The APDT Chronicle of the Dog Summer 2020 | Page 32

FEATURE | LESSONS LEARNED
1) Get your finances in order. Sadly, despite governing
funding and local community/state grants offered to
help businesses, there were many small business owners
who weren’t able to apply simply because they didn’t
have their financial paperwork up-to-date. Lack of good
financial data prevented some small business owners from
even filling out applications. It’s true that in the pet care
industry most of us get involved because we love the dogs.
The financial paperwork isn’t usually the highlight of our
work, and it’s easy to put it off in favor of working with the
dogs. But this pandemic should be a solid reminder that
you have to run your business like a business and you really
need to know your numbers. Being able to run reports to
understand your payroll, your expenses, and your revenue
is vital to ensure you are making money. As Peter Druker,
a management consultant, educator and author, states,
“What gets measured, gets managed” and we need to
manage the money in our business.
Lessons Learned
from COVID-19
By Robin Bennett, CPDT-KA
None of us could have predicted the impact COVID-19
would have on our businesses. Stay-at-home orders and
canceled events have been great for bonding with our
pets... but as a business owner, social distancing has hurt
your bottom line. We have seen a huge impact on all pet services: dog
training, grooming, daycare, boarding, petsitting/dogwalking. Every
business felt the impact of this pandemic.
And while we could wallow in self-pity, vent about our losses, or how
poorly our community, state, government (name the group of your
choice) handled things, I think there is a better use of our time. This
is the time to pivot and make changes. This is the time to consider
the future of your business. This is the time to determine how you
will rebound from this crisis and how you will come out stronger in
the long run. More than anything else, this should be the wake-up
call to ensure you set up your business for success if something like
this ever happens again. This is the time to ponder lessons learned
from a pandemic.
Action step: Whether you are a small sole-proprietorship
or a corporation, hire a bookkeeper or learn to do it
yourself. Keep your financials up-to-date and study
them on a monthly basis.
2) Have a budget. In our business consulting at The Dog
Gurus, nothing brings on more anxiety and stress than
when we ask business owners to put together a budget.
Most pet business owners dread the question and it’s rare
that our response to, “Do you have a budget” is met with a
smile and an up-to-date document. Budgeting is valuable
for a number of reasons. It gives you a benchmark to
know the revenue goal you need to hit in order to make
a certain profit. It will tell you when you should increase
your marketing or staffing. It will help you understand
the impact of discounts on your bottom line (and it would
surprise you to know that many businesses are giving away
more than 25 percent of their profit without even realizing
it). Having your budget reviewed by an outside consultant
can help you identify leaks in your business where you are
losing money. And, during COVID-19, a budget would
have helped you know what you need to make in “unique
and original services” to mitigate the devastating losses
when revenue dipped.
Action step: Complete your budget for 2020. It’s never
too late to get one done. Don’t wait until next year. Start
today. If you aren’t sure where to begin, just pull your
financial data from last year and use that (if you don’t have
that data, refer to #1).
30 Building Better Trainers Through Education
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