The Evolution of the Entrepreneurial Spirit featuring Beth Heyer, Owner of Babysitting Connection and BethHeyer.com

Danny: Joining us is Beth Heyer, the owner of Babysitting Connection that’s Sitting Connection, and Beth Hyer Consulting, where she works with numerous brand new and established agency owners. But it wasn’t always this way for Beth, her journey is a testament to the power of pivots, strategic shifts, and direction that can lead to unexpected and fulfilling destination.

In this episode, Beth gets honest, like really honest and hands over her insights to making successful pivots, sharing that they can be in good times just as much as when your back is against the wall. And we pivot a bit in this episode as well, making it a very fun listen for every business owner turn it up so you too can gain valuable insights for your own entrepreneurial journey.

Hi Beth. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. 

Beth Heyer: Hi Danny. Thanks for having me. 

Danny: This is great. ’cause this is the second time that you’ve been on our podcast and you’ve done webinars with us before. It’s incredibly awesome that you’re willing to share like all of this information all the time with everybody.

Like you’re just transparent and honest and I feel like I can ask you anything. 

Beth Heyer: Always. I am an open book and I am a firm believer in community over competition. 

Danny: So for our new listeners, could you just tell us a little bit about your backstory? 

Beth Heyer: Yeah. Um, so I am in Austin, Texas. I moved here about six years ago and, um, I moved a thousand miles away from all my friends and family.

I’d spent my career in recruiting and training. Uh, I was a stay at home mom when I moved here and shortly after I moved here. It was kind of time for me to get back to work, time for me to figure out what I wanna do. I knew I never wanted to have another boss again. I wanted to start my own business, and I saw a huge need here in Austin.

In for safe, reliable childcare. I was struggling to find babysitters myself. My kids at the time were two and three, struggling with Facebook. Didn’t really like anything I was finding, so it kind of just fell in my lap that this is what I needed to do and this is what I needed to build. So I launched babysitting Connection five years ago in January, and we have since grown into five cities.

We’re in San Antonio. Austin Houston, Dallas, and then we recently went nationwide in Salt Lake City, and then about a year ago we also added pet sitting. So we have pet sitting connection and then much to the folks at engine hires. Um, persuasion, uh, Mary in particular, um, I started Beth Hire Coaching, um, about six months ago, um, where I really just specialize in helping agencies add babysitting to their platform.

Or I also have a couple clients who are brand new to the industry and helping them launch their babysitting agency. And also working a little bit on the nanny side too. 

Danny: I didn’t even realize you were in so many cities. That’s crazy. So I know that you said that you never wanted to have a boss again, but that means then you’ve had a boss.

So how did you get from having a boss to now being the boss? 

Beth Heyer: Yeah, yeah. I mean. I spent about 10 years of my career, like I said, work in recruiting and training. I worked in, um, commission-based outside sales, which is some pretty, uh, rigorous recruiting and a tough thing to recruit for. And I loved the work and I loved my coworkers, but I had some good bosses and I had some bad bosses, and I’m a pretty, um.

Hmm. Outspoken person. So not everybody likes to be my boss. I would say not everyone is equipped to be my boss. And, um, I just, I just didn’t want it. I just didn’t want to, to, I didn’t wanna work the nine to five. I had little babies. I had been a stay-at-home mom. I wanted flexibility. I wanted to be able to go on, you know, vacations whenever I wanted, knowing that that was.

A very long-term goal. You know, I knew, um, the first couple years were gonna be tough. Uh, some things in my, my life changed with my family and it was just time for me to get back to work. And although when I did launch babysitting connection, I worked like four part-time jobs. I had so many jobs for like the first year, I was paying two people to work for babysitting Connection before I even.

Paid myself. Um, so I did have bosses for a while, but, um, you know, I very much bootstrapped this business. Was working a lot of other jobs part-time just to help my family and help make ND meet. I was working at my kids’ preschool, doing some stuff there to help get their discounted tuition and I was working for a neighborhood newspaper and, um, but all of those things really helped me build connections in my community that then worked out.

