be spent in little changes to your home.
A little bit will be spent in advertising, which is usually not much at all. The
way that I’ll teach you to advertise at low-cost or no-cost, so, that it really
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won’t be an issue.
That’s really the majority of what you’ll need in working
capital.
This is a cash-positive business. Absolutely speaking, you never take on
a client without advance payment. If you were to start tomorrow and got three
clients, you would have advance payment for those three clients for the first
week or two. That’s going to give you probably most of everything that you
need to get started.
Your worst-case scenario to get started is that you might have to work
for free for a week or two. It might take your first few weeks’ billings to go
back and do all the things that need to be done to the house and to make sure
that you’re ready to go.
I would not suggest that anybody go out, start a doggy daycare center
business, and just totally retrofit their home from day one. It just doesn’t
make a lot of sense. You’re going to be starting from a negative cash flow
position and let me tell you, that is a place you never want to be. I would say it
takes $500 to $1,000 to get you started unless you’re going into a major
facility. We’ll talk about that further on. Even then, it’s not that heavy of a
working-capital need that you’ll have.
Next we’ll talk about naming your business. A lot of people who start
daycare centers come up with nifty and funny names. Other times, they are
really plain like “Betty’s Doggy Daycare,” “Betty’s Home Doggy Daycare,”
“Miss Betty’s,” or something like that. I really suggest that when you’re
starting—it depends on where you mindset is. The thing is that once you start
a business, it’s kind of difficult to go back and change the image of the
business.
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I really suggest trying to start with a name that sounds national. You
really want a branded look to your business, even if it’s a home daycare. It’s a
good idea to have a branded look to your doggy daycare. If you decide at a
later time that you want to expand it or move it out to a commercial building,
you don’t have to change your name, your corporation, all your legal papers,
and all of that. You get to carry your reputation on with you.
I don’t know if there are trademarks to any of these. I think I saw one
not too long ago that was “Little Pupps.” Use something along that line that’s
brandable. A logo is a really good idea if you can afford it. Again, you can
probably get a logo done by one of the logo companies online for $300 or
$400. I think that business cards are absolutely important. It shows that you
are a business. If that logo is on your business card, it’s going to make you look
a lot more substantial.
People who are bringing their dogs to you are going to look at your
image whether you think they are or not. They’re deciding whether or not to
leave their dogs to your care. Although you could be the worst person in the
world with a nice logo, most of the time people see logos, business cards, nice
signage, ads with your logos—when all of that ties together it says confidence
to a lot of people.
I think it’s really important that you’re able to show that to everyone,
that you have a real business. The image of your business is really important.
Don’t skip that step if you can afford it. To get a logo, a sign, business cards,
and all of that is probably less than $500. I would really suggest that you go
out there and do it.
23
There are franchises out there that you can buy that will charge you
anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 to do that. I don’t necessarily suggest that
you do that. It’s okay if you can afford it and want a really structured business
model. Some of those things are $20,000 or more. That’s a personal choice. If
you have that much money, you might consider it. I would say that you can
look almost as good as a franchise for just a few hundred dollars or at least
under $1,000.
Next, let’s talk about your actual legal structure, whether you want to
incorporate or be a sole proprietor. Again, I can’t give you legal advice and I’m
not speaking as a lawyer or legal advisor. I’m just going to give you some
general information about incorporation and sole proprietorship.
In a real basic way, a sole proprietor is just you “doing business as,” or a
DBA. What that means to you is if you have a liability issue moving forward, if
someone were to get hurt or you have some other liability, then the liability is
personally, 100% squarely on you as a person. You have to deal with that
liability personally.
Most people in business that are experienced don’t operate sole
proprietorship businesses. When you’re first beginning, it costs a little money
to incorporate. It costs $200 or $300 usually to get a corporation filed. It
might be more or a little less. You may not have the money to incorporate. If
you operate as a sole proprietorship for a period of time, just know that you do
have a higher liability.
If you decide to incorporate, you’ll want to talk to a lawyer about which
incorporation is better for you. Most all incorporations have one thing in
common. That’s the fact that the corporation itself becomes an entity. It’s like
24
another person. You become a stockholder in the corporation. You may own
all the stock, but you’re a stockholder in the corporation. If there is liability at
that point, typically speaking the liability falls on the corporation and not on
you personally.
You may lose your investment in the corporation by being a
stockholder, but if you’ve got a good lawyer and there’s not malice on your
side, oftentimes the corporation will protect you against personally being
liable or personally being sued.
That’s something that you really want to take into consideration.
Liability can be a lot of things. It can be the injury or harm to somebody. It can
be being sued by a owner for some reason other than physical harm. You may
have had a contract dispute with an owner or with a customer and you may be
sued over that. People in business get sued, unfortunately. It’s a part of life. If
you’re a corporation, they sue your corporation. If you’re a sole proprietor,
they sue you.
One of the down sides to having a corporation is that if you get sued as a
corporation, you do have to get a lawyer in most states to represent the
corporation against the legal threat. If you’re a sole proprietorship, you can
represent yourself typically. Again, I’m not giving you legal advice and that
changes from state to state.
Those are more or less the pluses and minuses to incorporation vs. sole
proprietorship. I will tell you that most people I know who have been in this
business for any period of time and have any stable record are incorporated.
Most people—not everyone, but most people—do incorporate for the legal
protection that it provides for them.
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Lastly, since we’re talking about business setup—and this is the most
boring part of all this. I know you’re probably just bored to tears right now.
We’re getting close to being done with this section. Let’s talk about taxes. One
of the absolutely beautiful things about the home doggy daycare business is
that because it’s in your home, a portion of the cost of your home is going to
be deductible on your federal and state taxes, typically. Again, I’m not an
accountant or a tax lawyer so I can’t tell you exactly what amount those
deductions will be. Typically speaking, however, they are substantial.
Also things that you buy for the doggy daycare center, from purchasing
feeding bowls to cleaning supplies—and normally you have to buy cleaning
supplies to clean your house anyway—a lot of that stuff is going to be tax
deductible. So the good news is that a big portion of what you earn in the
doggy daycare center business you get to keep free of taxes. That’s really a neat
thing.
Now you’re going to need a decent accountant or CPA to help you figure
out exactly how to go about your deductions. Somebody is going to be able to
give you advice. Again, this is not somebody that you have to hire from the
first day but I would tell you this. You want to keep really great records from
the first day. If you’re waiting to make some money to go hire an accountant—
and usually they’re not that expensive to begin with—you’re going to definitely
want to keep super-clean records. Everything needs to be filed perfectly
because that’s going to cut down on your accounting bill.
If accountants have to go through shoeboxes of receipts and figure out
what’s for what because nothing’s categorized, then it’s going to be extremely
difficult. It’s going to be extremely difficult for you to function.
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There are general software programs out there like QuickBooks, that
can help you keep up with all your receipts, write your checks, and do all of
that. QuickBooks is a reasonably good program; it’s a couple of hundred
dollars. You can get it at just about any computer store, Sam’s Club, or Costco.
The only downside to QuickBooks is that it takes a little while to set it up.
You’re going to have to spend probably a day maybe, or more, setting up all
your categories, all your company information, all your business information
in there.
QuickBooks will do a pretty good job. It’s not particularly built for the
doggy daycare center business, but it is a good piece of general bookkeeping
software. Most accountants or bookkeepers will be able to import your
QuickBooks files and use them to reconcile your bank statements, to get your
taxes ready, and to find out what’s deductible and what’s not.
I would say keep your records well. There are some other programs out
there that I’ll put in the Resources Guide. They are accounting programs that
are specifically built for the daycare center business. These will typically
already be set up for all the daycare center accounts exactly where you need to
put
everything.
Setting
up
the
categories
and
getting
everything
compartmentalized and categorized is really the biggest, difficult part of
accounting software. If you can pick up one of these other programs that have
all that information already in it, it sure will save you a lot of time.
You’re going to want to keep up with every receipt of everything you buy
related to your home, even if it’s not for the doggy daycare. It may be that you
buy a can of Febreeze to spray on your bed upstairs. Well, that’s okay. But if
you use it downstairs on the dog’s furniture, then a portion of that was used in
the dog daycare and a portion of it is deductible. Your accountant will be able
to share that information with you and really be specific. We find that most
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people in this business have a great deal of tax deductions and are able to
really offset their income considerably.
I think one of the main things out of this category that I everybody else
got—was you really need to go check with your local state government to find
out exactly what you have to do. That seems like the easiest thing to do. I said
that the best place to do that is the county or city clerk’s office.
HOME PREPARATION
Let’s go into something that we started little earlier and I’m sure
everyone is anxious to get to it. Let’s look at preparing your home. Your
business is set up; you know exactly what’s going on; you’ve made the decision
to go into this business. What do you need to do—bare minimum or luxury—to
get your home ready for several dogs to be in it every day?
There’s quite a bit that needs to be done but when we finish with this
section, you’ll realize that it’s not quite as much as you might think. Most of
what you’re going to need to do to prepare your home is about just being
smart and learning a little bit. It’s not so much about spending a whole lot of
money, which is always good. People who are starting on a shoestring don’t
have a lot of money to spend.
If you want to open your Dog Day Care from your house, then there are
a few things you need to think about right away.
1.
Do you have an inside room large enough to hold 10-12 dogs
(depending on the size of your operation and any local laws)?
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2.
Do you have an outside area that the dogs can run and play in that
is at least 1,000 square feet and fenced?
3.
Do you have easy access from inside to the outside?
4.
Do you have safe locations both inside and outside for the dogs?
5.
Ability to separate dogs, either with gates or separate rooms both
inside and outside?
6.
No way for small or large dogs to escape?
7.
Non-carpeted room for your inside room (tile or linoleum are
typically best, carpet stains and absorbs smells and hardwood
floors scratch)?
8.
Shady spots outside to keep dogs cool in summer months or
warmer weather?
