Your Pet Business Launchpad
Tips
On Vacation..Speaking of Which…
Aug 11th
So as a petpreneur you’ll need to take some time to unwind…time to take a break and re-charge. Especially if you’re a solo-petpreneur, but is your business ready to run on semi-auto pilot? As I sit here on vacation…my business is still pretty much a lean-running machine. Here are a few tips to keep your vacation an enjoyable one.
1) Plan – this sounds easy enough, but planning is more than jotting down a happy face on your calendar(although I don’t condone this). If you’ve been operating for a few years you’ll probably have a general idea of when your slow period is. It’s a 
good idea to try and schedule your down-time around this period. If you’re just starting out… no vacation for you…you have a business to grow my friend!
2) Give Your Customers a Heads Up – Make a point to let your customers know you’ll be on vacation and what they can expect during this time. If you’ll still be able to fill orders, let them know. If you’re totally unavailable let them know that too. I generally do this through my social network with them, and with a reminder in my email signatures.
3) Prepare – If you’re going on an extended vacation schedule some blog posts during that time, to keep your blog fresh and crawled. If you’re on WordPress you can do this under the ‘Publish’ box on the right hand side while you’re writing your post. Go to the Publish line, click edit, you’ll then be able to schedule when you want that post to go live. This is a great trick to keeping your blog updated, and looking like you’re ‘there’.
4) Enjoy – Now technically if you’re really doing what you love, a vacation means something different than when you’re doing a J O B. When you’re doing what you love, and you take a vacation, it could be because you need to get some inspiration, or you need to go to an expo or convention…it’s still fun…as it should be. So enjoy your time ‘away’, and be happy that you’re walking down the path of a fulfilled petpreneur 
5 Social Media Hacks for Busy PetPreneurs
Jul 20th
One of the big dilemmas facing those diggin into social media bliss as a business tool is the balance between authentic participation and automation for time saving sake. If you haven’t considered any automation let’s look into it so you’ll know when it’s ok to automate and when it’s the kiss of death.
On one end there are certainly tools and services that can actually take care of all of your social media participation and automate the process of posting your content to every known social network.
On the other end is the desire to create personal engagement and branding building community through one to one content creation and participation.
The first certainly lacks a human touch, and the latter can suck up too much time. In my mind, the perfect balance lies somewhere between the place where tools can be employed to facilitate intent and leverage time, while still adding personal attention.
Below are five social media hacks that allow personal engagement fused with the use of tools that make it easier to do more.
–>1. StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon It’s essentially a social bookmarking site that allows people to bookmark and find interesting stuff. There’s a unique approach with StumbleUpon that makes it such a great tool though… once you create an account you can pick categories of content that interest you or that might interest your pet parents. Then you install the StumbleUpon browser tool bar and any time you want to find some potentially interesting content discoveries, just hit Stumble. The tool bar takes you to random sites identified by other users and is almost always a great way to come upon content that is unique and valuable from little know sources. This is a great way to share great finds in your blog posts and tweets while spending a few minutes doing the research.
–>2. The Round-Up
This isn’t a tool so much as a practice. Pet parents love to digest content, especially when it pertains to their pet companions. One way to create and deliver that is to get in the habit of using a bookmarking tool like Delicious and simply tagging sites you come across (perhaps in the tip above) with various tags like ‘blog’ or ‘newsletter’ or by client industry segment, and then going back at the end of the week and writing a post or creating a newsletter issue based solely on abstracts of the good stuff you found during the week. By installing the delicious browser toolbar, you can tag any page with the right click of a mouse. Filtering content and delivering just the best of what you read (perhaps in your RSS Reader) can make you a very valuable resource to people who just want the good stuff. By employing your own filtering tool you can easily create the content on the fly.
–>3. Reader to TwitterFeed
TwitterFeed is a tool that allows you to connect any RSS feed to your Twitter account and effectively auto tweet anything that is added to the feed. I don’t find this very useful and in some cases it’s seen as spam, so that’s not what we are going to do here.