Um, so. I completely lost track of the question at this point. So yeah, I just, um, I decided to start my own business that I’m never gonna have a boss again, and now five years in, I can finally, you know, go on vacation and not have to turn in a PTO form. And I’ve worked really hard to try to also create an environment where I am a boss that I would wanna work for also.

When 

Danny: did you get to stop doing those other jobs? Babysitting connection just took over. 

Beth Heyer: It was probably about a year, a year and a half. 

Danny: That actually sounds pretty good. 

Beth Heyer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I look back at that time and it was crazy. I didn’t have as great boundaries then. And I talk, I, I kind of talk a lot about boundaries now in my life and the people that I work with.

Because I didn’t have great boundaries, but at the same time, me not having great boundaries probably helped babysitting, connection. Um, but you know, I, my kids at that time weren’t even in school. They were in preschool, so they were going part-time. So I would get up early in the morning and then I would work, and then I would take them to school and then I would, um, work when they were in school and then they’d come home and I’d kind of mom from, you know, three to three to seven, three to eight.

And then I’d work again from like eight to midnight. And I was working all the time. It was, um. It wasn’t until a year and a half in that I finally was able to like, take a couple days off where I didn’t have my phone on, like I didn’t have to be on. And I knew that my team could handle it and I knew that I had a well equipped team.

And now luckily I have an amazing team of six and I have a lot more flexibility and I have a lot more boundaries. And I realized that, you know, someone doesn’t need to have their email reply to at 1130, um, on a Friday night. But I was working. A lot, especially in the beginning. I was working a couple other jobs for the first year and even still, I have this great relationship with a recruiting agency and they’ll reach out to me even still, I did a project with for them at Christmas time.

Danny: Yeah. You’re just like available 

Beth Heyer: too much. 

Danny: Like you’ve never, like you don’t burn the bridges, I guess that’s what I really Oh, 

Beth Heyer: no. I would never burn bridges and, and so like, it’s funny, I, I worked. I worked when, when I first started, I was working for this accounting company. They’re really great and they specialize in accounting, recruiting, or staffing thing.

And for the last five years I’ve done like this really niche project with them for hiring tax accountants for tax season. So bizarre. I don’t know anything about taxes. Like I don’t, I don’t know this stuff, but I love it because I’ve been so out of. The corporate world for so long, like it gives me an opportunity to like see what software they’re using and see what processes they’re using and, and learn about their systems and actually, like, have a boss for a little bit.

So I don’t need to do it, but I enjoy it because it’s just it. I talk to get to talk to different people than I normally would and it gives me a chance to kind of learn different things. Um, so that job I. Still do, uh, for, you know, six weeks a year. Um, but most of the work I quit after about a year, a year and a half.

I kind of transitioned away from it. Um, and was fo solely focused on babysitting connection. Um, about a year and a half in, 

Danny: when you mentioned that you had poor boundaries or no boundaries, and then you started having boundaries. Yes. What did that shift look like? What happened there? That boundaries actually became a thing to now you actually tell people.

You, they need to have them. 

Beth Heyer: Um, it was bad. I was not healthy. I was like, I started to gain weight. I was like, not. Eating food when people should eat food. I would work until like 11 or 12 at night, and then I would like drink a half a bottle of wine and eat a bunch of chips and queso at like midnight. It was so bad.

And then it also got to a point where my, my ex-husband, my husband at the time, I started to do really weird things. Like we kept losing the ketchup. We kept you losing the ketchup. So like my, my son gets chicken nuggets every night. We put the ketchup out. The ketchup kept disappearing and we were finding the ketchup in like.

Places where ketchup shouldn’t be because my brain was like in other places. So I would clear the table and I’d put the ketchup under the sink. With the dish detergent. My ex was like, you need to get your life together. He’s like, you are not present at all. It was just, I was stretched so thin that. I wasn’t giving a hundred percent to anybody anymore.

I wasn’t focused on work because I was so distracted with dinner and all this stuff. I wasn’t focused on my kids and I just, it was kind of just like, I need to get it together. And it took a lot of just like convincing myself that yes, it’s important for me to show my kids that I am a working mom and that I’m committed to my business.