It is a good idea to make sure you answered “yes” to all of these
questions if you want to open your Dog Day Care in your home. Now, these
aren’t the only things you will need, but it’s a really good start.
If you want to open a commercial doggy daycare center then you will
need to purchase or lease a location. Again, we don’t recommend doing this
before you have first opened a home doggy daycare center. However, some of
you are going to do it anyway so here are a few things that you need to keep in
mind when picking a location.
1. Minimum 1,500 square feet on the inside
2. Large open area on the outside with a fence
3. Easy access to the outside from inside
4. Hard floors on the inside with a drained area
5. Fence to contain small and large dogs
6. Easy access for pet owners
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7. Highly visible area easily seen by people driving by
8. Ability to separate dogs on the inside and outside without cages
9. Shady spot to keep dogs cool on hot days
Again, these are not the only things you will need to open a commercial
doggy daycare center but you should never rent or purchase a space that does
not have these things. That’s pretty much all we are going to say about
commercial doggy daycares. Now back to the home doggy daycare needs.
Gates are necessary and extremely important in this business.
Obviously you will be using gates to barricade of the areas of your home that
you do not want the dogs to have access to. However, there are other reasons
to have plenty of gates. There will be times that you will need to separate dogs
from each other for one reason or another and if you don’t have kennels or
crates for the dogs gates are a great cheap alternative.
You will also need to pick up some feeding dishes and water bowls. The
best place to get things like this is the dollar store. Here’s a little tip, dogs are
like kids and the best way to avoid a confrontation or act of aggression
between dogs is to make sure that everyone’s bowl or ball or tug rope is
EXACTLY the same. In some cases the owners may bring special toys or
bowls or treats for the dog and you will have to decide if you are going to allow
that or not. We will talk more about that later.
A phone list for your home is incredibly important. It has the numbers
for the clients, vets, etc. Of course in the case of a serious injury, the most
important thing is to immediately dial a good vet or emergency vet clinic. You
don’t even have to reference your list. Everything that you need should be on
that emergency list and it should be placed directly next to the telephone so
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that you or even a substitute or staff member, in the case of a major problem,
can immediately get help.
The key is to stay extremely calm and the dogs will stay calm. If you
don’t make a big deal out of what’s going on, the dogs aren’t going to make a
big deal about what’s going on. You definitely want those things in place to get
your home prepared.
You’re also going to want to do one of the things that people forget
about a lot. You’re going to want to make sure you have a place for your clients
to pull in and pick up their dogs and leave safely. You should have a turnaround plan that you give the owners. Show them that you’d like them to come
in from this direction and leave in this direction. In the afternoon when
owners are coming to pick up dogs, if you’ve got 8, 9, 10, or more dogs whose
owners are coming in from all different directions and leaving from all
different directions, the odds for an accident happening are extremely high.
The odds for your neighbors getting really ticked off because they can’t get in
and out of their driveway are higher yet.
So parking is a big concern. Hopefully you can put your own vehicle in a
place where it’s out of the way, and give most of the right-of-way to the owners
so that they can get in and out okay. Be sure to talk to your clients about how
they drive in, the speed that they drive, the speed that they leave, being
courteous to your neighbors, not pulling into the neighbor’s driveway or
pulling in front of the neighbor’s driveway. You just don’t want that headache
in your life.
That’s probably the majority of what you’re going to have to do to
prepare your home and to get ready to start your daycare center business. It
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didn’t sound too bad, did it? Overall, there’s not a lot of cost involved. It’s
more thinking than it is cost.
SETTING RULES AND EXPECTATIONS
Setting rules and expectations not only with the dogs but with the dog
owners is vital.
These rules and expectations are probably one of the areas
that if you did this part of the presentation you are going to have a business
that’s manageable.
The difficulty in this business isn’t not making money or almost never
making money. In almost every market there is a higher demand for quality
dog daycare than there are doggy daycare providers.
The secret is being able to run the business manageably and keep your
sanity so that you can have a life and be able to do this. I guess that’s probably
one of the reasons there is a shortage of doggy daycare centers. So many
people approach this business without a plan and after a fairly short period of
time find themselves extremely frustrated and just bail out; they don’t
continue to stay in the business.
Unlike a lot of other businesses the investment to get into the business
is relatively low, so the resistance to jump out of the business is relatively low
as well. If you decide you’re going to get out of the home dog daycare business
someday, it’s not like you have a lot of assets you have to sell off or a big
closure or anything like that; it’s fairly simple.
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I would say that’s the biggest pitfall in the business. People get in the
business, find out it is very frustrating to them, and eventually just quit and
decide to go out in the world and do a job or do something else.
Time and time again, when I see that happen, I realize that the reason it
happens is 100% because of the lack of a plan of action including rules and
expectations. That is really one of the biggest pieces to your plan.
First, I want to talk about the rules and expectations of the owners
which is something that is usually forgotten until you’re in the middle of a
problem. You know, it is usually forgotten with inexperienced pet care
providers.
When you are first starting you don’t realize what you need to go
through with the owners and setting expectations. Owners will tend to abuse
you if you let them.
I always suggest that you put your owners through an application
process. If they’re not willing to sit down, fill out an application, and give you
quite a bit of information about them, then they’re probably not the owner you
want.
You are going to see that the amount of time and the amount of
difficulty the owner is willing to go through in the onset of your arrangement
is probably, but not always, equivalent to the level of interest and care they are
going to have of their dog inside your daycare center.
We’ll talk in a little bit about doing a phone interview with an owner
before you ever meet them and actually doing a live interview with the owner
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and the dog and having the owner fill out an application. I ask questions
about the interest they have in their dog and the time they spend and what
they do with them. I know that this may sound a little outrageous, but, this
process also builds credibility with your potential client.
We’ll talk about the application process as we move along, but if we
decide to work with an owner and the owner decides to work with us, the best
thing to do is sit down, lay out a rules sheet, and say, “These are the
expectations that I have of my owners. Before we ever engage in a contract,
before we decide we are going to do, these are the rules that I expect.”
These rules will include the earliest time that they can drop their dogs
off and the latest time they can pick them up. What happens if they’re late?
The rules also include late charges for late payments and late charges
for late pick-ups. You want to spell out all those things up front not to try to
beat the owner to death, but to let the owner know up front that if they don’t
perform to the contract, these things will happen. I will give you the Golden
Rule of this. If you ever let the owners slip on one of the contract terms, they
will begin slipping on all of them. It can be a whole lot more enjoyable and
you’ll find that there are owners out there who are willing to work with you
per your terms to make sure that their dogs have great care. Those are the
owners that you want.
I would say that for a home doggy daycare center, if you use the
marketing tools that I’ve set forth for you it’s fairly easy to sell out your entire
capacity for the center in a matter of just a few days. In a lot of cases, you can
sell out in a matter of hours if you’re willing to take the first five or ten
customers that come to you.
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The secret is not taking everything that walks through the door; not
taking every person who walks through the door. It’s like leasing a home. You
know, you can lease a house in ten minutes, but they don’t do that anymore.
If you have tried to rent a home lately, you know that they really put
your through quite a rigor and that’s because there are a lot more people that
want to rent the house, usually, than there are houses available. The landlord
has an upper hand and he can pick and choose his tenants. You have the
ability to do that as well.
Clear expectations on the front end are going to make your life squeaky
clean on the back end. Also, you definitely need to spell out the conditions in
a contract. A lot of doggy daycares don’t use contracts. I think it’s absolutely
foolish not to use a contract. Owners are willing to sign them and it’s a great
idea for you to have a contract with an owner where it can be executed with,
usually, a 30-day cancellation period by either party.
That way, if an owner is going to move or an owner is going to leave,
they have to give you some notice in advance that gives you a chance to fill
that slot.
If you don’t, you’re going to be surprised on Friday afternoon when an
owner comes in on Friday and tells you they won’t be back on Monday. Your
income just drops by 10% or 15% or 20% depending on the size of your dog
daycare center and you have to scramble to make that up. You might not ask
for 30 days; you may ask for seven or 14 days. It depends on your market and
that’s really discretionary. Those are some of the basic rules for owners.
35
EMPLOYEE ISSUES
If you choose to have employees, I always tell people that the very best
employees you can have are your family members. You can start with family
first. Most home dog daycares we see are when two best friends or two ladies
start a doggy daycare or sisters or nieces or nephews.
If you can work with
family, it’s really the very best. You know them; you know what they’re about;
and it is so much better.
However, when you are working with family
members, clear boundaries have to be set prior to starting. Everyone has to
understand their individual responsibilities and consequences have to be set
upfront.
But there are going to be times in certain situations where you will need
to hire employees. There are two different kinds of employees that I would
suggest people look at most heavily. If you’re looking for somebody to help
you full-time, probably the very best person to look at is someone who has
children who can hardly afford to work outside the home.
Your neighbor across the street whom you’ve known for a very long time
may want to go get a part-time job, but if she has a couple of dogs, she doesn’t
have a great deal of skills, and she can only earn $8 or $9 an hour, let’s say,
she can hardly afford to pay the child care for two children to be able to go to
work.
By the time she works maybe 30 hours a week at $8 an hour, she is
making a little less than $200. Her child care for two kids is probably going to
be $150, so by the time she’s finished, she has worked all week for $50. A lot
of time ladies just will choose not to work and stay home and take care of the
home and that is fully understandable. However, if she could come to work
for you for even less money and bring her kids with her to work and help to
manage the dogs, it’s actually a net benefit for her. That’s one area you can
36
definitely look; people that you know who have children who want to get out
and make a little part-time money.
I suggest you not hitch your wagon to one star there, if you can. If you
can have two or three people who want to work on a call-in basis or one day a
week, it is a lot easier. They’re not going to experience burnout like full-time
employees are going to experience and, really, you’re going to have a lot more
flexibility in schedule.