Since you can attach any feed to it you can have total control over what goes to Twitter, so it’s really just a way to make it easy to tweet things you find. For example, the delicious tags you created above also have RSS feeds associated with them. So, you run that feed through TwitterFeed and have it tweet anything you hand select and tag as you surf.
Another great use is to connect it to your GoogleReader account, but only for the RSS feed associated with your “shared items.” That way, as you sit at the diner reading the blogs you subscribe to on your phone app over lunch, you can find a great post that you want to share and all you do is hit the share button at the bottom of the post and that one item gets pushed out to Twitter. Still, done by hand, but just skipping a few steps to save time.
–>4. RSS to HTML
There are any number of tools that will take the content from an RSS feed, one that you produce or one that you find and read, and turn it into dynamic HTML content that you can display on any web page you like.
Creating content specific pages and pushing the content you find as you surf to them can be an easy way to create content for your web pages.
Google has a free tool called Dynamic Feed Control Wizard, but check out the great list of RSS to HTML web publishing tools from Robin Good.
–>5. Blog to Fanpage
There are lots of plugins and apps that make it very easy to republish blog content to your Facebook personal wall, but many businesses these days are much more interested in publishing new blog posts to their Fan Pages.
There are, in fact, a number of free and paid apps that allow you to do this, but the simplest (and in my mind best) approach is to use the built-in Notes function. When you enable the notes tab on your Fan Page you can click on add a new note and you’ll see that one option is to add a blog feed. When you do this you get a new tab (the name of your blog) and the last five or so blog posts, depending upon your RSS fee settings.
The reason I like this approach is that there’s not a third party app involved – that’s where most tech issues arise – and, in addition to simply having a blog page, your new posts go right into the wall stream when you publish them.
Blog post adapted from John Jantsch award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing
Email Marketing: Tips for Newcomers
Jul 11th
Join my list!
Do you have a list?
10 ways to build your list!
Build your list Build your Business!
You’ve heard all the buzz, hype and whoopee-la on building your list and email marketing but what really IS the big dealy-o?
Well here’s my take on it. Should you build some sort of a pet parent list? Yes…do you need to bug them every other day with your stuff? Well maybe not so much. Should you keep in touch with them, with useful, valuable information and updates…Absolutely.
Having a list of people that have stepped up and said “yes I’m willing to open up my valuable inbox to you and listen to what you have to tell me” is pretty amazing. Not to mention a wonderful direct line to those who matter most in your business.
With that list you can ask questions, get honest feedback, share updates, make product and service announcements the possibilities are endless.
The idea is that if you have stuff to sell, the people in your list will be at least willing to hear you out, and if you present it with them in mind and they need what you’re sharing they’ll click the ‘buy’ button and you’ve just made an easy sale. In theory this is how the gurus’ say it works, but what if it doesn’t.
What if you have a list of a just a few people and you’re just starting out? Well here’s my theory.
To start out let visitors to your website and/or blog know that you’d like to have them on your list. How do you do this without sounding…’List-y’ ? You can go for the give stuff away bit. That works for some folks. For example: “Sign-up for my 5-day e-course on selling to retail boutiques” this way they get something from you for free, and you get a name and email address…Golden!
Or if you don’t have an e-course to give away, you can share tips with them on something you know, or something you’ve recently found that they would enjoy or like. Be creative and make sure it’s something that’s useful. DON’T trying selling something unless you know beyond a shadow that they want it. If not it will surely backfire on you.
Here are a few email marketing services you can look into.
1) Aweber – Have heard rave reviews about this service and it looks great if you have the budget for it. Pricing starts out at:
$19/month, and they have a free trial to give it a shot for $1.
2)iContact – This one keeps soliciting to me to switch and try them, while I have not yet, they seem worthy enough to mention. They too have a trial to give them a try first, and their plans start at just $9.95/month.
