August 2009

Yesterday I had a coaching client call me to ask if I could do an emergency pet sitting business coaching session with her.

Due to my  jam-packed coaching and work schedule I’m usually not able to fit coaching clients in the moment they call for an appointment but it just so happened that I had a 45-minute open window of time. We were coordinating when to set up her emergency session and I could hear the frustration and burnout in her voice so I said, “Would you like to do the session right now?”

“YES!” The relief in her voice was palpable.

Offering that kind of relief to pet sitters who are in business crisis (or just low-grade burnout) is so rewarding to me. I just love it. Having owned my own pet sitting company since 1995 I understand the frustrations that can come from owning this unusual type of business. Being in that place of despair and frustration (excuse the expression) sucks.

Anyway, we started her session and basically she was wanting to know exactly what it took for me to get from ‘there’ (frustration, burnout, working a ton but not making a ton of money) to ‘here’ (ease and joy in my worklife, working 3-4 days a week, making a lot of money without doing doing a lot of work, etc.).

I walked her through the various changes that I had made in my business and what exactly I do differently now that I didn’t do then. We talked about the nuts and bolts of running a business: from spreadsheets to marketing to time management.

Then we hit on the most important business tool of all: Self-worth.

Discovering that place that is deep within ourselves that really knows that we deserve to make a lot of money without a lot of stress and strife.

Out of that awareness comes the self-worth to raise client prices, market the heck out of our county and have the phone ringing off the hook and to not take difficult and super-challenging clients simply because they are paying us green stuff.

Have I been at the place of low self-worth? You betcha. And yes, it sucks. And it absolutely affected the way I ran (or didn’t run) my business. And it absolutely affected my profits.

How did I get to the place of high self-worth? Well, it has come from the various little and big changes I made in my business life. Some of them include:

• Having the willingness to say no to clients no matter the amount of money they were willing to pay because I knew that, should I take them on, they’d suck my energy dry.
• Raising my pet sitting prices even when I was scared.
• Realizing that I don’t want to work 40+ hours a week and having it be okay that I work much less than most of the American population!
• Allowing myself to have the desire to make a lot of money and not to be ashamed that I wanted to make a lot of money. (That one took a long time to break free from and sometimes I still struggle with the okay-ness of wanting to be wealthy.)

Self-worth often came when I had the courage to run my life and my business in a way that was congruent with those inner parts of me that desire a really great life–one with meaning, purpose, ease and profit. Managing my life and business in a way that isn’t always congruent with the way society says I should manage my life or my business. As I stay true to my own inner course in business and my life, my profits have continued to rise, rise, rise. And yours can too.

Today I encourage you to: notice the areas where you are saying ‘yes’ when really you want to say ‘no’. Notice when you are charging a client too little and feeling resentful for the amount of time a particular pet sitting/dog walking job is taking you. Are you feeling totally stressed out in the area of time and/or money? If so, what you can do to give yourself a little breathing room today?

Noticing is a first step to changing behavior.  And if the current way you run your business is not working for you, begin the process of changing the way you run your business. Making those changes will increase your self-worth which will, in turn, increase your profit.