We recently connected with Monica Miles and have shared our conversation below.

Monica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

I grew up in a family owned business. Like me, most of my siblings are entrepreneurs now. I learned many things from my parents – some things I have duplicated and some I try to avoid with my own kids and employees alike. Some of the issues we have and how we make them work –

-Keeping business and personal separate – If there is conflict at home or work it has to stay there and not affect the other area. Staff do not need to be involved or aware there is anything going on with the owners when they are there.
-Raises, promotions & shifts – These need to be fair across the board. Just because you are family does not mean you always get the best shifts or time off when you want. Raises and promotions need to be earned and given fairly.
-Work day – Family needs to be just as vigilant about meeting daily expectations in their job duties as non-family members. Non-family staff see if the family staff is getting away with not doing their assigned tasks and that affects their attitude about their job.

What we have found works best for our company is having each person responsible for something different dealing with the company. Monica is over the front/POS area, Brandon is over the Dog area & Dan is over all finances/accounting. We meet weekly and discuss all issues, what’s going well, what we need to improve on. We also discuss our goals and are we meeting them? Where can we improve and how are we doing?

Working with family can be challenging and it is also very rewarding. I get to see my kids daily and we have a great relationship at work and outside of work. They have a feeling of ownership and responsibility with this business. It is a career, not just a job. They work well with all the staff and are great examples of leadership to others. What disagreements we have are not done in front of anyone else and that is also important so we provide a united front to our staff and customers alike. We have a common goal for the business – and most importantly – we love what we do and are excited to be here!

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?

Backyard Dog Care & Boarding, Inc is our business. Monica Miles and Brandon Miles (mom & son) own and run it. We are a dogcare and boarding business. Brandon has a Labrador/retriever – Cooper – who would be in daycare daily. He tried multiple facilities and while they were ok he wasn’t truly impressed with them. He thought ‘I can do it better and I can be with Cooper at the same time’. So Brandon came to Monica and we put together a business plan, ran the numbers and said let’s do it!
We found a location, got the building built and here we are – 2 years later – going strong!

We opened in the middle of Covid-19. This was hard as no one was going on vacations and many people were working from home so people didn’t need dogcare very much. However, we were noticing a trend with dogs that they weren’t getting the stimulation and socialization at home that they need to be well rounded. We started advertising to all dog owners that we provide a place for their dog to play, socialize and have a great day while mom/dad is working or traveling. This caught on pretty quickly.

Since people are traveling more – word of mouth got out that we are available and ready to have some fun with their fur babies and business has increased each month. We provide great customer service to parents – we send videos and pictures of their baby while they are away and we keep them posted as to how they are doing while here.

We provide a very open layout – the dogs can run around all day long. They have access indoors and outdoors all day. They are only in their kennel to eat or sleep. Parents love that they can come home and their dog has had an energetic day too! All our staff loves dogs and are wonderful with them. We have supervision all day long and someone is here at night too just in case of an emergency.

We have plenty of room to keep growing and are ready to play with all our new friends!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is critical to businesses these days! We met with many marketing agencies when we first started our business. We learned what we can do ourselves and what we need to outsource for best value of our money.

Website is the first thing people see about you – it needs to be easy to understand and navigate, engaging, lots of pictures, not too wordy (but wordy enough for google to get the adwords there for you). People want to see your facility, prices, hours, what you offer. We also have articles on our site that parents can read to know more about their dog, safety issues, health issues – new things we offer etc.

Instagram and facebook has gotten us many leads also – we have one of our employees do this. We have a ‘dog of the week’ that posts every Sunday! This alone gets us many followers as parents and families can’t wait to see when their dog will be spotlighted. We also share pictures and videos from our day – we show what the dogs are doing, what they are playing with and who they are hanging out with.

Parents like to see tips about handling their dog, summer fun or helping keep them cool , things you can do to keep your dog happy, warning signs for sickness, etc.

We do reels, stories and posts. We try to do 3 posts a week and keep a story once a day so we are out there but not too much in your face. We keep it simple and fun to read so people want to see what you have to say.

Our website and all the ads for that we have outsourced to an amazing marketing company.
Facebook and Instagram we do ourselves (but our marketing company does put some on there also)

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

We work with dogs. This is an ever changing staff. We are usually one of the first jobs someone has so we try to make it a positive experience.

As employers I feel you have an obligation to have an open communication system with staff. Set your expectations, talk about them, reinforce them, and most importantly do it yourself. Be a do as I do person. Show them you love your job and take it seriously and hopefully they will follow.

When an employee doesn’t do the job they are supposed to do – this is at first a teaching opportunity. let them know – quickly – where they missed the mark and teach them again how to do it. Employees want to know where they stand and using teaching techniques instead of negative talk to them goes a long way.

Listen when they have suggestions. Some of my best upgrades have come from those who are doing the job day after day. When I implement a suggestion from an employee – they get an Amazon gift card and a shout out at staff meeting.

When someone goes above and beyond – we try to recognize it immediately also. We have treats and gift cards to give out when we see them doing something amazing. We try to acknowledge the good and hopefully that gets repeated often.

Hold staff meetings regularly – keep them short – focus on a few things so they don’t get overwhelmed. I usually have treats there and we keep it informal and fun yet they know what is discussed they are accountable for.

Always be willing to listen. Be willing to let them confide if they need to and make sure to hold that confidential for them. I am not their parent or friend but they can always count on me for support when having a rough time – they still need to do their job but they know they can come chat and release some frustration when they need to.

Be flexible when you can. We have high school students so I watch the school calendar and I remind them that holidays are coming or dances and we communicate when they need to be off or maybe they want more hours since there’s a holiday. When they feel valued and listened to they usually are willing to go the extra mile for us.

Be fair and consistent with raises and reviews. When they know what you expect for a raise, they won’t be shocked when they don’t get the full one because they are always late and timeliness is important for the job. Or they will be excited when they get more than usual because they always do more than the minimum.

Most importantly – treat them like valuable people – the way we all want to be treated.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BackyardDogboarding.com
• Instagram: @backyard.dogcare

Image Credits
@kinseylynnPhotography