3) Your Mailing List Provider – This is the one I personally use for Bark Business and for my other gigs. It’s free to use for up to like 1000 contacts, you can upload images, and you can configure the experience after they enter their name and email. You can use HTML, and it’s pretty easy to use. By far a great fit if you’re just starting out and don’t want to pay for a subscription service just yet. And when you’re ready to their plans are awesomely affordable, like under $6/month affordable!
4) Constant Contact – I’ve used this service in the past and was mildly pleased. I was upset that for each email blast I could only add I think maybe 5 images. Anything over you have to upgrade…bummer. And their lowest plans start at $15.95/month. Not much else to say, it’s an ok starter, but would personally go for one of the other service providers.
My guess is that your email list and your blasts will depend on what you want to share, what you want from them, and how much you’re willing to spend on it all. But at any rate, the idea of course is to start if you haven’t already.
Build your pet community…build your pet business
Jun 23rd
Here is a few quick steps to building your pet community, and grow closer with your customers and fans.
1. Make your pet community prominent.
Don’t hide your online community behind a link. Bring it right up to the front page. Anything less, and you aren’t giving your community the respect it deserves. If you are serious about your online community, prove it by giving it serious exposure.
Show that you value the opinions of your members by featuring their content alongside your own editorial content — you are equal partners in this.
This goes further than just proving your commitment to the community. It puts the community in front of eyeballs. A lot of the time, visitors won’t even notice a link to your community — so put it where they can see it if you want them to join and get involved.
2. Keep it simple.
You don’t need fancy features and a glamorous site design. Most of the time, these are simply distractions. Keep things simple. There is nothing wrong with basing your community solely on a forum. You don’t necessarily need a full range of ‘social networking’ features. 
People need to be able to communicate — it’s as simple as that. They can do this with a basic forum.
Fancy designs are often just an ego stroke for the organisation that commissioned them. Remember, an online community isn’t about you — it’s about your members. Strip everything back and keep it basic. Your community may not look glamorous, but it will be far more likely to contain activity and member engagement.
3. Tell me why.
I come across a lot of online communities that don’t explain or outline their purpose. As crazy as it sounds, there are a lot of people building communities without actually making it clear what the purpose of the community is. Sometimes this is obvious from the name — but even then, I need to know why I should join your community rather than one belonging to your competitor.
Ensure that all visitors to your site know why they should be joining and getting involved in the community. Keep it short, simple, snappy and accurate.
4. Be active.
As a community manager, you need to be active in your own online community. You can’t be a matchmaker unless you get to know members of your community. You can’t learn from your members if you don’t know who they are.
Lead by example — get stuck in and enjoy the community. If you aren’t active or if you aren’t enjoying being active, your community has a problem. Fix it.
5. Build pet parents relationships at home and away.
Some people who contact me stress that they are highly active in their community — in fact, sometimes they are its chief contributor. Of course, a community isn’t a community if there is only one person doing the talking. If this is happening to you, it’s an indicator that you need to be more proactive.
Just because you’ve built an online community it doesn’t mean people will flock to it. You need to get out there and find members. Fortunately, that’s never been easier. Your potential members are out there writing blogs, telling the world what they are doing on twitter, and networking on Facebook.
Don’t stalk these potential members, and don’t spam them. Get to know them. Comment on their blogs, provide value. It’s all about what you can do for them — not the other way around.
*I surely cannot take credit for this amazing article it was originally written by RodLow on Social Media Today*
Paying Yourself 101
Jun 22nd
Are you one of those pet business owners that is doing everything yourself and wondering when your business will start to give back to you a little? Let me tell you I Am One of Those Business Owners.
Since 2007 I’ve been wearing every possible hat available to keep my small business chuggin’ along. I do all of my social networking ( which doesn’t really seem like work most times I do all of my web, print and design stuff, I design my products I source manufacturers here and abroad, I pick out fabric, I sketch the drawings, I take of shipping, customer service and all of my blogging. Phew…I think I should be getting a mondo fat paycheck. Well…nope not here my friend. But….I got an eye opener today.