And they, they love babysitting connections, you know, as much as I do. But if I’m not showing up for them. That’s not fair. So it was about putting my phone down. So what I, I started to do is I told my team from five to seven o’clock every night, I’m not in the phones, I’m not touching the phones. So my team started to help pick up some shifts then, and then we kind, when I was able to hand that off, I realized this, we don’t need to be working from five to seven o’clock at night.

Right? That we don’t need to be working after five o’clock. There’s no, you know, there’s certain things. If a sitter calls in sick for a sit tomorrow, that’s one thing. If someone sends an email that says, Hey, I’m interested in learning more about your company, that can wait until the next day. It can. And I had this thing in my head that if I wanted to be this great business, I had to respond to everyone instantly.

And I just felt like I had to do that, and I felt like I was letting my customers down. And that’s not true. No one emails a business expecting a response at nine o’clock at night, even now. You know, there’s some weekends where I work a little more than others, depending on if I have my kids and all of that.

And I had someone this weekend that was like, thank you so much for like replying to me on the weekend so quickly. So it’s like, it’s nice that they recognize that, like I didn’t have to do that. And they didn’t email me on Saturday expecting a response on a Saturday. So it was. When I handed it over to my team, no one’s gonna love your business as much as you do.

So I saw that my team was kind of not as driven to reply instantly. Yeah. And it made me realize, like, okay, like we’re not crumbling, we’re not going out of business like we can do this. And one thing I did is I, I put in my signature of my email, our business hours are nine to five, Monday through Friday.

I will do my best to reply to you during those hours. If there is an emergency, you can text this number. So that was my way of instantly apologizing to every single person, you know, that was my way to apologize. And it’s funny, I was talking to a mom, um, a couple months ago. She was a new mom and she was like, how do you do it?

How do you do it? And I was like, boundaries. And I told her, she, it’s, she owned a, um, she owns a. Baby physical therapy, um, company. And so all of her, all of her clients are moms. So I was like, put a signature. I said, put it outta office every day at five o’clock that says. Just like you, I’m a new mom and I wanna spend time with my babies just like you do too.

We’re all sleep deprived, we’re all tired. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. And it was like her, like me telling her that. I was like, you’re being lighthearted. You’re being relatable. No mom. Is going to be mad at you that you are nursing your own baby instead of replying to them after hours. I said, you have to forgive yourself.

No one’s mad at you. You are mad at yourself about it. Yeah, so you need to forgive yourself for not being a hundred percent all the time. I’m such a better mom when I’m able to focus on my kids. Put work aside and focus on my work and put everything else aside and focus on my friends and focus on my house, and instead of trying to do everything at one time, you’re basically half-assing everything.

Danny: I also wanna point out, like what you’re saying too, is like when you step back a little bit, it actually gives your team the oxygen to take up the space. And start making, start learning to make more executive decisions. And then they can go, Hey, I made this decision, and you could go, that was an amazing decision.

Or, Hey, next time that happens, I actually want you to call me first, because that was a big one. And that 

Beth Heyer: I have always, and I tell my team, um, from the beginning, like anybody I brought on, like I’m an ask for forgiveness boss. I want, you know, once we get you trained and once you kind of get the gist of it.

Do not text me and ask me if you can do something. Do not text me and ask. Like, unless this is a very, like you said, unless this is a very niche or specific situation, I hired you because I trust you and I trust your judgment and I trust that you can figure it out. And I had a team member, um, it was a babysitter.

She was a, she is and was a wonderful babysitter for us and. We brought her onto our admin team for a while and it just wasn’t, it just wasn’t clicking. Mm-hmm. And I finally sat her down and I said, I can’t, like she wanted me to be. Ask. You know, she wanted to come to me and she wanted me to give her all this direction and give her all this guidance.

And she’s like, I thought I wanted a boss like that, but I don’t. I actually need a boss who’s more involved and more on top of things. And I was like, that’s not me. Yeah. And she’s still with us and we have a great relationship. But I’m really conscious now of when I bring people into my team and when people I wanna work with, it’s like, I’m not gonna hold your hand.