If you got sick, which you don’t even think about, if you become ill and
have a cold or the flu this week, what are you going to do? If you only have one
person who works for you it is going to be difficult for them, but if you have
three or four people who work on a part-time basis, you can probably pull
together and organize an effort to get things covered.
The second thing I would suggest is students. Students make really good
employees for the most part, especially for afternoons. I find that most of the
dog daycare center people that I know kind of get up in the morning rearing to
go. You’re usually up pretty early in the morning in this business, so by the
afternoon you’re sort of going through an afternoon lull, you’re tired, you have
things you’ve been trying to do all day and you couldn’t quite get to.
To have some student employees come in the afternoon who are willing
to work for a little over minimum wage that at least likes dogs, it’s really nice
to have them around. They only work a couple hours a day at peak times,
perhaps as just dog walkers. You really don’t have to pay them very much
money at all. I suggest you run ads in the student newspapers. Almost every
high school and junior college has a student newspaper that they publish. You
can run an ad in those newspapers for very little like $5 or $10 for an ad, and
you will usually be overrun with people who are applying for the jobs. When I
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get to additional income in a minute, I will explain how that can help you, too,
to make more income in your business.
There is a classified ad Web site called www.CraigsList.com. A lot of
people know about it; some people don’t. It’s called Craig’s List and almost
every city in America has a Craig’s List page of any size and there are always
people looking for pet-sitting jobs, posting pet-sitting jobs and dog daycare
center jobs. Craig’s List is free to post an ad for employees and you can spell
out exactly on Craig’s List what you want because you have a thousand words
or so to spell out exactly what you want. I would explain it in great detail
exactly what you’re looking for whether it is student or full-time or whatever.
But Craig’s List is a good source.
Just be sure that you prescreen people from Craig’s List before you
actually bring them out to interview. Really, really put them through a series
of questions and ask them things that lets you know more about their
personality and what their true motives are before you have them come out
and see. Typically, you are going to get such a volume from Craig’s List of
people that you could waste a lot of time talking with people who really just
don’t fit what you’re looking for. Typically speaking, they are looking for a job
and they really don’t care how much money it pays, so to speak, they just
really want to work with dogs. They are usually really good-hearted people.
You need to take hiring an employee extremely seriously. Err on the
side of safety. If anything comes up during the process that you think is
abnormal, unexplainable, or that throws you off, throws up a red flag, or
makes you think, “I don’t know about that,” pass on it. That’s the big rule.
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Lastly, I’d suggest you put all of your employees on a trial period.
Usually a 90-day trial period is reasonable. Depending on your state laws, you
may be able to pay them on a contractor basis for 90 days, but if you have to
put them on salary, that’s okay. The point is you need to sit down with a set of
rules and expectations written line item what you expect them to do and how
you expect them to do it. You need to spell out that they are on a 90-day
probationary period and that any time in that period you can terminate their
employment without cause, just that it didn’t work out. They need to agree
with that before they ever start the job.
If you explain to them that sometimes things don’t work out, sometimes
the dogs are too much for people, and they’re going to be understanding of it.
But you just need to spell it out clearly in the very beginning to avoid the
problems. It’s just like almost everything else in this business. If you spell out
the expectations clearly in the very beginning, you probably will not have any
problem. I’d say a 90-day trial period is really good, and you’re going to know
within three months. You’re probably going to know within three days if
somebody is going to work out long term.
If you have to terminate an employee, it’s important that you try to stay
on a very professional basis and handle any interaction with employees that
you disagree with outside of the earshot of the dogs or the owners. You need to
do this on weekends or after hours. You never want to get involved in an
employee altercation around the children or around the owners. It’s just bad
for business overall. While it is true that the regulations for small businesses
are not as stringent regarding employee termination, I have always stayed on
the side of caution when dealing with disciplinary actions against one. Have a
stated policy in place. For instance, post rules and consequences regarding
attendance, professional manners, attitude, and pet care guidelines. Use a
39
stated disciplinary escalation for the simple reason that you need to protect
yourself and your small business from wrongful termination law suits. State
and restate your rules and have new employees sign it upon commencement
of employment.
ADVERTISING AND MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS
We will begin with a question. What’s the easiest way or what’s the
starting point to go get some clients now that you’re ready and start bringing
in some income?
Well, the thing is, I’m a student and a fan of marketing. I
enjoy it. I know quite a lot about it. This business is so different than 99% of
other businesses in that like we talked about earlier, marketing here is used
for a different reason.
Most businesses you need marketing to get clients. And it’s true in this
business, you do need some marketing to get clients, and I’m going to go over
the basics with you. But the big deal is in the home daycare business you only
have so many slots to fill, so where marketing is going to be your real friend is
by creating way more people who want to be on your waiting list or way more
people who want to work with you than you have slots to fill so that you have
the ability to pick and choose your clientele. That’s really the big deal in this
business if you can choose the pet owners that you want to work with. You’re
going to meet some owners from hell. They’re out there, believe me. There are
some owners that you're going to meet.
There’s a comedian that I really like named Chris Rock. He’s talking
about men and women in relationships. He says that when you meet
somebody for the first time, you don’t meet that person; you meet that
person’s representative. They’re going to tell you all the good things about
them, all the good things about their family, and all the good things about
40
their dogs. And if you take all that at face value, a lot of times you are going to
be sadly disappointed.
They’re going to be putting on their very best face for you right then. So
the idea is to put on as much of a marketing effort as you can afford to do, get
as many client options as you can get in front of you, and begin to whittle
down to the ones that you are really most interested in taking.
We’ll talk first about some methods for advertising. There are really
only three methods that I would suggest for advertising your dog daycare
center, especially if it’s a home based center. I’ll give you a pre-warning on a
couple more that you really should totally avoid. Radio and television
advertising, no matter how it’s presented to you, in the dog daycare center
business is really typically a bad idea.
You’re going to have the home dog daycare center business, the majority
of your clients are going to live within five miles of your home or where you’re
doing your business. So they’re going to be within five miles of your home. If
you’re advertising on radio stations or television stations that broadcast for a
50 mile radius or a 100 mile radius, 80% of what you’re spending on
advertising and marketing is going to be totally wasted.
So I would say that rule number one is avoiding those at all costs. And
let me tell you, there are sales representatives who are going to call on you and
things like that. They can be very friendly, very attractive, very convincing,
and tell you all the things that they can do for you, but in truth, this is really a
geographically limited proposition.
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Now, what are some things that do work? Print advertising works
extremely well, but I would suggest to you that if you’re going to put an ad in
the newspaper, or let’s say for instance the city I’m in has a population of
about a million people, and to advertise in a local newspaper here is quite
expensive and I really wouldn’t suggest it to anybody for the same reasons you
wouldn’t want to advertise in radio or television. You’re advertising in a
medium that’s distributed broadly across a million people all over a large city
that covers probably 100 square miles. I don’t really know the exact amount,
but quite a lot.
However, each little area of town for the most part has a small suburban
newspaper that only covers a few zip codes. Advertising is usually extremely
inexpensive and I think that’s a great place to run ads, and there are going to
be some ad examples in your resource guide that really get good results.
When you’re running a print ad, when you’re running a flyer, when
you’re running any kind of ad, you want to advertise putting your company’s
image out there, like we talked about before, your logo, as much information
as you can for the customer and show them the benefits of using you.
So let me tell you for a minute about the things that you need to have in
an ad, the elements of an ad. The headline is incredibly important. You want
to put a headline in the ad that tells the people what you have to offer,
sometimes what it’s going to cost, what the benefits are going to be for them,
and why they should trust you.
And those are the things that are the big elements of an ad. If you can
get that all in the headline, that’s great. Usually you can't. But if you can get
that within the ad it’s really important. If you say, “Hey, I’m in a dog daycare
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center; It’s going to be great for your dogs because of this reason, this reason,
this reason. And you can trust me because of this reason, this reason, and this
reason. And my fees are reasonable – this amount, this amount.”
You’ve pretty much covered everything that you need to cover in that
ad. Most ads spend way too much time putting people’s photographs in the ad,
putting wasted image space in the ad. People want to see your logo, but they
want to see it small at the bottom of the ad. It shouldn’t be the main focus of
the ad. The main focus of the ad should be the message. If it’s ‘loving dog
daycare’ then that should be your headline: Loving Dog Daycare. If that’s what
you’re offering, if you’re offering a loving dog daycare, that would be a great
headline.
Start the bullet list underneath that why it’s a loving dog daycare and
why they should believe you, why they should trust you, your experience, your
credentials, etcetera, and approximately what you want to charge for rates.
And actually, this is one of the big things, be sure to tell them at the end of the
ad that there’s limited space available.
Limitations bring people to action. Diamonds are a great example.
People don’t buy diamonds. A diamond is a rock, no different than any other
rock. It’s not worth a thousand or two thousand or ten thousand dollars a little
speck. It’s only worth that because of its scarcity. There’s not enough of it to go
around.
So when you’re talking about your ad, “A rare opening is available,”
“Won’t last long,” things like that. Let them know right away that they need to
call right now to find out if they can be considered. I would let them know in
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the ad as well, at the end, to call now to apply. I’d let them know there’s an
application process and I’m just not taking everybody that walks in the door.
So when you’re designing your ads, those are going to be the things that
are going to be the elements of your ad. And there will be a couple of examples
in the resource guide to show you that.
Also, back to Craigslist, online advertising has become extremely
popular, and Craigslist is a fabulous place to advertise your dog daycare center
for free. You can go to Craigslist, create an ad; there’s a section under pets or
pet care. So you’ll be able to place the ad right there and you have a lot more
characters to explain to the customer exactly what you have to offer them.
Another thing that you might consider is running Google AdWords
which is a little more difficult and you have to have a small Web site for your
business in order to do that. If you have a Web site or you have somebody that
can build you a simple Web site, you can actually go on and buy terms like
Dog Daycare Center in Powcampsee, Iowa.
