We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alyssa Boyd . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alyssa below.
Alyssa , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?
DogTime started as a team of two. We personally did all of our marketing and promoting. We would hang flyers in local businesses and apartments around the neighborhood, hand out business cards, post on social media, wear the DogTime logo on clothing in the area, attend many local events and volunteer at local shelters. It was a lot of hard work, but it paid off. We wanted to make sure we were advertising the company with our face for DogTime.
Once an established consistent clientele was set, it was time to bring additional walkers on board. Being that DogTime prides itself as a small, local & personal business, it was very important to not only find the most trustworthy walkers, but someone who’s personality shines and has a true love for animals. We focused on hiring someone who is local, familiar with the neighborhood, willing to work in all weather conditions, has a true passion for animals & is comfortable with many different pet behaviors. Bringing the right person onto the team is very important, as pets are family and we strive to make everyone feel happy and secure with us coming into their home and caring for their fur babies.
The first walker DogTime hired already checked most of the boxes. She was someone we knew from the neighborhood, lived locally and grew up with animals and had other pets of her own. She started shadowing a day of walks, meeting the dogs, learning the routes and routines as well as understanding how to manage time and interact with clients. Her confidence with dogs, as well as her personality made her a perfect fit. That started the expectations and model to follow for the rest of the employees hired over the years.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve always known that an office job was not the right fit for me. In 2011 I adopted my first puppy and started to volunteer at our local shelter, BARCS. From then on, I knew I wanted to work with animals. I took the risk and left my office job to start building DogTime. It was worth the risk, as the company grew and the more I worked with BARCS, everything started to come together. It provided me the time to start fostering animals and I learned so much about working with many different animals and behaviors. This gave me the tools to have confidence and experience I needed to offer more then just a potty walk in the middle of the work day, but to really know how to connect and with every dog I worked with.
There are multiple dog walking companies in the area, DogTime stands out in many ways. DogTime stays a small and local company. I believe it is very important to treat every client’s pet and home as if it was my own.
Not only is it important to have a trusting relationship, but to keep communication and consistency a priority. After every walk or pet visit, we send a personal message about our visit to the client. Each report with have our start to end time, a personal and detailed message of our visit, We use an app that walkers and clients have access to keep all personal and pet information up to date.
It is very important to me for DogTime to feel like family and not just a service. This keeps every relationship personal and we make sure to be here for the good times and the hard times. I am very grateful for everyone who trusts DogTime with their animals and very proud of our team who cares for them.
Have you ever had to pivot?
As for many, COVID was a huge turning point and struggle. As everything shut down and everyone was working from home, we lost the need for the majority of daily dog walks. Time went on and everyone stayed home longer than expected. From there I had a big decision to make, Do I close down for good ? Or accept the loss and stay open. I choose to stay open. I wanted DogTime to still be here when things would get back to normal. This created many hardships financially and with employment. Without there being enough revenue coming in, every team member of DogTime had to seek additional employment. I am very thankful for such a loyal team and family we have built, that we had a few clients stay on with us to keep us from shutting down.
As things slowly started to get back to normal, we still faced many obstacles. With all of the DogTime staff committed to multiple jobs, our availability window became smaller. It was a very slow process of gaining clients back, not only are many households continuing to work from home, but a new fear of anyone coming into the home. Eventually this became less of an issue, but still has a big impact on DogTime as a company. We hope that with continued hard work , DogTime can get back to where we were before COVID.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
As DogTime was growing, we started to make a name for ourselves. With all the personal marketing and promoting, people were able to have a face to the DogTime name, not just a local dog walking ad. We would attend every community event, host socials for people and their dogs to meet, host local fundraisers for BARCS, continue to volunteer, leave our info at local vets. In no time, word of mouth got around and referrals started to come in. Keeping our priority of making sure to have a relationship with each client really helped build our reputation. Then social media became a new way to get noticed. It was a great place for people to reach out if they were new to the area or bringing home a new pet. I was able to quickly answer directly and offer our services. I created an account specifically for DogTime, then we got many recommendations by being tagged on social media. This has been a great service to us by being tagged multiple times on one request. It provided reassurance of a trustworthy company to anyone that was new to the area or first time pet owners. We are so grateful to clients and the community for all the support and trust with us to keep DogTime grow and continue have a good reputation.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.baltimoredogtime.com
- Instagram: bmoredogtime
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaltimoreDogTime/
- Linkedin: DogTime LLC
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dog-time-baltimore
Image Credits
Anny Djahova