And if that’s what you need. That’s totally fine, but like, that’s not gonna be for me. So I’ve always really been able to, you know, let go and let God, like let my team handle it so when I know that my team is on the phones, I can completely shut off. They know that if there’s an emergency they need to text my personal number ’cause I’m not even texting the group chat.

You know? So I think just really hiring a. Capable team and knowing that they can handle it. And if they can’t, knowing that they need to ask. 

Danny: How did you know to like continue to grow your team, grow the business? What is that part where you went from, this is my business in this city, and then you go, I’m gonna put it over there too.

How did you know to even make that decision? How did you know to make these changes? 

Beth Heyer: Oh, I’m just a crazy person. My tattoo says, make no small plans. Like, I don’t, like, I just get an idea in my head and I do it. It’s, it’s a. Problem. Like this is not normal behavior. Um, San Antonio was our first city and it was, it, it just felt like a low hanging fruit, right?

They’re an hour, hour and a half from us. We’re, we were kind of already pushing kind of into Northern San Antonio. We were like, this seems like an easy thing to do. Um, I had either recently. Or had intended to hire someone in San Antonio. One of my team members lived in San Antonio for while, so I knew I would have some feet on the ground and we’re just like, let’s try it.

And then San Antonio, you know, happened and Austin’s always gonna be our biggest market. Um, San Antonio, you know, took off, started doing really well, and then maybe a year later we were like. Well, you know, Houston and Dallas are pretty big cities too, and I, I just have zero chill. I mean, ultimately that’s what it came down to.

People weren’t beating on my doors and telling me they needed me in Dallas and Houston. I was just, I’m a crazy person. So Dallas and Houston kind of just happened ’cause it’s like, well we tried San Antonio and I do think, I’m always willing to admit my mistakes. I wouldn’t call Dallas and Houston a mistake, but.

I advise now if you’re gonna launch in a city that you don’t live in, to have an ambassador in that city to have feet on the ground in that city, to have a mom, to have an ambassador. So we now have an ambassador in, um, Dallas. And um, it’s, it’s going really well there. And we’re kind of working on finding an ambassador in Houston.

’cause I do think to differentiate myself from some of the apps out there and care.com and all that. To have a real face and a real person there representing the business is really important. So I always advise my, my coaching clients, if you are gonna start another city, find someone there. And then Salt Lake City was actually really fun.

Um. Salt Lake City. A cast member reached out to me, Allison, and sent me an email and said, Hey, um, you know, we left Texas two years ago. We have not been able to find but one babysitter, we need your help. What do we, what do we, what do we do to get babysitting connection here? And, um, she was kinda interested in helping run it.

She works. Um. Has a career also. So she is our ambassador and manager in Salt Lake City. And then even crazier, another member reached out to me shortly after that and said, Hey, we’re in Vancouver, Washington and we wanna bring babysit connection to Vancouver, Washington. I had to really sit and think about, this was the one time where I was like, you need to.

Take a chill pill here sis, and figure out what you’re doing with your life. And I really, really thought about it and I thought, you know, there’s people who start agencies because they wanna sell ’em and they wanna grow ’em and they wanna scale and all this stuff. That wasn’t me. I don’t have a drive to to sell babysitting connection.

I have a daughter and son who’s eight and 10. I would love to pass it on to them in 10 years. I was like, is it important to me to own. 10 babysitting connections across the, across the country. I looked into licensing, I looked into franchising, and I just don’t, it wasn’t a. Motivator for me to have that.

And I decided to add that to the coaching. So now my, my past members in Vancouver have hired me to, we’re calling it, um, babysitting agency blueprint to, to build their business from scratch. So I just come in for three or four months and we do everything from the name to the LLC, to the branding, to the logo, to the marketing, to the software to.

You know, ev so your phone number, all of those things. And it’s really inspired me to do that more. I, I would rather I get more inspired and excited to help another family build a business than I do kinda adding to babysitting connections, branches. So that’s been super exciting and I am, I’m really excited about that.