And people in Powcampsee, Iowa who are looking for a daycare center,
your ad may come up. Depending on how big Powcampsee is, that might be
good or that might not be good. If you have a daycare center in Queens in New
York and you're running New York Dog Daycare Center, then that’s not a very
good idea because a ton of the traffic that you get and a ton of the advertising
that you’re doing, again, will be wasted.
You just really have to think about, “Is this super-focused advertising?”
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The online advertising, Craigslist is probably by far the most effective
source of online advertising for the childcare business. I would say second
would be Google AdWords, but you have to have your own Web site for that.
And then third, the next form of advertising that I would talk about would be
flyers and hand-distributed print materials.
The ways that I like the very best for advertising a dog daycare center
are with posters or printing card ads which can be the same ad that you had
laid out for the newspaper. They should be about the size of a 3” x 5” index
card. That seems to work the best. Or a flyer sheet with tear-off numbers at
the bottom, and you’ll have an example of both.
You can post those at local grocery stores and business establishments
near you. The key is ‘near you.’ Don’t go way outside your geographical area to
post these things. People are not going to drive that far. People like dog
daycare centers that are convenient to them. Those are going to do extremely
well for you. I’d say that probably 80% of all dog daycare centers that start,
start their whole business from some flyers in grocery stores. It is extremely
common. It’s probably one of the most effective ways.
Another way is something called bandit signs or lawn signs. In some
cities you can't use these, in some cities you can under certain restrictions.
There’s a Web site called MrYardSigns.com. You can get these signs you see on
the street corners or whatever that are posted at busy intersections near your
home. These signs will ring your phone off the hook if you can legally use
them. A lot of cities will allow you to put them up on the weekends, like on a
Friday night, if you’re willing to pull them up by Sunday night. You’d be
shocked at how much that will make your telephone ring.
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The key to yard signs is: don’t put a whole lot of information on the
signs because people have to stop and read those in just a matter of a couple of
seconds and they really don’t have the ability to read a lot of text. You want
your basic message and a phone number, a way to contact you. I would say
that if you go to four or five major intersections around your home and place
those, you’re going to get three or four or five phone calls a day from them. It’s
amazing. The standard on those signs, if you’re on a busy intersection, is about
one call per day per sign, which is an amazing amount if you can get a grip on
that. So if you have ten signs out at a really busy intersection, you’re probably
going to get ten calls per day from those signs. So that will show you that it
doesn’t take very long at all to get you a big roster to fill your center.
This next one is one that we’ve found extremely effective over the years,
are door hangers. I’ll put a resource in where you can get these printed pretty
inexpensively. Door hangers are the little things that hang on doorknobs, the
ads that hang on doorknobs, and you can put your entire ad on this door
hanger. It has a little hole at the top; it hangs over the doorknobs all over the
neighborhood.
This is really great to use if you can blanket an area. Get the kids out on
the bikes or whatever, and just blanket an area about one mile from your
home, a one mile circle around your home, it is entirely possible that you can
get your entire population for your dog daycare center from people who live
within one mile of you.
If you do, it’s really ideal because then they’re your neighbors, they can
walk over and pick up their dogs in the afternoon, it is extremely convenient
for them, extremely convenient for you. It really works out well and door
hangers don’t cost that much, 20 or 30 cents a piece to print. You print 500,
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600 of them and it’s not much money. For less than $100 you can distribute a
ton of them. If you are looking for a great source for door hangers, try
GraphixEnterprises. There direct number is 901-791-2674. If you’re in an
area where people have a lot of dogs in your neighborhood, the call rate is
really high. It’s usually within four or five percent call response rate if you
write a good ad.
One of the simplest ways to advertise your doggy day care is by the use
of magnetic vehicle signs. These have been around for a while and have been
proven very effective. They are not as expensive as you would think and
generate a very consistent call volume. I would determine that 10% of my
business comes from this form of advertising. The cost of the magnetic signs
is typically paid for with your first client. The best place I have found to get
these is at:
www.mrmagneticsigns.com
So those are some of the simplest ways that I’ve told you that actually
make the phone ring. That’s step number one to this process is making the
phone ring. If you’ll use the examples that are set forth for you, I really don’t
think you’ll have any problem in doing that.
A lot of times in home doggy daycare, you’re only looking to fill maybe
ten spaces, so, you need to have a consistent marketing effort to make sure
that you maintain a waiting list, because you want to have a waiting list of
people in case somebody’s situation changes, people move. You say, “Okay,
my business is all set now. I don’t have to think about that any more.” It’s just
not right. You need to have a fairly consistent effort so that you can add people
to the waiting list. And there’s nothing wrong with leaving a card up or an ad
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up somewhere when you’re fully sold out, because you can tell people, “I’m
fully sold out right now. Things may change. I can take your name and your
number, your information and let you know as soon as I can when I have an
opening.”
It’s going to make you feel very secure. I read an article by a lady the
other day that said she averaged about 50 people. She only had ten dogs in her
center and she averaged 50 people on her waiting list. Well, I’d say she’d feel
pretty secure in her business.
AFTER THE PHONE RINGS
So those are the ways you make the phone ring. Now, when the phone
begins to ring, you’re going to want a series of questions that are available to
you right away. And those will be in your resource guide of what you need to
ask these people to kind of start to make a determination of whether you want
to meet them in person or not.
And that’s the first step of this process. And the fact that it feels like it’s
an interview process is okay. I think that you need to let people know – I
would tell people right upfront. I would say, “We have a lot of people here that
have called and I only have a limited amount of slots. I’m hoping to find some
owners that I can really work with, that I “click” with. So I’d like to ask you a
few questions.” That is another example of inducing scarcity and setting
expectations of the potential client.
I would tell them right upfront about your fees and what they entail. I’d
talk about your theory on disciplinary policies and things like that. I’d tell
them that there’s an application. I would tell them about the contract and the
agreement. I’d talk about the structure of daily activities. And that’s all that I
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would talk about on the phone. I’d ask them more about their dog. Actually
before I did any of that, I’d ask them more about their pet, what they are
looking for in a childcare center, what kind of work they do, what kind of
hours they have. Find out more about them. Let the potential client talk first
and you can give them some of your information at the end.
Then you can decide if you think it would be a good idea to meet for a
personal meeting. You’re going to want to ask them how old their dog is,
breed, temperament, size or weight, what times of the day they need someone
to care for them, if their dog is house trained. That’s a really big question
because you might be surprised at the dogs that are older aren’t potty trained
yet.
Ask how they heard about you, too. That’s going to tell you a whole lot
about how your advertising is working, how your marketing is working. You
need to explain to them that you're licensed, how many dogs you are caring for
at a time, what kind of dogs that you typically care for. You just want to share
a lot of information with them on the phone so that if they have a problem
with anything you’re doing, you don’t waste a lot of time and they don’t waste
a lot of time by coming out to see you.
Now, if you all feel like everything’s good, I would set up an interview,
usually in the afternoon as the dogs are leaving or just after the dogs leave,
where you can meet and maybe spend 15 or 20 minutes with the owners and
the dog and you can make a decision whether you think that you would work
well or not. There’s no reason why you have to make an absolute decision at
that interview. You can tell the owners, if you have questions, “I need to check
to make sure that I can provide the proper care for your dog and that this will
all work out, if you can give me a day or so, I’ll call you back.” Things like that
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are really going to make a big difference for you. And then you can make a
choice. Are you always going to be absolutely right? Well, of course not. You're
going to make mistakes sometimes and that’s okay.
But marketing in this business is pretty easy. Just don’t panic. When
you first run your ads and you get three or four phone calls, don’t panic and
take the first three or four people that walk through the door because you
really might be doing yourself a disservice.
What’s next? Day one, first ten dogs start. What do you do now?
Well, there are a couple of things that you should have done already before the
dogs get there. And you’re probably not going to take on ten dogs at once. If
you did, you might be pulling out your hair unless you’ve done this in the past.
You’re going to take on dogs a few at a time. Really it is better with dogs to
introduce dogs one, two at a time until you get to your capacity, that way
everybody gets to know one another, there’s cohesiveness among the dogs,
and it just really works out the best.
KEEPING RECORDS
But one thing that you’re going to do right away before you even start
taking the dogs in is set a budget. The one thing about this business that’s
interesting is, unlike a lot of other businesses, you’re going to have a finite
amount of money that you’re working with a month.
You’re going to know that if you have ten dogs at $600 a month, you’re
working with $6,000 a month as your core budget. So you have to take out of
that what you feel is a fair amount for you to make as a profit for running the
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business and doing all the work. And you have to figure out how you’re going
to spend the rest. You really have to keep an eye on that budget.
The one thing that I see happen, we were talking about earlier, why do
people jump out of this business, well one is they get frustrated because they
don’t have systems and rules in place. The second is they don’t follow their
budgets. You can sit down and on paper make a really good budget. If you
think about your budget, you can figure out how to make things work, I always
say add another ten percent to your budget because you’re probably going to
be off by at least ten percent.
But the idea is if your budget plus ten percent is reasonable for you to
still make a profit, then you’re okay. Now here’s where things get really
screwy. It’s really easy to get off that budget and at the end of the month you
sit down and you haven’t made any money. You were going to spend $1,000
in supplies and instead you spent $2,000. You were going to buy one piece of
furniture a month, but instead you bought all five. You’re advertising costs
were more than you thought they were going to be. Or you let some owners
slide on paying you the money you deserve. And if you let them slide once,
they’re going to slide again. Anyway, from the income perspective or from the
spending perspective, if you don’t follow that budget to the absolutely degree,
you’re going to have a problem.
So you need to stick to the budget and treat that thing like it’s a life or
death document. You need to make sure that you follow that budget. We’ll
have some suggested budgets for you. But they’re going to vary. It’s very
difficult for us to provide a budget for you based on your situation because
your home and your rates vary and are going to be different. But I would say
the number one thing is to set a budget.