I got a chance to speak with another fellow business owner who gave me some awesome advice this was his quick but very insightful tip! Here goes:
**No matter how much ‘profit’ you’re making, Pay.Yourself.First! Now what exactly does that mean? Well it doesn’t mean you go and blow every dime of your sales on a Coach bag or new uber expensive plush spa bed for Dino. Here’s how my friend broke it down for me.
1) Even if you’re brining in $125/month. Set a pay structure in place, right from the beginning. Divide your ‘income’ into 3 divisions.
–>Pay yourself
–>Pay the business
–>Pay for growth, and expanding or sustaining ( depending on your personal or business goals)
If you can get in the habit of dividing up every single bit of income that your pet business brings in you’ll see that slowly or quickly it starts to build and you begin to gain more confidence in your business and before you know it you’ve got a budge for yourself, your pet business and budget for the growth or sustainability of it.
You may know already what happens when you’re not paying yourself at all. You may doubt your endeavor at times, you may feel overworked and obviously underpaid. You may wonder why or why did you jump in and do this…But I can tell you that once your business has foundation and starts to ‘love’ you back it’s a great and wonderful feeling.
**So get those pay systems in place and start appreciating all your hard work**
10 Questions to consider when hiring an Independent Contractor(IC) for your pet business
Jun 16th
Once your pet business begins to grow and the business is coming in on a steady basis you may consider hiring some assistance. The trend in small pet business is hiring an Independent Contractor or an IC as they are commonly referred to. Here are some questions that the IRS may ask to ensure you do in fact have an independent contractor and not an employee.
Here are some questions the IRS asks in determining whether a new hire is truly an independent contractor or an employee masking as one (so the employer can avoid…well, you know):
1. Does the worker set his or her own hours?
2. Who makes the rules for how and where the work will be done: employer or worker?
3. Does the worker furnish his or her own tools and equipment and hire his own assistants if needed?
4. Does the person have a workplace (home office, for example) that’s separate from the employer’s premises?
5. Can the individual work for other companies?
6. Is the worker paid on a per-job or a commission basis?
7. Does the person send you invoices for his services?
8. Is there a written “independent contractor” agreement between worker and employer?
If the answer to these questions is yes, you’ve successfully hired the person as an independent contractor and avoided the employee issues.
Take care to ensure you definitely have an Independent Contractor and not an employee, or the IRS may slap you with fines and all that ‘employee’ paperwork. See your accountant, bookeeper, or VA (virtual assistant) if you need further help with this one.
*adaped from Entrepreneur.com*
Sales & Marketing…Getting it Right!
May 13th
The pet industry marketplace can be testy and tough if you’re not sure what your pet people want or what they really like. You may think you know…but listen up….you probably have no idea! Now hold on a second before you get all up in a gruff, I have a good reason for saying this.
While you may have an idea of what your pet parents like or what ‘Scout’ enjoys. Those wants, needs and demands can change and fluctuate like Virginia weather. As a pet small business owner, launcher or pro you need to know all about these fluctuations and you need a system in place to hear your people loud and clear. Flubbing this mark could cost you your budget power and we do not want that.
So what is a small pet business owner to do? This thankfully is an easy one. Let.Them.Choose. Simple …yes? Easy….yes? You bet but I’ve heard many readers and clients come to me and say but, ‘I don’t know what my customers want’ or ‘I’m just not sure I’m getting it right, my sales are flat’. Listen, you’e not sure because you haven’t asked, or worse you’re not listening…Yikes.
Let’s take a look at how we can turn this around for you:
–>1. Get in tune with your pet people. Go where they are online and offline. This is simple because you’re out and about with you furry one, and so are your pet parents. Listen to conversations, ask questions, be insightful and inject key phrases that will garner responses you can use. But don’t be pitchy here, the idea is to just be you (but listening for info nuggets). Personally I wouldn’t yet push a business card or anything here, it may come off wrong. If the opportunity presents itself, you make the call.
