S1/E1 – Kicking off Season One!

Transcript:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Lucky Pup Podcast, where we’re talking business dogs and how to live a full and happy life. I’m your host Morgan Weber. I am really excited to kick off this first season of the podcast and I am really happy that you’re here with me. I’ve been a business owner for 10 years now, and I’m turning into a bit of a serial entrepreneur and a serial project starter. I tend to find something I’m interested in or I see something that’s missing and I really want to explore it further.

Now I had the honor of being the Pet Sitter of the Year for Pet Sitters International in 2022. And during that time, I really noticed how much burnout was really affecting our industry. And we were still really weathering the effects of COVID. And I think many of us were tired and overworked and trying to find a better way forward. Now, honestly, I think many of us are probably still feeling that way. But I can tell you that I’ve struggled with burnout, really over the last decade, kind of going back to when I was in architecture school. Before I was a pet sitter, I was trying to be an architect and architecture school is really pretty brutal. And the industry as a whole is not very forgiving either. And being an architecture school, they really taught us to chase an idea, to stay up late, to throw our whole selves into something. And I definitely bought into that perspective, and I brought it with me into business ownership as well.

I had graduated architecture school with my master’s degree, kind of at the tail end of a recession. And I was barely making a living wage. I was pretty happy to just have a job, honestly, but also we could barely pay our bills at the time. So we started pet sitting to make some extra money, do some active work that wasn’t behind a desk all the time. And, um, pretty soon we were getting pretty busy and after five years we were working nonstop between our pet-sitting work and our day jobs. And, saying, you know what, someday I’ll have more bandwidth and someday I’ll be able to slow down a little bit. 

Well, then I quit my architecture job and I focused on pet care full time. And things were doing pretty good for a while. I had some free time. I was able to walk my own dogs. Things were getting caught up around our house. I had hobbies again. It was pretty good. Um, but then we kept getting busier and then we hired folks and we were still busy and suddenly again, I was working nonstop saying that, you know, someday I’ll have more bandwidth and someday I’ll get to do all of these things again. Well, then COVID came and I think like so many of us, I processed about $15,000 of cancellations in one week. You know, guys that hurt. That was hard. Then unfortunately our beloved dog, Olive was really struggling and her quality of life. Was not so good. And we really came to the realization that, um, unfortunately, because of the circumstances that she was born into, she really had no quality of life left. And even though it broke our hearts, we decided that the kindest thing we could do for her was to offer her peace through behavioral euthanasia. And like I said it at about broke us. It was terrible. Then three weeks after we said goodbye to Olive, we learned that my husband had a tumor. Yeah, it was a terrible year. It was not, it was not a good thing.

And amidst all of that grief I realized that there could be, and there should be no more working non-stop, waiting for someday to, you know, someday in the future someday later to enjoy life. Because too much can change too quickly and we need to enjoy life now.  And I realized that while I was evaluating my dogs and what I was doing to optimize their quality of life, I was totally neglecting my own. If I had a quality of life scale, it would have been in the toilet. And I was making sure my dogs had time for fulfilling and fun activities. But I was choosing, I was choosing to work nonstop over my own fun and fulfilling activities and spending time with those I loved. And I really realized that while I was being a great steward of my dog’s lives, I was not being a great steward of my own life. And I was really thinking about these things and I really started to consider how could I prioritize my own full and happy life. And I really looked to my dogs for their best advice on living a good life. 

They have an amazing set of skills and behaviors and favorite things that they do in life. And we can learn so much about how to live a good life by just seeing what comes to them naturally.  

So since then, I’ve really been spending these last three years thinking about this and trying new things and picking up those abandoned hobbies and encouraging, empowering others to have their own full and happy lives too. I’ve been reading books and following experts. And I came to the point where I really had things to share with all of you and things that I’ve learned. And I am just really excited to pour all of those things into this podcast.

I believe in being truthful about the hard things that we experience in life, you know? I’ve already given you a clue into the way our 2020 went. And, after all of these struggles that I’ve had with this burnout cycle and the emotional challenges that came or that come with working in pet care, I really want to make room for conversations around some of these harder aspects of our work and being a business owner. Because I really believe that the more we discuss these challenges, the more that we can normalize them. Now with this podcast, I am hoping to bring you really candid and authentic conversations is certainly it’s not going to be all doom and gloom here by any means. We are going to talk about the joys and the benefits and the amazing things about being a business owner and working in this industry. And we’re going to talk about some hard things too, but it’s going to. I promise you guys, it’s not just going to be sad things.

But this first season, I am really excited because I am talking with my friends, both inside and outside of the pet sitting industry. We are going to share lessons learned over the years, the struggles, and for sure the joys that come along with being a business owner and really how everybody got to where they are today. So I’m hoping you’re going to hear some big ideas that resonate with you maybe you’re going to hear about some things that really challenge your thinking or something that inspires you and I really hope that you’re going to find  something in these episodes that spurs you into action of whatever kind that is whether it’s making a change in your business making a change in your life because I really believe that we all deserve to live a full and happy life that’s why i keep saying this over and over again And i hope that this podcast helps encourage you to do some of that yourself. I’ve really been thinking and dreaming about a lot of the things that we’re going to talk about in Season One and I believe that taking action is the best way to create a better future for ourselves and our teams and our clients.  

I love getting to talk with all of you guys. It is one of my favorite things if you’ve ever been to a conference that I’ve been to and anyone ever comes up and wants to chat, i just love chatting. I always had the report card that said i talked too much, and I said you know what it’s going to serve me well someday and I think here I am! So I think that it is much less fun to sit behind this microphone and just talk into the internet and hoping, you know, that somebody out there is maybe listening or picking up something of value so instead i want you to connect with me and i want you to stop by and say hello because everything is much more fun when we can be a little bit social.