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Let’s say that we’ve done that and the dogs start to come in. You’re
going to need a dog’s record sheet on every dog that you have. This is the form
basically where you’re going to get down all the information that you ever
think you’re going to need when it comes time to contact owners, or you have
an emergency situation, or need to know something about the dog. Those are
really important record sheets.
Most of the time you can make those on the front or the back of a large
index card and get an index card box to hold them. I think that’s the very best.
Those are going to include things like who’s allowed to pick up the dog and
who’s not. It’s going to have all the basic emergency contact information that
you need for the dog.
Second, vaccination records – let’s talk about those for just a moment.
You can make a personal choice whether you’re going to require vaccination
records or not.
Let’s say you’re in a situation where some of the dogs are
vaccinated and some are not, you are under a fiduciary responsibility to let the
owners know that the dogs that aren’t vaccinated are in that center. In other
words, if you bring your dog to my daycare center for instance, and I have
dogs that aren’t vaccinated against disease and I don’t tell you, then I’m not
being responsible as a pet care provider. If you’re not okay with that, I
understand, but I can't take your dog. I don’t want to take your dog without
you knowing this. And then the owners can make a decision of what they want
to do.
I never accept dogs that have not been vaccinated and I really
recommend that you follow the same policy.
You need transportation permission forms signed. I would have one of
these signed overall, but especially for emergency transportation in case of
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medical emergency. You’re going to need a medical care waiver signed. You’ll
get an example of that too, where basically it’s giving you as the childcare
provider the ability to seek medical attention for their dog should their dog be
injured and you can’t get a hold of the owner right away.
The transportation permission form just says that you have the
permission to transport the dog, and you should take those forms with you
any time you transport the dog on any sort of a trip, the emergency medical
forms and the transportation forms should be physically in the vehicle with
you or on your person when you take children out of the childcare center. So
those are things you want to get done right away.
You’re going to have attendance reports that shows when the dogs were
there and when they weren’t.
You’re going to need a medication report signed by the owner. If they
want you to administer medication during the day to a dog, you need to know
what those medications are, exactly how much are supposed to be
administered and the owner is supposed to sign for that along with they can
choose to allow you to give the dog these medications. That needs to be
documented as well.
You are going to want an accident report file. This is where I would use
carbonless forms. I would use a carbonless form to do this, and a lot of these
forms it’s good to use a carbonless form. We have those printed at
CarbonlessForms.com. It’s a good idea to get most of your forms done in twopart or three-part carbonless forms so you can give one copy to the owner and
save one copy, the original, for your file.
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Any time there is an accident or injury, you need to fill out a report to
give to the owners at the end of the day, even if you feel like it’s a fairly minor
injury, because you just don’t want it to come back later as being something
that it wasn’t. I’ve heard all sorts of stories. The point is you need to have an
accident report and document anything that happens, a nip from another dog,
whatever. Just give it to the owners at the end of the day. No further medical
attention was needed, but we just want to let you know.
These are also things you’re going to show good owners how attentive
you are, and how well you’re running a business, and that really makes an
enormous amount of difference. You will also want to have a veterinarian
release form in your new customer packet. We have included one that you can
make your own in the forms kit that came with this course.
Lastly, you’re going to want to maintain up-to-date payment records. If
you don’t want to use a computer system to do that, the index card system
again works really well. You can date and show the check number and the
amount paid every time somebody pays something. And don’t let them leave,
don’t let them just drop a check off and take off – write them a receipt so that
you have that receipt to go back and record it at a later time.
So those are some of the basic records that you are going to want to
keep. There are going to be more things that come up, but those are the big
ones. If you’re doing those, you’re doing more than about 90% of all dog
daycare centers. We’re not trying to teach you how to be an average daycare
center. We’re trying to teach you how to be an extraordinary dog daycare
center and stay in this business for a long time and make a great living at it.
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It sounds like it’s a lot, but to be honest, I’d say the total record keeping
in this business is ten or fifteen minutes a day, so it’s not nearly as much as it
sounds like. It sounds like a lot, but once you’re doing it, it’s ten or fifteen
minutes a day.
WHAT TO CHARGE
I want to go back up to before the dog actually gets there. We talked a
lot about in the phone interviews with the owners, after you get the phone to
ring; I want to talk about your fees. We really didn’t go over what to charge so
I’d kind of like to talk about for a bit. I know it’s obviously not going to be the
same. Remember, this is an opinion, and not a thing that you absolutely have
to follow. Because doggy daycare is a localized business, I would certainly look
at first surveying the area. When I say surveying the area I mean what are
people charging?
A lot of people make a mistake when they’re about to start a good
quality dog daycare center. They make a huge mistake in that they decide to
pick their prices based on what they see in the classified ads for Betty’s
Daycare. That’s just not a good idea. The point is, when you’re selling yourself
as a home doggy daycare, you need to sell yourself as better than one of the
corporate daycares.
You can show more personal attention, the dogs are in a home versus a
commercial building, the person to dog ration is much higher, everything is
much better in a home dog daycare for the most part than what it is in these
facility type daycare centers. Our angle has always been in teaching people is
tell them all the benefits of being in a home doggy daycare center versus a
commercial daycare center or kennel. And sell it as an up-sell. Just tell people
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that home doggy daycare centers are maybe a little bit more expensive than
the commercial pet care centers, but I’ll tell you this is why, and show them
the benefits. Show your programs that you give every day.
There’s a joke in a lot of businesses, and it’s essentially true in this one,
the customers that pay you the least amount of money will be the biggest pain
in the butt. And that’s absolutely true. Those people who take on the super
cheap clients with super cheap rates usually burn out of the business within a
matter of months because the owners just abuse them. They’re the worst in
the world to deal with. I’d try your very best to stay away from, if you’re in the
private daycare business, negotiating down cheap rates. It’s just a bad idea.
I would try to find within say a ten mile radius every daycare center
within a ten mile radius. Call them as a customer and survey their rates. That
would be the first thing that I would do and make a chart. Then I would come
up with an average of what the commercial daycare centers in your area are
charging.
So basically, if you surveyed ten, you add up all ten. You add up
the total of all ten and divide by ten, you’re going to have an average. I think
that the best rate to target for at that point is 110% of that average rate.
In other words, let’s say for instance you surveyed every one, and
everyone’s charging $400 a month on average. I would say that some are
probably going to be charging $500 or $600, some are going to be charging
$300 and $400, but the average is $500. If you position yourself at about
$550 a month, then I think that you’re going to be able to be competitive in
the marketplace, not take the lowest paying customers that you really don’t
want, but not be on the ridiculous high side of the market either. Remember,
that your services are considered premium. So many dog daycare facilities
(home-based and commercial) simply don’t charge enough for their services.
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I believe that it is due to people not wanting to upset people. “Premium”
pricing is for premium service. It is inferred. One of the biggest rules of
business is that you NEVER leave money on the table. To be completely
honest, it happens all the time.
Those would be my suggestions to you to try to figure out what to charge. Now
you’ve also got to look at your own expenses and what you need to make and
determine if that will work for you. But the thing that I tell people is you can't
set prices in reverse. In other words, you can’t say, “Well, it’s going to cost this
much. I’ll sell it for this much.” That’s another one of the biggest mistakes
that you see in marketing. Most of the time what you’re doing is you’re selling
yourself short. A lot of people will find a product not in the daycare business
and say, “I can make this product for $10 so I think I’ll sell it for $20.”
Well, oftentimes people would have paid $40 or $50 or $60 for it if
you’d just ask. So I never try to set pricing based on the cost plus model. I try
to set pricing based on what the market is currently used to and willing to pay.
That’s how I come up with that pricing model.
Do your survey – everybody within a ten mile radius of you – find out
what they’re charging and then I would do the average and mark it up by
110%. So that everybody understands 110% - that just means 100% of the
average plus another 10%. So if it is $600, it would be $660.
If you want to have one week off a month that you’re paid, which is not
uncommon for people, a lot of people in the childcare business go, “How could
I ask for that?” If you just tell people upfront, I’m taking this week, or
sometimes I’ve seen people take as many as two weeks. I’m taking this period
of time off for vacation, you need to prepare for that, but I’m also getting paid
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for those weeks, and that’s part of my deal. I have a 52-week contract, but a
week or two weeks out of that, I’m not going to be here. So you just have to
know that and that’s my vacation time and I expect my owners to share in the
cost of that.
You need to lay out your payment rules clear and upfront. You tell
people when payments are due, how much they’ll be, and the penalties for not
paying them on time, because you’re going to have to set penalties on people
for late payments. You have to totally stick by those penalties or they will
absolutely wear you out. The good news is late payments and late pickup fees
can be a considerable percentage of your income. A lot of times people are lax
about getting things done on time, and you’re going to find out that you’ll pick
up probably 15% to 20% of your income a month in late fees and late pick-up
fees, depending on the clientele of your owners.
You hate charging owners for that, but if you do, you have to. If you
clearly spell it out upfront, there’s no way on earth that it’s your fault, so you
just need to make sure that you get clear on that right upfront and let them
know. Bottom line is though this is your business and your time and you have
to be paid for.
But I would just get those things made clearly upfront and
figure out a payment method. I’ve been suggesting for a long while now that
people work with, and have a resource for this, automated automatic billing.
This is a lot easier than it used to be. If the owner’s have a debit card on a
checking account, or a credit card, it’s real easy.
There’s a company that we’ve used in the past, that’s about $29 a
month. They’ll set you up with an online service that will automatically bill
your customers for you, deposit the money directly in your checking account
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every month automatically. Let me tell you, that is the best money that you
will ever spend in this business.
You can set the customer file up in there. It has automatically on a
certain date, hit their credit card or hit their debit card for the amount of your
fee. It can do it every week. It can do it every month depending on how your
billing cycle works. I like weekly billings versus monthly billings and I’ll tell
you why. If an dog owner stops paying you in a weekly billing, you’re going to
know about it in one week. If an owner stops paying you in a monthly billing,
you might not know about it for a full month and then you’ve lost a month of
income and you’re behind.