–>2. Exercise Voting Rights. It’s no secret people love to share their opinions and say what’s on their mind. You can use this edge to actively get participation from your pet people and get valuable feedback on what they like, don’t like and what they’d like to see in a particular product, service etc. Use polls, and interactive ‘games’ to get your pet people engaged in your products and services. Make it into a contest or something, with the winner getting some free stuff of yours. Thinking about launching a new product, get their vote on it. Thinking about changing your rates (with good reason) get their vote on it. What you thought was genius move could be a ‘don’t do it no no’. Allowing opinions and votes will prove very useful. Be sure and ask questions that will directly yield the information you’re seeking. Stay away from long drawn out questions…they’re confusing and will most certainly not give you a usable, measurable answer.
I can personally attest to the success of this particular strategy. When I launched Stick Me Designs, I got input before I even had a product, I still to this day almost 3 years later [which in cyberbusiness is like 10 years ] still regularly ask for opinions on new fabric choices for my accessories. My customers love it and feel like they’re having a say in what will be of the upcoming collections…it’s a fun process.
What about you, how do you get it right?
6 tips to a Stand Out Business Card
Apr 27th
How many mixers, networking get togethers have you attending in the last 6 months? And while at those shin digs, how many business cards did you acquire? And now here is the most important question? —> How many of those cards actually made their way into a ‘safe-keeping’ spot? 2, 3? Not many huh?
Why do you think those lucky few made it there? Well probably because there was something interesting about it, or something that 
struck you as worth keeping. Too many times we fall into the boring-forgettable business card routine…for what and why? There’s really not an excuse.
And the coolest part is that since you’re in the pet industry you can really have fun with your business cards personality.
So here are,
5 Tips to a Stand Out Business Card:
–>1. Give yourself a creative and fun title. If you’re a groomer why not go with Fur Stylist Extraordinaire, be unique and fun you’ll be more remembered because of it.
–>2. Move away from the traditional rectangle shaped cards. Try a 3×3″ square, or even a die cut paw shape, or even round. Many print shops now offer die cuts, custom sizes at reasonable price points. Couple of my faves:
–>3. Don’t forget to include all of your social, and online connection information. Nowadays unless you’re a brick and mortar pet business, your address isn’t necessary. Email, phone, web, twitter, facebook, etc is what’s important now.
–>4. Don’t skimp on the cardstock your cards are printed on. It’s one thing to print your own cards which done correctly is perfectly ok, but puleeeze do not use the tear out Office Max business card paper. It doesn’t make a great first impression or a memorable one for that matter. Today it’s so cost-effective to have them printed for you, it makes better sense to have them printed. A great service to start out with that I used for several print runs was Printsmadeeasy.com they’re slow to ship, unless you wanna pay extra but well priced.
–>5. Make your business card have another purpose. My favorite that I’ve seen is a busienss card that was actually a little envelope and it was filled with wildflower seeds. Maybe you could fill your business card envelope with doggy mints or something useful. The possibilities are endless…again Get Creative
–>6. Be creative with your orientation of your business card. My most recent card for PinkSpringMedia uses little snippet 2.2″ cards with my information on all four sides of my card, and the my title and business name in the center. So whenever I hand them out, people are caught off guard with the size, and then intrigued to find the information on the card. I get positive results from them often.
I found some pretty neat-o cards on this site, which I thought were very cool! http://www.geckoandfly.com/tag/business-cards/
So what kind of ideas do you have, please share them below!
What I learned from junk mail and value
Mar 31st
You know how you get junk mail almost every single day? How annoying it always is and how you may skim through it just to appease the junkmail gods? Well it got me thinking today about what we can learn as entrepreneurs from this annoying albeit somewhat effective method to get us to buy, buy, buy.
–>First let’s look at the frequency of junk mail. It’s like every single day there is some type of junk mail to greet us in our mailboxes. Actually the frequency of the mailings can be looked at as consistency. When you consistently are sharing your goodies with pet parents you’re keeping you and your products and services fresh in their minds. But let’s keep in mind that overkill is never funny and could possibly cause you to lose loyal customers. So find your sweet spot of consistency and stay fresh in their minds with events, deals, giveaways, contests etc.