It’s a lot of my network now is, they’re already agencies, so I’m kind of like trying to figure out how I can find people that are. Earlier in the stages who are just kind starting and are thinking about an agency and how I can help them launch. Yeah. And it’s, you know, I offer it much more affordable than a franchise.

I don’t, you know, I’m not, I’m not taking a cut of your earnings and then as soon as you launch or as soon as you want me out of the picture, I’m out of the picture like it’s you. But I just, you know, take my experience and background with the agency and, and. All the things I’ve learned and all the things that I would do different and sharing that insight to help get someone launched.

So we got that coming. I don’t wanna say too much about it yet, ’cause they haven’t, they haven’t shared too much, but yet. But, um, no, keep telling us more. Tell us. They’re gonna be up in, um, in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon here. Hopefully before the end of the year they’re gonna be launching. 

Danny: I love that because as you’re saying that, and I wasn’t, I didn’t know that that’s where you were gonna go with it, but I love it too because I feel like you can.

Continually change. And if you change your mind and you want to be the giant conglomerate of the United States or the world of babysitting, that can become your agenda as well. You don’t have to like, you know, it’s nice to reflect every once in a while and ago, is this actually what I wanna be doing? It sounds like you had that moment where it was given to you to go, do you wanna be in this city?

And you had that like moment to reflect on it and choose how you kind of wanted to proceed. But you can do that all the time. 

Beth Heyer: And no one hates to make the, no one loves to make the wrong decision. I mean, just like being totally vulnerable. You know, we launched a nonprofit a couple years ago and it just hasn’t been what we hoped it would be.

It, it’s a, it has a lot of focus in the foster care system and foster care system’s messy, and there’s a lot of red tape and just things that we’ve really struggled. To do what we wanna do. And, and I’ve, I’ve had to sit and think like, is this, is this something I, I wanna keep doing? Um, and although it’s really hard to admit that, I don’t think I made the wrong decision, but to kind of close something or close a chapter on something that you were passionate about or worked on or really believed in.

And, you know, that’s kind of it on a big scale. And, you know, we’ve had to think too, like, you know what? We don’t have a big presence in Houston, like. Do we wanna stay in Houston? What do we wanna do there? Do we wanna commit time and money and resources and grow, or do we wanna, you know, hand off the members we have there to somebody else?

You know? And those are, you know, the big decisions. But there’s a lot of things with my coaching that I’m helping, um, you know, clients build and, and they’re making these decisions on pricing or structure and I. If it doesn’t work, just change it. You know, if, if, if you were six months in and you realize this, this pricing structure doesn’t work, change it.

You know, no one’s saying you’re locked into this forever. You’re the owner. You get to do whatever you want. Um, so you know, when I built babysitting connection, we, there was bells and whistles and all of these things. And I’ve learned in the coaching, let’s just keep it really simple. Yeah. Let’s keep it as simple as possible and we’re not gonna overthink it because I think when we are starting a business or making decisions.

We think of every single possible scenario. What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? And I’ve learned, you know, 65,000 sits in. That one outlier, you should not make a policy based on that. Right. Um, so, you know, we’ve changed our sick policy over the years. We’ve changed our cancellation policy over the years.

We’ve changed our pricing, we’ve changed our memberships. No one’s, you know, no one’s come to me and said, Beth, you’re a failure at a business because you changed your cancellation policy. You know. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to realize this isn’t working how we want it to work, or this isn’t suiting us, or we’re losing money doing this and saying, I’m gonna make a decision.

You know, I’m really calm, I’m really careful with pricing stuff like. Once a year, we, I don’t wanna like change, you know, change rates and policies, but we, every year we sit and we send surveys to our members and we send surveys to our sitters and really take a hard look at does this make sense? Is it working, is it profitable?

And, you know, is it serving the members? Is it serving the sitters? Is it serving the business? And make decisions based on that. Like, you’re allowed to change your mind, you’re allowed to change your policies. Um, so I think, I think that’s one of the big things I’ve learned with the newer businesses or the businesses.

Going from nanny to babysitting is you just kind of overthink it a lot and it’s a lot simpler than you probably think it’s gonna be. 

