The Realities of Running a Small Pet Business

Every successful pet business looks different on the surface, but beneath it are the same questions every founder has to answer: How do you win customers? How do you build efficient systems? And how do you keep growing without losing what made the business work in the first place?

This week, we speak with 3 founders with 3 very different pet businesses:

They share candid insights into their daily operations, biggest growth decisions, marketing strategies, and the lessons they've learned building sustainable businesses in one of the fastest-growing industries

We have three key racks on the wall just inside our apartment and a fleet of 6 scooters for our staff. The day usually starts with our walkers coming in to say hi and grab their scooter and keys for the day. The day ends the same way - when their shift is done, they come back, drop off their keys, and drop off their scooter for charging.

The day itself is filled with the logistics of dog walking. Sometimes walkers get behind, sometimes clients forget to leave the key in the lockbox; you never know in advance what that day is going to bring! We schedule Kerry and I to half of our capacity though. This builds in the ability to respond in real time if emergencies happen. This has saved us more than once. Last Christmas Eve I was walking a beautiful German Shepherd who started to limp badly, with a head tilted at about 30 degrees to the side - she kept vomiting. Fortunately, the vet was literally around the corner.

They weren’t emergency care, but they knew us. After contacting her family (who were in Manhattan and couldn’t come home immediately), it was agreed that I’d take her to the ER. We were able to give the rest of my walks to Kerry, and I stayed with her all day until her humans could come and take over. It turns out she had a double ear infection. 

That’s a good question. For us, we notice that trust is gained through reliability and humor. Put another way, so much of dog walking is filled by people who are between jobs, or not particularly able to follow through on their own commitments. As a mid-sized walking company, with a staff of 6 and both of us on backup, we are able to give each dog a primary and a backup walker. Word gets out. People contact us saying they heard we are reliable. 

Humor really is the other side of dog care. Dogs are genuinely funny. We’ve found that sharing pictures with captions of dogs being cute with their owners goes a long way. Every dog has a certain collection of jokes that seem to follow it. We pick up on these and look for pictures and texts that lean in here.