For owners who chose monthly billing I always ask for 30 days in
advance – they need to pay 30 days in advance. If they want weekly billing,
they need to pay two weeks in advance. So you’ve got a little bit of a buffer in
there.
Automated billing is really just awesome. You go in, enter their
information and their credit card, they’ll be billed right then, and it will go in
your checking account in a day or so. Then every week, let’s say it’s on Fridays,
everybody bills on Fridays, and boom, you go in and hit the thing on Friday.
You look in your checking account and their money’s already been deposited.
It’s already there. There’s a record of it all.
It’s easy for them and it’s easy for you. I would say that the default rate
on automatic billing is probably a fourth of what it is if they have to write you
a check or pay you cash every week. So automated billing is the wave of the
future in this business. I tell people that they really need to get on that right
away. Most automated billing sources are internet based. However, it’s just
like a credit card swiping machine. It’s very, very secure and you can set it up
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for next to nothing. You can also use PayPal for this as well. PayPal is a little
more cumbersome, but, it will get the job done for you in the beginning.
That pretty much covers what to charge I think. The amount of money
you make is determined by obviously the amount that you charge, plus the
expenses that you have. So watch your expenses, make sure that you stick to
your budget, and charge a fair rate. Never be the bottom feeder in the market.
I’m going to tell you again. I keep beating this rule into your head, but I’m
going to tell you, when you start charging low rates, you’ll get low rate clients.
When you get low rate clients, your life is going to be tough.
DAILY OPERATIONS
Although there is no right way to do the daily scheduling for your Dog
Day Care, you need to have a couple of goals in mind. The first goal is to keep
the dogs happy and this is done by keeping them active and loving and playing
with them. The second goal is to wear them out during the day so they will be
ready to take a nap in the afternoon giving you and your employees a break to
work on other things. We have put together a sample schedule for you to use,
but feel free to change it as long as you keep the two goals in mind. This
schedule is assuming your day care is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. which is
fairly standard hours for a day care. You might have to adjust the schedule if
dogs need to be dropped off or picked up earlier because it takes longer for
their owners to get to work.
7:00 – 8:30 Dog Drop Off
This is the time when most dogs are dropped off and is pretty much a free
time for dogs to roam either inside or outside while they wait for other dogs to
arrive. This period is pretty unstructured.
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8:30 – 11:30 Outside Playing
Dogs are allowed to play outside doing the many activities available including
catching balls, sliding on the slides, playing with other dogs and playing in the
pools.
11:30 – 12:30 Dog Walk
The dogs go on a walk around your location looking at the different animals
and sites that are out there. Some dogs may need a leash for this walk while
others will be fine without one. Make sure you watch the dogs closely during
this walk so they don’t get away or become over heated.
12:30 – 1:00 Lunch Time
The dogs eat their lunch, snacks or treats, whichever they prefer.
1:00 – 2:30 Nap Time
Dogs sleep in their crates, on beds or in segregated areas if your location is set
up this way.
2:30 – 4:30 Outside Playing
Dogs are allowed to play outside again with the different activities available.
You can also work on special skills with each dog during this time such as
catching, sitting, etc.
4:30 – 6:00 Pick Up Time
This time is usually done inside and the dogs can play with a variety of
different toys available to them before they are picked up. This period is also
used as an unwinding time for the dogs.
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This schedule can be used on all five days your dog day care is open.
Most dogs are creatures of habit and they will be happier if their daily
schedule remains the same. The goal of the entire day is to keep them
occupied and toys will help do that along with personal attention.
CONFLICTS
If you are in this business long enough, even if you follow my interview
process, inevitably you will have to deal with a least one difficult dog. Dogs are
like children in most cases and need to be disciplined. There are a couple of
ways to deal with dogs that break the rules or that fight or bite other dogs or
employees at the doggy daycare.
1) Kennel or cage the dog. Sometimes what works best is having a
“bad dog” kennel both inside and out where the dogs go when
they do something they shouldn’t do. Dogs are pretty smart and
putting them in a kennel while the other dogs are playing will
send them a message.
2) Only reward the “good dogs”. Another way to handle dogs that
don’t act right is to withhold their treats. It is best to give treats at
a scheduled time like when the dogs return from playing outside.
The dog will understand when they don’t receive a treat that they
didn’t act properly and this hopefully will change their behavior
next time.
Now, there will be some cases where you will try everything possible to
discipline a dog and their bad behavior will continue. Sometimes it’s just not
going to work. If you have been communicating with the owners about the
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dog’s behavior then they will not be shocked if you have to tell them that you
can not longer allow their dog to come to the daycare. This is never a fun
conversation but unfortunately sometimes it is a necessary one.
There won’t be many dogs in your care that you will have that much
trouble with. Most dogs are happy and playful as long as they are getting the
love and affection they need. Having constant human interaction is important
to keeping a dog behaving properly and how you run your day care will ensure
you don’t have problems. If you just throw the dogs outside and don’t have
yourself or one of your workers interacting and playing with them, then you
will have many more behavioral problems. As long as you take the time and
show the dogs love, the dogs will be happy and their behavior will make your
job easier.
ADDITIONAL INCOME
I have a lot of really interesting ways that maximize what I like to refer
to as a lifetime value of a client or the monthly value of a client, really take that
average ticket up to maximize your time and your effort. This is one of my
favorite parts of this business. And this is the part that’s ignored by 90% of
your competitors. If you can learn to grasp this part, a lot of people go into the
business, even after I start telling them about this, “Yeah, I’m going to get
around to doing that really soon, or one of these days.”
It is just detrimental to you if you don’t start from the very beginning,
because it will make the difference in your life. Here’s the principle that you
should know. There are really only three ways to increase your income.
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Number one, get more customers. We’ve taught you how to do that, and in
the doggy daycare center business, you’re typically limited in the amount of
customers you can have, unless you’re in a commercial doggy daycare center
or kennel where you have a real large volume. But typically speaking, there’s a
limited amount of customers you can have. However, it’s important that you
get the customers that you can.
The second way is to get your client to spend money with you more often.
The third way is to get them to spend more money with you per transaction.
We are going to concentrate on number one and number two for a little bit.
Over a period of time I’ve learned from other dog daycare center operator’s
ways to earn additional income that in most cases can double the net income,
or maybe even more than double the net income from your daycare center.
This is a really big deal.
I’ll start by telling you a couple of stories. Starbucks Coffee - I know
everybody’s familiar with Starbucks. Starbucks Coffee right now announced in
a big shareholders meeting not too long ago that their master plan is not to be
necessarily in the coffee business. They have ten million people a day that
walk into their stores worldwide to buy a cup of coffee. Their objective is to
begin to deliver other products and services to those people who come in to
buy a cup of coffee, because they realize the value of the foot traffic that they
have. They sell so many CDs, they’ve started a movie company, they’re selling
their own DVDs, and they’re putting in a station right now where you’re going
to be able to go in with your iPod or your iPhone and plug it into a computer
in a Starbucks and download music instantaneously from a big hard drive that
has every song in the world on it. Basically, you’re going to be able to go in
and have a filling station for music. The point is what does music have to do
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with coffee? Well, absolutely nothing. The point is that they have those people
walking in the door.
And in the dog daycare center business, there’s an advantage that’s
ignored by 99% of all dog daycare center providers and that’s the fact that
those owners walk in your door twice a day, every day. They probably have
more interaction with you than they have with any other business that they
deal with. I’m going to give you a couple of ways that I’ve seen in the past,
actually I have seven or eight of them listed here, that dog daycare centers
have really boosted their income passively by doing some things for their
owners.
Weekend and Overnight Dog Boarding
This is a really good one. It depends on how much time you have and
what you’re doing on your weekends and how your life is, but owners nights
out are a great way to earn additional money. Weekend or Nighttime boarding
service or “Sleepovers”, like weekend or Saturday night sleepovers or Friday
night sleepovers. Typically speaking, in suburban areas, I see centers charging
$40 for this per night. They may only do one or two a month, but you can
charge $40 and have the dogs come and spend the night at your house and it
gives the owners the ability to go out and have a life, go out on a date night
and not have to worry about picking up the dogs until the next morning.
You can also tell your clients that these are not necessarily just dogs that
are in your daycare center on a daily basis. Tell your clients that their friends
or whatever can bring drop-in dogs. Let me tell you that on the average street
in any neighborhood there are people with pets that constantly struggle with
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what to do with their pets while they are going out of town on business,
vacation, etc. This can be a very difficult thing to deal with.
If your friends want to go out to of town or overnight somewhere, they
want to go wherever, there may be two or three couples that bring their dogs
there to be watched and for $40 for one, and probably a discount for two, if
you’ve got ten dogs in for the night, you can get a pizza and usually have a high
school student come and spend the night with you and do most of the care for
the dogs.
Don’t charge too little for that by the way. Owners are much more
willing to pay $40 for you to watch the dogs all night so that they don’t have to
be on a time clock of when to get back home and all that, than they are to pay
$20 for you to watch them for this many hours or this many hours.
This is
easy to sell in just general conversations with the owners.
Family Dinners To-Go
This is one of the most successful and one of the inventive ways to make
extra money in your daycare center. However it takes a little bit of work. So
you may have to have somebody else to help you, but it’s a great idea. It’s
providing family meals for the people who you care for their pets. You can put
out a sign in the morning with the sign-up sheet when the owners come in. It
sounds so simple but you’ve probably never seen anybody do it. You just say
tonight we’re going to have spaghetti and meatballs for four. Let’s say the
meals are made for four people plus you can charge an additional fee for each
additional one.