Danny: I totally agree with you too, without having been in your shoes of people can often think of. Thousand scenarios, and that might not be what your clients want at all. You might have thought of all those thousand scenarios and turns out they want something else and you should just be that business sometimes be the thing that all of your clients are telling you they wanna work with you, but in a slightly other way.

So maybe it’s prices, maybe it’s offerings or services or all of that. With your surveys, what’s the worst thing that you. Heard from like the surveys and that you changed 

Beth Heyer: O one big thing we changed this year with sitters e especially with my sitters, they’re that they’re not employees. You know, I think they all feel a little, they can feel disconnected.

They don’t necess, they don’t know their coworkers that nannies and people, they don’t, they don’t run their coworkers. We try to do meetups and I think once you’ve been with us for a while, you realize like. We’re there, like we’re involved. You could text us any time. But newer sitters, I think sometimes struggle and maybe feel like we are kind of an app and they aren’t connected and their voice doesn’t matter.

But we had a huge, uh, response this year. Our sitters did not feel that our less than 48 hour cancellation policy was fair. Um, they really felt that it should be. A longer period of time where they said if it’s less than 48 hours, we can’t get rebooked. If maybe it’s a little bit more time, maybe we can get rebooked, but we would have a lot of sitters who would get canceled on, you know, Friday night, Friday morning for a Friday night or Saturday night sit, and would only make 25 bucks when they were gonna make.

$150 at this sit. So we, we listened and we changed our policy and um, we extended it to 72 hours and we raised the rates. Um, and also one big thing we did this year too with our cancellation policies, and this was a hard one for me to swallow because. I’ve always said, I’m never gonna take money out of my sitter’s pockets.

I don’t take a, like they get paid directly by the families. I don’t take any cuts or commissions or anything like that. Families pay me for the membership. But we realized, and we’re with Engine Hire and Stripe, like I’m sure many of the listeners are too. We were paying 3% commission or 3.7% not commission fees.

Because the cancellation policies were coming in and they were going back out. So we would bring a $40 cancellation policy in, cancellation fee in, we would pay $4 on it, and then we would send the sitter $40. So we were losing three, four, $5 every time a member canceled. And I was like, we can’t, we can’t do this.

We can’t sustain this. So we made the decision and, and, and it wasn’t a. You can figure it out. It wasn’t a very vocal decision, but our members think the cancellation fee is $50. Our sitters think the cancellation fee is $45. Sitters got a raise in their cancellation fees. We now take $5. I’m not, I’m not making money off that cancellation fee.

You know, I’m covering my, we call it like a processing fee. Yeah, yeah, 

Danny: exactly. 

Beth Heyer: But I was so nervous to do that because to me, it felt like I was taking money from my sitters and I’m like. No, I’m not. I, I gave my sitters a raise on the cancellations. They all, it went up, I think five, $10 each, but I started taking that $5.

It, it’s not, like I said, it’s not a secret. You can figure it out on the website that that’s how it works. But we, I’m like, I, some, my team always jokes like, I hate to make money. I’m always like, no, we don’t need to wait. We can eat those costs. And then I looked and I’m like. We lost thousands of dollars last year.

Right. Paying credit card fees. So, you know, that was a really big decision for us to make this year that was very, very driven by our sitters. Um, and that policy, and I had a couple members push back on it when we switched it to 72 hours. And, you know, I, I always say. Running this business is so hard because I try to walk a fine line between being a great place for members and being a great place for sitters.

Yeah, and I think there’s certain policies like that one where I do swing heavier in the sitter’s direction. I do, you know, families, things come up and they have to cancel and it’s not fair to leave that sitter high and dry. No sitter is gonna want to be canceled on on short notice and not compensated in some way for it.

Like, let’s only. Fair. So, and, and I also see for members and sitters too, like these are the policies. I’m clear about my policies, I’m clear about my rates. Everybody sees them when they join. Everybody signs them. If you don’t like my sick policy or you don’t like my cancellation policy. Then, then go find a different agency whose policies you like, you know, and, and that, that’s hard for me too.

