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By Beth Stultz-Hairston | January 1, 2024

With the start of a new year comes the much anticipated—or perhaps most dreaded—time to set new goals for your pet-sitting business. With the hectic holiday rush over, have you taken time to sit down and determine what you want your pet-sitting or dog-walking company to achieve this year?

As you consider the progress you’d like your pet-care business to make over this next year, your goals may be to make more money, gain new clients, earn enough to quit your other full or part-time job to exclusively focus on pet sitting; or maybe you need to finally take the next big step and hire staff pet sitters.

As a business owner, you already know how powerful goal setting can be for your business. When you first entered the pet-sitting industry, you likely started with specific goals—a desired number of clients, a target income, etc. In your hectic day-to-day schedule, though, it is easy to lose sight of your goals or fail to create new goals. Sometimes, when you are simply trying to fit in time for that last visit of the day or figure out when you are ever going to have time to sit down and invoice clients, short-term and long-term goal setting may be the farthest thing from your mind.

But without goals, your business will not thrive and cannot reach the level of success you can achieve—so stop now and schedule time for a goal-setting session. If you can’t fit in time today, schedule a planning session in the next couple of weeks and be sure to invite any other necessary goal setters, such as your business partner.

How can you set S.M.A.R.T. goals for your pet-sitting business?

It’s easy to throw out possible goals you want to accomplish in the coming year like “I want to make a lot more money that I made last year!” But take time to dig deeper and set S.M.A.R.T. goals, which are much more likely to be achieved.

So, what makes a goal a “smart” goal? Let’s take a closer look at the acronym S.M.A.R.T.

S: Your goal should be specific. You have a much better chance of accomplishing a specific goal than a general one. For example, let’s say one of your pet-sitting business goals this year is to “finish paperwork—including client invoices and staff schedules—in a timelier manner.”

Now the sentiment of this “goal” is great—but do you really have enough details to even get started accomplishing this goal? Consider why you want to accomplish this goal, when you want to have this goal accomplished, if anyone else will be involved to help you with this goal and if there are any limitations on you achieving this goal.

In thinking more about this goal, you may determine that you are already spending fifteen hours a month on paperwork and are often two weeks behind on client invoicing—and you want to decrease the amount of time you spend on paperwork and make sure clients are invoiced (and staff scheduled) in the most efficient manner.

So, if we take your original goal and make it more specific, you may have a new goal that looks like this:

“My goal is to reduce the amount of time I spend on client invoicing and staff scheduling by 25% during quarter one of this year, and ultimately by 50% (down to around seven hours/month) by the end of the year.”

Re-phrasing the goal this way gives you a specific milestone to reach and allows you to gauge your progress throughout the year in relationship to this set goal.

M: Any goal you set should also be measurable.  If you can’t measure your goal, how will you know if and when you’ve actually achieved it?! Let’s say you have a goal in mind to increase awareness of your pet-sitting business and the services you provide in your local community this year. Again, the sentiment of this “goal” is right on target—you need local pet parents to be aware of who you are and what you do if you are going to increase your client base and revenues. But “increased awareness” is almost impossible to measure (and determine if you’ve achieved) if you do not make the goal more specific and indicate what you will measure.

So, how could you measure increased awareness? Typically, as more pet parents know about your business, the more you will see phone inquiries and website traffic increase. These specific indicators give you something to measure.  So if we make your original goal measurable, you may have a goal that looks like this:

“My goal is to increase my overall pet-sitting business website traffic by 25% and my number of incoming phone call inquiries by 15% this year.”

Re-phrasing your goal this way gives you specific statistics that you can track and measure to determine if you are meeting your goal.

A: Your goals should also be attainable.  We all (well, most of us) want to make a million dollars, be the perfect business owner—all while never eating junk food or losing our tempers with anyone—in the coming year. But a key component of any goal is that it be attainable or achievable.

