We recently connected with Anne-Marie Kaden and have shared our conversation below.

Anne-Marie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

I am a bookkeeper who exclusively serves the pet care industry, such as pet sitters, dog walkers, dog trainers and groomers. In the past this has been an industry of self-starters, part-timers and hobbyists. But as the pet I dusted has exploded in the last 10-15 years, so have these business owners had to adapt, expand and scale. As these businesses grow, there has become a huge need for delegating bookkeeping work or even financial education. I hope to bridge that knowledge and skill gap through my work at Tiny Paws Bookkeeping.

Anne-Marie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been a professional pet sitter and business owner since 2017. I owned and operated The Pet Professionals just outside of Raleigh, NC for five years. In 2022, my husband and I decided to relocate our family to Colorado. We sold The Pet Professionals during that move. Once we were settled in our new home, I decided to start Tiny Paws Pet Sitting and Tiny Paws Bookkeeping side by side. It was my hope to continue pet sitting on a smaller scale than previous and do bookkeeping as a side project with somewhat better hours than pet sitting would provide. I knew I wanted to serve my community of pet care providers. From experience, I knew that most business owners in this field had very little formal business education and were actively seeking help with their business accounting. It became important to me to not just simply offer financial reports every month but to also teach and explain bookkeeping in a way they could begin to learn the importance of knowing their numbers. Having that knowledge would then encourage and inform better business decisions for their business.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

When I sold my first business, I had no idea how to value it in the first place. I understood some of the important numbers to look at and how to read them on a very basic level. But valuing a business to sell was an entirely new level of finance I had to dive into and quickly. There wasn’t anyone I could seek for help at the time, for a price I could afford and in the short timeframe I had before our family relocated.

I researched and explored the financial side of what would be important to a buyer. In short, I was a business owner without the knowledge and skill I needed. So I had to adapt and learn on my own. Very much like my clients today. I’ve walked in their shoes. I’ve tackled the same challenges, answered the same questions they have.

Through that experience, I learned how to better understand my financial success, how to value my business and prepare it for sale.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Pet sitting in NC was my first side hustle. I had been a stay at home parent for 10 years and was ready to have a little extra fun money for myself. What started out as pet sitting for friends and neighbors, quickly turned into a full-time business in just a few short months.

By 2019, I knew I needed to hire. I was burnt out working 7 days a week, mostly holidays and weekends. I missed spending that time with my kids and family. So I began the journey to find staff.

I hired my first pet sitter in February 2020. We all know what happened a month later. We spent that year just holding on to what we could through the pandemic and when 2021 hit, we scaled from a team of two to a team of nine very quickly. It was a wild year of growth and became the foundation of my entrepreneurial expertise.

Those trials, mistakes, challenges and successes taught me to be a manager, a business owner with grit and forced me to understand the financial side of my business in a way nothing else ever could. I am still grateful for those lessons.

Today, it helps me be a better bookkeeper because I understand those challenges my clients face in a way another bookkeeper not familiar with the industry might not.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tinypawsbookkeeping.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/tinypawsbookkeeping
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/tinypawsbookkeeping