We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sylvia Bedrosian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sylvia below.

Sylvia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

When we first launch the Facebook page, we started getting followers mostly pet parents interested in learning about new pe friendly places, but we needed business to actually be interested in learning about us and joining the movement in order to grow and to have content to offer.

That’s when we created the pet friendly sticker. A 3×3 round, water and sunproof sticker for businesses to place outside and easily let people walking by, they welcomed pets. I would leave my car parked at a street and walk through all the businesses, introducing myself, quickly telling them about what we do, and giving them the sticker as an option for them to place in their windows. It only took one restaurant, one beauty salon, and office, in order for others to jump on board.

The sticker gimmick worked perfectly in Puerto Rico. Restaurants started emailing me asking how they could get one (or two), and it brought us additional traffic from tourist who saw our sticker and were curious to learn more. However, the sticker did not work that well in New York City, because most of the stores have a window guideline, which don’t allow them to place any sort of stickers (not even the ‘Pay with Visa or Mastercard’ ones). We changed the strategy there, and instead asked dog accounts with descent following (5k, 10k, 15k) to visit a pet friendly restaurant of their choice and we would give them a $50-$100 gift card to use in exchange for tagging us and allowing us to use the content.

Every market is different, but what is consistent is the desire of pet parents to go out with their dogs to malls, restaurants, and just running overall errands. The interpersonal skills, one-on-one communication is extremely important. Making sure you get to know your community, and what they need, as well as the businesses, and guiding throughout the process because many of them were and some still are, somewhat scare of allowing pets because of the legal implications.

Everyone plays a role! If we go out with a dog that i s well behaved, clean up after him, train him, and show others what a wonderful experience it can be to go out with dogs, more business and pet parents will continue to join. It’s the nature of the domino effect!

And those businesses who didn’t want to be pet-friendly at the beginning have ALL joined by now. We created a workshop where we train all their staff, including security and cleaning teams, to give them the tools to handle any pet-related situation. We bring a police officer, a lawyer, and me. After every workshop, they all agree they feel more comfortable with the idea and are ready to welcome pets.

New ideas take time, and always come with challenges. It’s about believing in what you have and being patience with the process.

Sylvia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a publicist with a master’s degree in music business from New York University. I lived in New York for 16 years, and return to my island of Puerto Rico, briefly, in 2016. After seeing everyone in New York go in and out of business with their dogs, I couldn’t understand why in Puerto Rico you weren’t allowed, and a pet-policy was simply non-existent. That’s when I started organizing the project to have a website/page were pet parents could easily find where to go. It quickly grew into the biggest page and pet movement in Puerto Rico, becoming the #1 news source, educational, and everything pet related. Which comes with a big responsibility because you have to fact check everything you share, from good to bad news. If I’m sharing a post about a dog abuse case, I have to make sure its legit, and I’m not defaming anybody, and if I’m sharing the news about a new business being pet friendly, I have to make sure they are in fact, and the owner and managers have all agreed it can be announced.

The Home Depot was one of the biggest challenges locally. A lot of people want to go to THD with their dogs, and I have no scientific explanation as to why beyond that, they are part of the family, and it’s their leisure time. Some THD allowed them while others banned them and were rude with clients. We took matters to social media, and openly asked THD what was their pet-policy once and for all because they are a corporate company, therefore the same policy applies to ALL stores, and store managers don’t get decide which ones can and can’t accept pets. The post went viral, and there was so much social pressure, now they all allow dogs, as long as they go inside the shopping carts.

Growing the community means challenging companies to change, to open to new ideas, and evolve, and we are here to build a pet-friendly community, with guidelines, and laws to make sure we can avoid any mishandling and have fun with our best friends.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Mi vice-president, use to work for a Dog-company, and they had approach me to do a collaboration for one of their brands. We had an immediate connection, and I went above and beyond with that collaboration. I like to make them feel they got their money’s worth. We had a great connection and stay friends and she offer to help as a volunteer in some events and then naturally she started migrating to our organization. We had the same interests, passion for dogs, and were filled with ideas we wanted to execute. You must be passionate about this industry, know the dogs account, the pet-friendly places, the type of content pet parents like to consume…and she had all of that.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We started with $0. The pet-friendly stickers were my personal investment, but the demand was so high we started selling them in our website and creating a small shop. We really didn’t have many expenses, but I wanted to have some budget to pay the volunteers for their monthly work, gas, etc.

After Hurricane Maria hit, by then our organization was already recognized and Pedigree partner and for every dollar donated, they would match it. We were able to raise $85k, donating all the money to shelters who were hit hard by the hurricane and other rescue groups, buy food, water, and materials needed to help them get back up.

Recently we received a grant for a local Bank, also for our work helping communities. Our passion is evident, and helping others is the most gratifying sensation you can ever have. We want to have more to give more, and we make sure to earn and keep our followers trust, because that’s what’s important. We showed them how the money was used, share receipts, and invite them to come with us to distribute donations.

We are a small organization, but we do a lot with what we have, and I wear many hats: social media, publicity, business relations, events, etc. but I enjoy it so much. The goal is to make pet friendly fully profitable, so I can quit my job and dedicate my 100% to the non-profit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.petfriendlypr.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petfriendly_pr/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetFriendlyPR

Image Credits
Pet Friendly Puerto Rico