And I think in the beginning you kind of question all of your policies and procedures and all of that. And ultimately, you know, as the business owner, you need to take a big umbrella look and think this is serving. 95% of my members and 95% of my sitters, are there gonna be 5% that the policy doesn’t maybe make the most sense for or that they don’t like.

Yeah. But ultimately I’m running a business. I’m, I need to pay my mortgage, I need to pay my team, so, I need to do, and, and I need to keep my sitters from getting hand, foot and mouth. They’re, these policies are in place for a reason. So, and that took me a couple years too, to really sit firm in my policies and be able to say back to a member, I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s exactly what you signed up for.

And we, it’s always been clear and that’s always been what it is. And if you don’t like it, then you know you can cancel your membership. You, you’re not, you’re not stuck with me. There’s no, there’s no contract where you have to stay with me. And, and that’s a hard thing too, I think, especially for new business owners, is to realize that not everyone is your client.

Not everyone is your sitter. Not everyone is your client. Someone told me early on in my career, and I think I said this in the first podcast, you can’t make everyone happy. You’re not pizza, right? Like you’re just, somebody’s gonna not like you. And that’s okay. 

Danny: You know, you’re bringing up a really great point that it’s an ecosystem where the sitters need you.

The families need you, the families and the sitters need each other, and it doesn’t just manage itself. And I also just wanted to say too, like. You’re talking about the 5% of like people that aren’t liking it. It’s really, you know, an equation of like, can you handle 5% of grumpy emails coming your way every day and 

Beth Heyer: five?

And honestly, five is high. Five is high. You know, I get, I get maybe one or two grumpy emails. A month from, and that’s members and sitters and, and, and you know, sometimes you, they do make you sit there and question like, am I doing the right thing? Is this the right policy? And then sometimes you’re just like, I can’t believe I just had to read that email.

You know, you know, there’s, like I always say too, like. I have 300 sitters, because not every single sitter is gonna be the best fit for your family. They’re not, you know, there are sitters who aren’t gonna let your kid play in the rocks and splash in the water, but then there’s sitters that are, and it’s just like finding the fit and trying to find the families that are compatible with the sitters.

So, yeah, it’s hard when you’re like, I understand you’re upset, but like, 

Danny: well, so Beth, from your great experience in all of this and starting with. Finding that the ketchup is not where the ketchup should be. Are there warning signs that maybe things are not adding up the way that they should or like, you know, uh, 

Beth Heyer: you know, I think there’s a lot of different signs of when to pivot.

So I mean, when to pivot when you’re burnout or over. Maxed out. You know, I think your, your body tells you, I think your skin and your hair and your sleep and your appetite and all of those things, I think can really change when you’re burnt out and your attitude and you run out of patience and those sort of things.

And I think that’s when it’s really time to sit and think about finding some balance. And I’ve always been a big believer too of, of asking for help. Um, I have a good friend of mine owns a business called All the Small Things. It’s like home management. And she comes to my house two hours every week and it’s the best thing I do for myself.

She folds all my laundry and puts it away. ’cause that is my least favorite job in my house. And I. I hate to do it and I leave dirty laundry every, I leave clean laundry everywhere. I leave dirty laundry everywhere, and I know that every Thursday she is gonna come and put away my laundry and it is. Such, it’s not just the laundry.

It is a stress relief thing for me because I would look at the laundry and I would feel guilty that I wasn’t doing it. I would look at my kids’ drawers and feel guilty that, you know, their clean clothes were in a basket and not in a drawer, and it was causing me all of this stress. And I was upset with myself about it.

And I was like, why? For ultimately, a small amount of money. I can have someone come in and take this all off my plate and I don’t have to feel stressed about it, and I don’t have to worry about it. And you know, I think some of it is just prioritizing what’s important, whether that be your kids or your work, and then setting boundaries with your time.

You know, saying at five o’clock, telling your team at five o’clock my phone is going to go in the other room and I’m going to spend two hours with my kids. And if there’s anything that happens in those two hours, I trust you to handle it. Or it can wait. There’s nothing that’s gonna happen in these two hours that can’t wait, you know?