–>What is your customers perceived value of what you offer? You know how when you look at a sales copy for faux ‘tickets’ to an event and the promoter says ‘We’ve given you complimentary tickets to an XYZ event’ and that those complimentary tickets have a retail value of $125 each? Well where do they come up with that ‘Value’? No one really knows and you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual sold on this date for that price customer. Why is this? Well because they want you to feel like you’re getting a slammin’ good deal if you ‘act how they want you to’. This particular tactic while extreme and a bit ridiculous, can actually work for us too. (No offense Mr. Trump, but I know your seminar croonies are gonna try to sell me some $999 system if I attend your $125 seminar)
If you can make your best customers and clients feel special and appreciated this tactic can work rather well. One way this could work is with the launch of a new product or service. Let your best customers or list know that a new exciting ‘woodget’ is about to launch and if they grab theirs first they can save over $XX of the soon to be retail price. Say for instance a new organic shampoo and coat treatment which will normally retail for $59. You let your loyalies have it for $39 the first week. The perceived value added bonus is $20!
Any little bit we can use to increase value, loyalty and trust is what works my friends, and offering good stuff helps too.
Got a question? leave me a comment or tweet*
Are you the bargain or the splurge?
Mar 26th
In today’s hot market of pets and animals it seems like many new petpreneurs are coming along for the furry ride. So if you’re just starting out or you’ve just launched have you asked yourself this question yet? Let’s break down both with reasons and responses.
Are you the Bargain? If you’re looking to sell more quantity of yourself or your products than this might be the route for you. If what you’re selling is something that can be consumed quickly and will need to be bought over and over again, you might be the Bargain. If your products or services do not have a high initial cost, you might be the Bargain.
The Bargain could launch fairly quickly as well. If you’re pet parents need what you offer and the price is a ‘Bargain’ than you could be reaping profits within weeks. Another positive to being the Bargain. The downside of the Bargain, you don’t want to come off as looking cheap. Still push the benies, and what your product brings to them, and then point out your Bargain price.
Not to mention you could give away your Bargain to gain exposure as well, and everyone always loves 
something that is free. This way you’re not out much by giving your goodies away. Word of caution with giveaways: Always have a means for your petparents to ‘take you up on your offer’. Be it a business card attached, or simply your website address on a string. Give them easy access to you.
–>Are you the Splurge? If you’re considering being a splurge or you already are, you had better have a great list of features to back up the pricey
cost. Be sure to emphasize what your service or products will do for them. Will it save time, money in the long run, or give a better overall standard of life for their pets? Make sure you point out every possible feature. Anyone purchasing anything that needs thought to decide wants to know that what they’re buying will be worth it say 2 months from now. Will yours be? Think of how the features will keep on givin’ so to speak.
Be sure what you have to offer is truly worth the price. Are you eco conscious, are your fabrics luxurious or at least feel that way. Is everything handmade, do you personally provide the service or do equally qualified consultants. Is there a status that comes with your products or services? Believe it or not this matters with Splurge buys.
A way to get your Splurge products and services out there is to carefully select pet parents to give away to. But in doing this you have to go a little bit further in the return. While you don’t have to ask them to buy anything, you should ask for some type of return. Blog post, high-profile mentions, sharing with a group, or some type of network share from them. You can’t go willy nilly with a Splurge product because it’s just too costly. Be smart and make sure you get something in return for your gifting.
So with these quick points you should be able to define where you are, make the most of it, and finally get the customers, clients you deserve. And if you’re somewhere in between a Bargain and a Splurge there’s room for you too. Just define and go for it.
Got questions or need some feedback? Ask it’s what I do!
Hey there and welcome to Bark Business, I'm Rickina and I'll be your blogger for your visit today. My mission for Bark Business is to share wonderful pet businesses with you. The ones you may not have heard of, but that should be on your pet-radar. I wanna feature you, got a fabulous pet-inspired product, shoot me an email to be considered. 