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But let’s say we’re going to have spaghetti and meatballs for four tonight
and it’s $19.95. If you’d like to order, you just need to sign up on the sign-in
sheet now. When they come to pick up their pet in the afternoon, you’ll hand
them a ready to eat foil container with spaghetti and meatballs, bread, all the
stuff that they need to have a full meal. Typically speaking these meals can be
made for about 40% food costs, so you’re making about a 60% profit on every
one you sell, so that’s $12 profit. If half your people a night, or three or four
people a night pick that up, it’s $30, $40, $50 extra dollars a day in profit. At
the end of the month, it’s several thousand dollars.
It’s incredible to see the participation in these programs, especially in
the more affluent areas if it’s done extremely well. You’ve got two working
clients, they’re just busting their hump all day, and the last thing they want to
think about is going home and cooking or preparing a dinner. If they can pick
up a nutritious dinner, all sit at the table in the evening, and sit down to
dinner together, you’re really providing a great service for the family, and
you’re really providing a great service for your clientele, and you’re picking
yourself up a couple extra thousand dollars a month in the process.
Let me tell you how much of an impact that is. Let’s say for instance that
you’re running a dog daycare center that you have ten dogs at $600 a month.
So your total billing is $6,000. By the time you’re done with all your expenses
and all your pay and all the other stuff, you can earn a $3,000 a month income
from that particular operation. Please note that his is just a total example.
If that’s true, then the additional $2,000 that you would make from
preparing meals for the family in the evening is almost a doubling of your net
income. The reason that is, the expenses have already been taken out of it.
There are no real expenses there. You already have the facility. You already
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have the kitchen, you already have whatever. You have all the other parts of
this together.
All in the world you need to do is prepare the meals or have someone
come in. It’s a great use for high school students. High school students can
come in and prepare the meals in two hours in the evening so you’re only out
$7 or $8, $10, maybe $15 on the high side for a high school student to come in
and prepare the meals for the owners in the afternoon and have them all warm
and piping hot, ready to go when the owners come to pick up.
If you don’t think that service will work, especially in a suburban
market, you’re crazy. Dog owners absolutely love it. And they’ll never leave
you if for any other reason that – you feed their family two or three nights a
week. They absolutely love that service and we’ve seen that operate with a
great deal of success.
A couple of pitfalls – just don’t try to rake the owners on the amount
that you charge them. Charge them a fair amount. We found that the secret is
about $20. If you can deliver a meal to them for $20 for a family of four, they
figure they can’t do it for that, plus they save the time, the trouble and the
hassle. It’s just really an awesome thing to do. Please note that I would not add
drinks to that. I’d let them provide their own drinks. And you have to be
careful with stuff like salads and perishable foods. But there are a lot of meal
plans, lasagna, pasta meals are really good because pasta is very inexpensive
but nutritious. Lasagnas, spaghetti and meatballs are great, things like
Salisbury steaks, chicken pot pies, anything that’s a casserole type dish that
can be prepared hot is also really good. So that one thing along can almost
double the net income of a dog daycare center.
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Those are really great. However, they are very hands on. Now I want to
tell you about some passive income opportunities.
Pet Photography
One is photographs. There are photographers in your area that do school and
daycare center photography and they will come to your doggy daycare as well.
The typical arrangement for this is they’re going to come in and have a picture
day.
I’ve seen a lot of centers now doing this twice a year where they come in
and have photo day. They’re going to take pictures of the dogs. The fee is going
to be very inexpensive, maybe eight or nine dollars. Typically speaking, you
don’t get very much of that fee. But what they’re going to do is send out a
package to your owners and ask them to buy photos. Believe it or not, ten
owners could buy $300, $700, maybe more in photos from these
photographers. Typically speaking, that’s a 50/50 split of those fees with the
daycare center and the photographer.
I started to take that to the next level as well. This is only a once a year
kind of thing though. A new and creative thing that is being done is pet
portraits. However, to get a portrait made for your pets can be $300-$700.
On top of that, getting your do to sit still long enough for one is a nightmare.
There is a new technology out there that is just awesome. You can have a
photo (digital or picture format) and have it turned into a portrait. These
services are very inexpensive in comparison to traditional portrait makers. I
have tried this and it does work. My clients have jumped on this. A portrait of
a pet or a family portrait is a very cool thing for families to invest in. I have
gotten a very positive response to this type of service. You will too.
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Dry Cleaning/Laundry Drop-Off
One of the more clever things that I’ve seen in the last little bit, has been
a dry cleaning and laundry drop off. This is a really interesting concept.
Because owners have to make so many stops in a day and it’s difficult, a lot of
owners, especially professionals and in the suburban areas have dry cleaning
and laundry that need to be dropped off. We’ve seen doggy daycare centers
now, home dog daycare centers that allow the owners to drop off their dry
cleaning and laundry with you when they drop off their dogs in the morning.
And you have a contract with a local dry cleaner or laundry provider that
comes and picks that stuff up from you two or three times a week, does it and
returns it back.
So all you’re doing basically is being a drop off center. Typically
speaking, you’ll make a 30% to 40% commission on the dry cleaning spent by
your client. It’s pretty remarkable. Some people spend $50, $60, as much as
$100 a week in dry cleaning. So you could pick up another $20 or $30 a week
in some of your more professional clients in just brokering their dry cleaning.
It just sounds absolutely insane, but that’s a lot of money. If you’ve got
two or three owners that do that, its $100, $200 a week, it ends up being
another $1,000 a month. Remember, just because you are a pet care service,
you don’t have to stay in just one industry. You are providing a necessary
service to the clients and they will love you for it.
You might be kind of seeing the theme now, that this is providing a
service here that makes you $300 or $400 a month, a service here that makes
you $1,500 a month, providing a service here that makes you $1,000 a month.
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When you’re all done and you add all these up, it turns out to be in a lot of
cases more than the core income that you’re making from operating the
daycare center itself. And I’ve never heard anybody, on any instructional
materials for the pet care business ever talk about any of this.
Pet Training Classes
The next thing I’ll touch on is training classes. There are trainers in
most cities that can go to doggy daycare centers to provide training classes. If
you offer those classes to your owners for your dogs that are in your daycare
center, and they sign up for them, they’re pretty pricey. A lot of times they are
as much as $100 a month or sometimes more. And if there are two or three,
they can be considerable more than that. These providers typically split those
fees with you as the pet care provider. So if you can encourage that, it’s good
for the dogs.
Another thing is that these instructors are going to come in and take the
dogs out in the backyard or take them in a separate room, and teach their
classes. This is a period of time when you have less of a load on you to watch
the dogs and you can do some of the side work that you need to do during your
day. So it works out for everybody. It’s great for the dogs to learn training. It’s
good for the owners. They get to see the involvement of the dogs. There are
benefits that go on to help the dogs tremendously. Additionally, you are going
to have freed up time and again more money.
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Drop-Ins
We talked about drop-ins already for night time. A lot of dog daycare
centers will take drop-in dogs. So you can take a larger number of drop-ins
than you can regular dogs. You can only have, let’s say for instance, your state
regulation says you can only have ten regular fulltime dogs, they may allow
you to have four or five additional drop-in dogs as long as they’re not there for
any more than a period of four hours or so. Check your local regulations on
that because it does vary from state to state.
But drop-ins are a really good thing for fulltime owners that aren’t
working but need to go to the gym, or need to go to the grocery store, or need
to go wherever. They are willing to pay a premium per hour rate. I would say
that whatever your per hour rate is for your regular dogs, you should charge
drop-in dogs twice that rate and owners are almost always more than willing
to pay it. So if you can charge that rate. Let them know that they can’t be there
over four hours, and tell them that you need at least 24 hours notice to make
sure that you have the ability to take the drop-in. They cost you almost
nothing to make that additional income and again, you can make $1,000 or
more per week in extra money just from taking drop-ins.
Dog Grooming Services
Dog Grooming at your facility, bathing, etc.
This is a “no-brainer”
service that you can offer on a monthly, quarterly, or even yearly basis. Again,
it’s a partnership between a local dog groomer that is mobile. There are
several in most areas that would die for a single location to groom 5-10 dogs in
a day. They would easily split any commissions with you for the opportunity
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to have that convenience. You can advertise it in your newsletter or just post
the day and time the groomer will be there for you.
Vet Taxi
Further, you can take the dogs to the vet for a service fee. It’s all about selling
the convenience of your services. If you follow the forms in the new client
packet, you will already have the Vet Release Form and Medical Profile for the
dog. You can easily provide this service to your clients. And again, you are
offering a very beneficial service. Your clients will appreciate this service and
your willingness to help them out by doing this for them when they need it. I
would advise your client’s that they need to let you know about the need well
in advance for purposes of scheduling.
Everything adds up and you will honestly be amazed that you can
double your income if you handle it correctly. Remember, the hardest thing
about business is getting the client. Once you have the client as a paying
customer, you have trust and credibility for other services to be offered as long
as they are related to the primary service you offer. Don’t leave money on the
table here. This is very important.
And those are the initial ways that I can tell you I’ve seen successfully used.
But the sky is kind of the limit. I mean, you’ve got people that you are going to
become very close with. Your mindset should be what do they have to do in a
day that is a real pain in the butt for them? What do they have to do everyday
that they don’t like having to do or that they don’t really have the time to do?
If you can find a way to passively either provide that service or to broker
that service for them, then you’re doing them a great service, they’re never
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going to leave, and you’re going to make additional money from them. They’re
going to give the money to somebody anyway, so they might as well give it to
you.
And that’s the way that I see it. If you can put these eight things into
place that I’ve told you about, I would venture to say that you would easily
make more money in the additional income area than in the net profit from
the dog daycare portion of your business. So that shows you how somebody
can go from making $36,000 a year to $70,000 a year in a home dog daycare
business. It’s all about creativity and ingenuity. The sky is the limit when you
can come up with simple ways to maximize the level of service that you offer a
client. Another benefit to these services is that you are going to get you name
out due to the response of your clients.