So I think it’s about setting boundaries for yourself. I think it’s about managing your time, and I think it’s really taking a look at what tasks you have on your plate. You know, I’ve hired five or six people on my team, and it’s always when there’s, you know, a need. I got burnout on doing interviews. I was doing interviews all the time in these video interviews, and I was like, you know what?

This isn’t the best use of my time. I would rather spend my time growing my business or networking or whatever. So that’s when I knew it was time to bring in Francis, who does all of our onboarding now, she does all of our interviews. She does all of our orientations. I think a lot of business owners too, you have to look at like, what’s your time worth?

What is your hourly time worth and if it’s worth it for you to pay someone else to do that, that job, that task, whether it’s laundry or cleaning your house or doing your onboarding or doing your taxes, or you know, all of these different things. For me, I’ve always been a believer in I would rather make less money and be more sane and be more.

Involved with my kids and be a better friend and be a better partner than have more money in my bank account. Um, so that’s kind of how I’ve always looked at it. So that’s kind of some signs I think with when you need to pivot, when things are going bad and you need to pivot. And then I think when things are going good and you need to pivot, I mean, it’s just like I knew in Austin, like we were doing something right?

Like we had something that was working. We had kind of had a little time to work out the kinks and I had at that point in time the kind of capacity to say, let’s give this a shot. And it was one of those things too where it’s like, what’s the worst that can happen? We, we don’t get any members and then we no longer are in San Antonio.

So it was one of those things where it was a really low investment to add another city. You know, we, we, you know, we added some things to the website and, you know, updated some information and hired some sitters, but it wasn’t anything that was, I wasn’t investing thousands of dollars into it. So it was like, let’s give it a try.

Let’s see if we can duplicate what we did in Austin and San Antonio. And it just felt like the right thing to do. And then there was also a little bit of like, look how happy these members are in Austin. Let’s make some of these people happy in San Antonio and let’s make some of these people happy in Dallas.

And I’m also just like a big fan of like trusting your gut. That’s, that’s kind of where I am with this nonprofit. Like I know in my gut, like it’s not. It’s not gonna ever become what I want it to become or what it was, what in my head, in my head, it could become, and, and it’s no fault of my own or anybody’s, it just, it just didn’t work out.

But I’m, I’m still struggling to kind of like officially close the door on it, but you know, I know in my gut. It’s not where it’s gonna be or it’s not where it’s supposed to be. So just kind of coming to terms with that and realizing that some things just have to let go. Yeah. 

Danny: And you can always turn it back on, you know, turning things off like, you know, or it could become something else.

I, I love that you mentioned like pivoting when you’re in the positive. Yeah, I think that’s like mind blowing to me. 

Beth Heyer: I mean, I, I don’t think pivoting is a negative thing at all. I think you can definitely have good pivots. I mean, pet sitting connection for us was a good pivot. You know, we had tons of people asking for it.

We realized we have all these members with pets. Our software could handle it. You know, we, one of the first people we went to was Indian hire and said, we’re thinking about doing this. Can, can we, can we do it how we wanna do it? Or what do we need to do? We already have a amazing team, so I’m not hiring new people.

My babysitters are also now becoming pet sitters and that was just like, that was a positive pivot. And you know, this coaching thing I’m doing is a positive pivot. I think pivoting definitely doesn’t have to be because something isn’t going right. Pivoting can be because something’s going well. 

Danny: Beth, we’re pretty go to learn more about be hire.

Beth Heyer: Oh my gosh. We got babysitting connection.com. We got pet sitting connection.com. You can see all about my businesses there and structured and how we work. And then beth hire.com, HEYE r.com, um, has all of my coaching information. Um, anybody at anytime can schedule just a 15 minute call with me to. Chat, um, about anything at all, whether you wanna talk about your business.

Um, and then I offer some just one hour coaching calls. If you wanna just pick my brain for an hour and ask me anything you got, you can pre-end questions too. And then, um, I do some kind of multi-month long programs. If there’s a specific project someone wants to work on or dig into or grow their business with.

Danny: Amazing be. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us. I love it. I think everybody else loves it. We know that. Yeah. Thank you. 

Beth Heyer: Thank you so much. Fun to be on here again.