It's Time to Get Out of the Field!
For years, I played a yo-yo dance with my pet care business. I’d get out of the field doing dog walks (finally!) but then almost immediately I’d get pulled back in again. It was incredibly frustrating - it felt like my time was never my own and it significantly lowered my enjoyment of my pet care business.
Even more than that though, is the way that this was subtly strangling the growth of my business, and I couldn’t even see it. By going into the field to work with the pets, I was actually restricting my business from growing.
In today’s episode, we will talk about strategies to finally get yourself out of the field for your pet care business - once and for all.
The season I spent trying to get out of the field in my pet care business was my least favorite season in my business. I KNEW my time was not going to where it should be - and just felt that I couldn’t get ahead. Every time I’d finally succeed, I’d end up right back where I started.
This continued on until my husband finally said to me, “I think you need to pretend you don’t live here anymore. Every time we go on vacation, you always figure it out. I think it’s just too tempting to rescue the business, rather than run it.”
I decided then and there to make a change, and where that led me was to discover margin for your business.
Your pet care business needs margin in your model. Without it, the owner will continue to end up being the buffer and going into the field to help the business keep going when there are issues with staffing.
There are 3 places you can put margin into your pet care business:
Your team
2. Your middle management
3. The Owner
I hope today’s episode helps you consider where YOU want to build the margin in your business to help it continue to grow.
If this was helpful, I’d love for you to share with a fellow pet care professional.
Michelle Kline is the founder of DogCo Launch, and the host of the DogCo Secrets Podcast. Michelle spends her time helping pet care companies in the industry grow and scale their teams, increase their revenue, and increase personal profits - all while protecting their time. Learn more about Michelle here.
Do you want to scale your pet care business? Consider joining us at the DogCo Business Summit - the first pet care conference focused exclusively on business scaling in this industry - September 26 - 28, 2025.