I want to point out, not just about income, but basically, if you do all
this stuff, who’s going to leave? You’re talking about some incredible client
retention techniques here because if a owner goes to another service or
something like that, then they have to go back out and find where they’re
going to get all this stuff.
SERIOUS ISSUES
In dealing with families and pets, typically speaking, family is a private
thing. I mean, your interaction with your pets inside the home is private
between you and your dog. When a person comes in like a pet care provider,
they’re instantly placed in a very odd position of being a pseudo-family
member. You’re going to find in dealing with these dogs, and a lot of times
dealing with the owners, you become almost a part of the family, especially
with the dog.
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Unfortunately there are going to be cases that may arise over time
where you’re going to find that those relationships in the home are not
healthy. Now, I want to warn you. There is a big difference between a healthy
and happy animal and a mistreated one. Unfortunately, I have seen abuse
first hand and it was difficult for me to address it.
But, I did.
To say
someone’s not a really good owner is one thing. To say someone is an abusive
owner is another. And that’s what I want to touch on is animal abuse and
neglect. This is the ugly beast of this business. You are probably going to be
the first person in some cases, if you do this long enough with enough people,
to actually notice, or it come to light that a dog may be being abused or
neglected. And it’s a very difficult situation to deal with.
You just really need to have your facts in place because you can begin to
tell yourself stories about things without fact. If you don’t have absolute fact
and proof, you can begin to tell yourself stories that may not always be the way
things are. And once you’ve brought the government into a situation, it’s very
difficult to get them out of that situation. Those owners are going to hate you
until the day you die, whether they’re guilty or not, for bringing them to light.
If they really haven’t done anything wrong, they’re really going to hate you and
you could be facing a serious liability problem.
That being said, like I said, this is not a clear cut simple thing that you
have to do. I would really consult with my family, I’d consult with other people
who have been around the dog before I made any decisions so that I knew that
I wasn’t just making this decision 100% based on my own feeling.
You can also make the decision of whether or not you talk to the owners
instead of talking to the authorities, or you talk to the owners before you talk
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to the authorities. That is again a judgment call. If you know these owners
typically overreact or act violently, you’re talking to the owners about an act of
violence to the dog, it could result in the dog experiencing more violence as
retaliation for telling you.
It’s a very difficult situation to deal with. I wish I could tell you exactly
what to do in those situations, but there’s really no way because the situation
varies so much. Just know that it is extremely serious and when you begin
down the road of government involvement in situations like that, you’re really
accusing the owner of an extremely serious offense. It’s not anything to be
taken lightly, but in certain situations it absolutely has to be done and you
have a responsibility to do it.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I hope I didn’t make things seem too difficult. This is not a difficult business.
It is fairly straightforward. You certainly don’t have to have a college
education to do this. It’s all right if you do, but there are a lot of continuing
education courses that you can take. There are a lot of things you can study.
We’ll give you those resources to get to become a better and better
provider. A lot of the states now are providing training materials and even
training videos in some cases for people who want to be in this business. And I
think it’s a great idea.
This is a fabulous business to be in. It is an incredibly rewarding business. And
those are the things that have an intangible value, so keep that in mind. I wish
you the best of luck in your business. I know that you’ll be very successful. And
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just check in with us from time to time and send us some mail and let us know
what you thought.
If you have questions, there’ll be e-mail addresses and mailing
addresses in your resource guide where you can send in those questions and
we’ll try our very best to answer those as quickly as possible, and we may even
include them on newer versions of the course.
Thank you for taking this course and good luck in your business.
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Resources Guide
Beneficial Links
Business Links:
Royal Pet Supplies
http://www.royalpetsupplies.com/
Carbonless Forms
http://www.carbonlessforms.com
Mr. Yard Signs
http://www.mryardsigns.com
1Shoppingcart
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/
PayPal for transactions on credit cards without having merchant
accounts
https://www.paypal.com/
Online Pet Supplies
- DrsFosterSmith.com
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/
Parent Clubs and Parent Club Health Foundations
•
American Belgian Tervuren Club
•
American Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club
•
American Manchester Terrier Club
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•
American Rottweiler Club
•
American Spaniel Club Foundation
•
American Water Spaniel Partners
•
Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America
•
Borzoi Club of America
•
Clumber Spaniel Club of America
•
Dachshund Club of America
•
Dalmatian Club of America Foundation
•
English Cocker Spaniel Club of America
•
English Setter Club of America
•
Flat-Coated Retriever Society of America
•
German Pinscher Club of America
•
German Shepherd Dog Charitable Foundation
•
Golden Retriever Club of America
•
Harrier Club of America
•
Havanese Club of America
•
Irish Setter Club of America, Inc.
•
Irish Wolfhound Club of America
•
Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation
•
Norwegian Elkhound Association of America
•
Japanese Chin Club of America
•
Papillon Club of America
•
Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen Club of America
•
Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen Club Health & Rescue Foundation
•
Portuguese Water Dog Club of America
•
Rottweiler Health Foundation
•
Saluki Club of America
•
Samoyed Club of America
•
Scottish Deerhound Club of America
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•
Schipperke Club of America Foundation
•
American Sealyham Terrier Club
•
Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier Club of America
•
Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier Club of America Endowment Fund
•
Staffordshire Terrier Club of America
•
Swedish Vallhund Club of America
•
Tibetan Spaniel Club of America
•
West Highland White Terrier Club of America
•
Westie Foundation of America
•
Yorkshire Terrier Club of America
Other Dog Clubs
•
Berks County Kennel Club
•
Burlington County Kennel Club
•
Central Ohio Kennel Club
•
Delaware Ohio Kennel Club
•
Durham Kennel Club
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Greenville Kennel Club
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Metropolitan Dog Club
Disease Specific Links
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Asbestos and Mesothelioma in Pets
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Bloat - Purdue Veterinary School
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Canine Epilepsy Network - University of Missouri
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canine inherited diseases from Cambridge
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Colorado State University Animal Cancer Center
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Lecture on Canine Genomics
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Minimally Invasive Surgery
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Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis
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Osteology - webmaster@vetnet.ucdavis.edu
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Transitional Cell Carcinoma Resources
e-mail: sydney@biochem.wustl.edu
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Vaccinations
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Veterinary Cancer Society
General Links
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American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists
e-mail: aerrane@Okway.okstate.edu
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Australian Veterinary Association
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Browse the Genome by Linkage
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Canadian Association of Veterinary Ophthalmology
e-mail: eyevet@netrover.org
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Canine Eye Registration Foundation
e-mail: webmaster@working-retriever.com
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Common Poisons Guide
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Courage Unlimited
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Dogpro.com (IACP)
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Dog Training and Behavior
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DVM News Magazine
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Orthopedic Foundation for Animals
e-mail: ofa@offa.org
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Federal Emergency Management Agency: How to Care for Animals in
an Emergency eipa@fema.gov
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HealthGene: Molecular Diagnostic and Research Center
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The Senior Dogs Project
e-mail: srdogs@srdogs.com
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USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory
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USDA Traveling by air with your pet
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Veterinary Genetics Laboratory
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International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants
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International Society for Animal Genetics (ISAG)
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Leonberger-Hunde.org
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AKC Companion Animal Recovery (CAR)
AKC-CAR is dedicated to providing 24-hour recovery services for
microchipped & tattooed pets. Email found@akc.org
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Guide Star
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International Kennel Club of Chicago
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Charity Navigator
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Purina Parent Club Partnership Program
purinappcp@purina.com
1.800.778.3375 (9 AM to 4 PM Central)
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International Sequencing Consortium (ISC)
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National Human Genome Research Institute(NHGRI)
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Request for Samples Dog Genome Project
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NIH Human Clinical Trials Listing
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American College of Veterinary Behaviorists
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The Chi Institute of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine
Veterinary Professional Organizations
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American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine
Melvin W. Balk, Executive Director
96 Chester Street
Chester, NH 03036-4305
Ph: 603-887-2467
Fax: 603-887-0096
Email: mwbaclam@gsinet.net
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American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine
Ms. June Pooley, Executive Director
7175 W. Jefferson Avenue, Suite 2125
Lakewood, CO 80235-2320
Email: acvim@aol.com
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American College of Veterinary Microbiologists
Dr. Leon N.D. Potgieter, Secretary-Treasurer
College of Veterinary Medicine
P.O. Box 1071
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37901
Email: potgieter@utk.edu
Website: http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/acvm
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American College of Veterinary Nutrition
Dr. Craig D. Thatcher, Secretary-Treasurer
Large Animal Clinical Sciences
Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0440
Email: idascani@vt.edu
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American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists
Dr. Mary Belle Glaze, Secretary-Treasurer
Veterinary Clinical Sciences
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Email: mglaze3937@aol.com
Website: http://www.acvo.com
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American College of Veterinary Pathologists
Susan Whitehouse, Executive Director
ACVP Executive Offices
83
875 Kings Highway, Suite 200
Woodbury, NJ 08096-3172
Email: headquarters@acvp.smarthub.com
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American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine
Dr. Stanley O. Hewins, Executive Vice President
3126 Morning Creek
San Antonio, TX 78247
Email: acvpml@flash.net
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American College of Veterinary Radiology
Dr. M. Bernstein, Executive Director
P.O. Box 87Glencoe, IL 60022
Website: http://www.acvr.ucdavis.edu
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American College of Veterinary Surgeons
Alan J. Lipowitz, DVM, Executive Secretary
Ann T. Loew, EdM, Executive Director
4401 East West Highway, Suite 205
Bethesda, MD 20814-4523
Email: acvs@aol.com
Website: http://www.acvs.org
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American Veterinary Dental College
Dr. Frank Verstraete, Secretary
Department of Surgical & Radiological Sciences
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of California
Davis, CA 95616-8745
Email: fjverstraete@ucdavis.edu
Website: http://members.aol.com/AMVETDENT
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International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management
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