Making a goal attainable does not mean you won’t push yourself or that you should set the bar low for your goals this year. With planning, determination and hard work, most goals you have in your mind for your business are likely attainable.

However, don’t set yourself up for failure when goal setting. Increasing your client base by 300% this year is likely not a goal you can accomplish (unless you are just starting out and have a very small client base to start with)—even if you focus your efforts exclusively on this goal.

Keep in mind, this does not mean that a lofty goal like a 300% increase in clients isn’t attainable but restricting this goal to one year may make it unattainable for you.

So, if we make this goal attainable, you may have a goal that looks like this:

“My goal is to achieve an overall 50% increase in clients this year and achieve an overall 300% increase in clients in the next four years.”

Remember, not all goals have to be short-term goals. Give thought to where you would like your pet-sitting business to be in the next 5 to 10 years (long-term goals) and set monthly, quarterly, and yearly short-term goals that move you closer to your long-term business goals.

R: Any goal you set for your pet-sitting business should also be relevant and realistic.  In short, your goal needs to make sense for your business and your overall mission. Similarly, your goals need to be realistic and take into account your available resources, the current pet-sitting industry, and your local economy.

While a 50% increase in clients may be realistic for some pet sitters, it may be an unrealistic goal for pet sitters in areas that are experiencing a high number of layoffs and high unemployment. Also make sure your goal is realistic based on industry statistics and trends. Check industry resources, like PSI’s State of the Industry Survey, when setting goals related to clients, income, and similar business characteristics.

Also, if you want to dramatically increase your client base, additional staffing will likely be a requirement. If you are currently solo, have you done the groundwork necessary to ensure you make the right staffing decisions for your business (e.g., will you use employees or contractors?) and are you ready to be a manager?

Using both local and industry information to analyze your goals—and really giving thought to your vision for your business—will help you re-shape or possibly completely change your goals for the year. 

For example, while you may want to increase your client base by 50%, you may want to consider if the goal of having more clients is actually relevant to your business, or if you simply need to generate more revenues. There are many ways to achieve that, but if your local economy is faltering or you haven’t had time to fully research staffing best practices (both of which would impact your ability to hire and/or quickly increase your client base), you may want to revise your goal to something more realistic and relevant to your business at this time:

“My goal for this year is to at least maintain my current client base of [your # of clients] but increase my overall revenues by 15% by offering additional services, such as nail trimming, pet transportation and overnight visits.”

T: Your pet-sitting business goals should also be time bound/timely. It’s very easy to put off a goal—or even completely forget about it—if you do not establish deadlines. Specifying a time restraint in your business goals will give your goals a sense of urgency and keep you accountable for what you’ve set out to achieve in the coming year.

Even your best ideas can fall by the wayside if you do not set up specific dates for projects to be completed. If you are looking for “free advertising” in the coming year, ramping up your public relations efforts may be one of your pet-sitting goals.

To make your goal time bound, set specific deadlines and benchmarks for your upcoming PR efforts. To do this, you may update your goal in this way:

“My goal is to contact five local reporters/writers to introduce myself and offer to serve as a resource for pet and pet-care articles by the end of February. In addition, I will distribute at least one press release to my local media in each quarter this year.”

You can also tie your goal in to the specific results you hope to achieve with your PR efforts:

“My goal is to be mentioned in at least five local newspaper or magazine articles by the end of the year.”

You’ll notice each of these options sets a specific deadline for what you plan to accomplish. A good idea is to set a quarterly goal check-in on your calendar. For example, set aside time on April 1, July 1, October 1 to track your results from the previous quarter; and then next January, you can set aside time to look back on your final results from the previous year.

What are your pet-sitting goals this year?

Have you set any S.M.A.R.T. goals for your pet-sitting business this year? Are you already taking steps to achieve those goals?  Tell us more about your current pet-sitting goals below in the comments section.

Is one of your goals this year to actually take the first step in becoming a professional pet sitter or dog walker? Learn more about how PSI can help you achieve this goal in the coming year.