We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caitlin Perna a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Caitlin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?
Perna’s Pet Care started out as just me doing as many pet visits a day as I could. Communication was directly between me and the client which guaranteed the best possible care; that in turn built their trust in me and my services ensuring they would book again and again. The relationship between me, the pet, and the client was so clear each time the owner would return home to a happy pet and a clean house. Once my business grew to needing more than just me, it became a top priority to find others who could do the job with just as much dedication and care as I would.
The way we are set up requires employees to work very independently. Each pet sitter has their own list of clients to visit and it would be impractical to have a manager follow them and check every home afterwards. Learning how to let go of that control and trust the people I hired was a huge learning experience for me.
I have definitely made some hiring mistakes in the past, but there is always something to learn from them. I sort of thought I’d just “know” if someone was right after asking a few questions about their past work and animal experience. Turns out hiring requires a lot of patience and time. A big change for me was refining my application process and interview questions which made a huge difference in the candidates I was bringing in in the first place. I needed to find people I felt I could trust, who fit in the schedule we needed, and weren’t afraid of dogs (yes, someone claimed to love dogs but then was clearly afraid day one of training), and that requires more than just one quick interview.
The next step is the actual training. Before a new pet sitter can go to work on their own, I needed to create an in-depth training program. As mentioned above, the company started with just me so my clients had certain expectations and I needed them to feel confident these new people would be just as reliable. To do that, my employees need to understand the importance of this job- we are not doing this for fun or as a hobby, this is our job and it involves living creatures and other people’s homes; it needs to be taken very seriously. The sitters also need to understand animal body language, how to give medications, toxic foods/plants, other animal care, and how to use our software and communicate professionally with the clients…the list goes on. Before I had all of this in place and they would only get a week or two of shadowing me, I noticed that while I could find good employees who loved animals, the overall quality of work wasn’t what I was looking for.
If I am honest with myself, I think my imposter syndrome of owning a business and hiring my own employees was probably part of the problem. I knew how to take care of my clients well, but I wasn’t confident in being able to manage a team where I was the only boss. In past jobs I’d trained new employees many times and it turned out fine, but this time it was all on me and that was scary. It felt strange telling other people about the policies *I* made up, giving them orders on decisions *I* made, and I think the employees could sense that. It created an air of casualness instead of the professionalism I wanted. I did luck out and find a few gems early on who helped carry me through until I could gain the confidence and figure it out. Hiring and growing a team takes practice, just like anything else.
Caitlin, 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?
Perna’s Pet Care started in 2018 in Austin,Tx. After a few years of working in doggy daycare centers and doing pet sitting part time I decided to make the leap and start my own business. One day I literally just decided to start making a website, got myself on google and just went from there! To back up a little though, I went to college for dance so this was not initially something on my radar. I had moved to San Francisco (from Western Michigan University, go Broncos!) and performed for a little while, but eventually got burnt out. I took some time away to travel, and when I came back I got a job at a dog day care and boarding facility. I loved it! I’d had dogs growing up, but there is nothing like spending 6-7 hours a day surrounded by dogs of all sizes, breeds, and personalities. I learned so much about dog behavior, care, and safety from them. Over the years I had more jobs with other pet sitting companies and found some clients on my own as well. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but this was when starting my own business starting taking shape. I’d moved to Austin by this point, and with my last name being Perna, adding the word “pet” after it just seemed like an obvious fit.
In Austin I also worked at the Neonatal Kitten ICU through the animal shelter Austin Pets Alive! which was a pivotal time for me. Getting so much experience caring for tiny kittens, healthy and sick, working with vets how to give different types of medications and properly track food, weight, behavior etc was such a unique experience and indispensable for the work I do now. It heightened my desire to take care of all the animals that I could, to protect them and love them. The skills I learned there I carry with me to this day.
Perna’s Pet Care offers in home pet care and dog walks 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We administer medications, send GPS tracked reports with photos, offer different visit lengths and can accomodate your pet’s schedule with multiple visits throughout the day. We have a team of dedicated, professional pet sitters who receive ongoing training so we can offer our clients the best care for their pets.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I think something many people can relate to is having to make major adjustments during Covid lockdown in 2020. My business doesn’t have a “work from home option”; we are either out taking care of pets or we have no revenu. We never really shut down completely as we had clients who still needed help with dog walks during the week, but it was a significant decrease. And back then our busiest service was our overnight pet sitting, so without that I had very little work to offer my team. Once we saw this was going to go on for a while I started looking for ways to keep Perna’s Pet Care afloat. To start, we had to put safety protocols in place for the dog walks we still had booked. Aside from the obvious hand sanitizer and masks, we wanted to make sure there was as little crossover between client and pet sitter as possible. Normally we would go inside the client’s home to get the dog, put on their harness, give water afterwards etc. During Covid we would let the client know when we were on our way if they worked from home, let them put the dog’s harness on, then we would grab the dog at the front door without going fully inside and use our own leashes. A lot more communication was needed to be able to time these visits around Zoom calls and to stay updated on any signs of illness.
As more and more people were working from home, we also changed our marketing strategy. Working from home doesn’t mean your dog doesn’t still need walks and social time. And they don’t understand that just because you’re home doesn’t mean you have time to sit and give them all the attention they need (or want!) so having a dog walker come can still be very beneficial. We wanted to let current and potential new clients know that we can make sure your dog isn’t barking at you during an important call, or if you don’t have time we can still be of service to you and your dog.
Another thing we did was offering gift cards for clients, not necessarily to give to others, but more as a credit they could put on their account for future needs. Normally, clients would pay for their services as they book them, but by pre-paying in this way it allowed for me to be able to keep somewhat of an income during those uncertain times. I sent a heartfelt message to all of my clients and was so thankful for how many people were able and willing to help out. Those that knew they would travel again and need our services paid well in advance so my team and I could stress a little less financially.
Obviously we made it through, people started traveling again and going back into their offices and business picked up back to normal. But we still market ourselves to people who work from home, we still offer gift cards, and now we have policies in place for any health issues we may encounter.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Starting a business requires a lot of trust from those first clients. With no online reviews, they put their trust solely on me as a person and how I sell myself and my previous work experience. Once they take that first step and decide to hire me, it’s now solely the experience they have that will decide if they will come back again. The best way to make them come back is by delivering on your promises. I think a few things set me up for success early on- having a professional website, having professional experience with animals even if from a different setting, and my ability to connect with people. I always meet with clients before we work together, I want them to meet me and get a sense of who I am and what I offer. They are looking for someone who they can trust to come into their home and care for animals they probably see as family, it’s a big deal! Meeting in person gives them a chance to see that I am who I say I am, that I am responsible and knowledgeable, and that their pets feel comfortable around me. That initial meeting is the beginning of our ongoing relationship and is something I will never take out of my business.
I take the relationship I build with my clients so seriously because client referrals are the fastest way I grow my business. We do online marketing, go to local events and businesses, but word of mouth has been our most successful way to get more clients. Our biggest market is making sure our current clients want to tell other people in their life that we are a company they can trust. Things like our open communication, software that sends GPS tracked reports with photos after each visit, and our knowledge and competence in pet care create our promised package of quality service.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pernapetcare.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pernapetcare/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pernapetcare
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pernas-pet-care-ypsilanti
Image Credits
Tess with Conifer Photo