Dog-Sitting...Like a Boss

Ten years ago, if you had told me that I would one day be the owner of two small businesses, I wouldn't have believed you.

But it's true. I am the owner of two small businesses. They are VERY small businesses--I am the only employee of both these businesses and I've never earned enough from them in a month to jeopardize my Social Security benefits--but they are still businesses, licensed at the state and city levels, official as can be.

c.creativity licences.

I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself. Owning a business requires the confidence to say, "I have something to offer that is worth paying for." It feels great to have that confidence.

Once upon a time, my anxiety made it difficult for me to show my art to people, but for three years now, I've had some of my photography for sale on the internet. Yeah, my mother may be my biggest customer, but I still collect and pay taxes, have business cards and a wholesaler's permit, and I intend to eventually expand into selling my photography for stock. I operate under registered trade name of c.creativity, which, not so incidentally, is the name of this blog and my Etsy store. I'm branding, people!

The online photo store.

When I first started looking after the Ancient Kitty eight years ago, I never imagined that act would grow into a pet-sitting business. But when I was looking over my earnings from last year and facing the prospect of more clients this year, I realized that my little enterprise had grown beyond its informal roots and ought to be treated with respect. So I applied not only for licenses at the state level and in all the cities where I was currently and might in the future do business, but also purchased pet-sitter's insurance and bonding. Let me tell you, it makes me feel really good to get to say "Licensed, Bonded & Insured" on my business cards! I've made a website for the dog-sitting business, which I've named "Jolly Mutt Dog-Sitting," so prospective and current clients can check out my rates and my testimonials and availability. (I especially love the availability calendar!)

I'm licensed to operate my dog-sitting business in four different cities in the state of Washington.

It's official!

Do you know what else I love? Answering business-related emails. In my day-to-day life, I engage in very few "adult" activities or responsibilities: I don't shop or cook or clean, for example. Pretty much everyone I know would love to have FEWER work-related emails to respond to, but it makes me feel like, well, a boss to be communicating with clients and scheduling services.

The services aspect of dog-sitting hasn't changed, though. The dogs don't care if I'm officially licensed to be providing services in their city of residence, they just want to know if I'm going to play with them!

I did my first overnight with Cutie the Pyrenees a few weeks ago. As a two-year old, she has a lot more rambunctious energy than my elderly clients, but she snoozed more than she played and is a beautiful and friendly animal. I came home with drool all over my clothes and a resolution to teach her a thing or two about leash manners in the future!

Cutie at play...

...and at rest.

She's very affectionate and friendly!

I just finished up back-to-back gigs with Mr. Gorgeous and Sweetheart, which have kept me away from home and my own dear dog for nine days.

The first few days with Mr. Gorgeous were pretty rough because I was having a medication interaction that left me feeling really wiped out. Mr. Gorgeous, however, was in exceptionally fine form, having just been groomed. None of these photos comvey how soft and clean all that fluff was! He was also feeling very lazy, so the fact that I was feeling under the weather didn't disrupt his agenda of sleeping all day in his cozy bed. He was still interested in a game of slo-mo keepaway after dinner, but instead of leading me in a sedate and dignified jog around the house, he settled for "eluding" me at a walking pace. And thus was a good time had by all.

The well-groomed Mr. Gorgeous.

A friend's comment: "It looks like it could be a centerfold in a dog magazine."

Did someone say, "Handsome"?

Sweetheart, by contrast, does not have "sedate" or "dignified" settings, so she seemed to be almost cartoonishly expressive and demonstrative after six days with the extremely mellow Mr. Gorgeous. She watched my every move with interest and enthusastically licked any body part within reach! Forget "kisses": this dog, when happy, will lick hands, arms, your pants, even the top of your head! Oh, and she's pretty much ALWAYS happy. She's such a charming dog and always a pleasure to spend time with.

Sweetheart: "Why be dignified when you can be happy?"

The happy German Shepherd lazing in the sun...

...and chewing on a ball. Life is good!

I think this photograph perfectly captures her sweet personality: she's checking in with me, her eyes full of love and joy, to see what we'll be doing together next.

So that's the latest! I just can't resist announcing that my business is going to the dogs and I couldn't be more pleased. (Dog businesses and organizations rely heavily on puns, so it's only appropriate that I occasionally indulge.) The work may be no different from what I've been doing, but I'm proud to be doing it under the banner of Jolly Mutt Dog-Sitting, Licensed, Bonded & Insured, and not just as little ol' migrainey me.

Follow c.creativity on Facebook!

Taking Care of Business

The front of my new business card

I've spent the last two days devoting my hours of energy to various business matters. Since I've opened the new store, I figured I'd better have a business card for it. I also ordered some shipping supplies for larger items, since there are quite a few listings for 11x14 and 16x20 photos in the new shop. I also purchased plastic sleeves for protecting note cards, though several hours later, when I was in the shower, I suddenly remembered that I already have sleeves in that size. Oops. Fortunately, it only set me back $6 or so, and with luck, I will eventually get through them! One of the other things I did yesterday was to order another round of notecards, some for my mouse store and some for the macro store, and hopefully they'll prove popular and I can get through those 5x7 plastic sleeves!

Cards are something I haven't worked out completely yet. People, when they see the mouse photos, tend to remark that they'd make great cards, but I haven't had much business in that area. I have lots that I haven't listed still, partially because I haven't decided whether to offer them individually or in sets. They're tricky, too, because to get the cards at a cheap enough price to be able to sell them for a less-than-astronomical sum, you have to buy them in quantity. I've found a printer that makes beautiful, high-quality cards for a reasonable price, in sets of twenty-five, with as many different images on those twenty-five cards as you want. The last set I had printed featured lots of flower cards for summer, but I spent the summer coping with the head injury, so I fear I missed my best seasonal opportunity. It's also much more fun to make listings for the new store than to cobble together ones for cards with flowers and Mouse on them, which may be a larger part of the problem! At any rate, you can view the ones I currently have available here.

I hope someone agrees with me that this makes a sweet card!

So between putting together the new business cards and getting twenty-five images properly sized for uploading (both endeavors that involve a lot of clicking around in Photoshop and Illustrator), I've really fried my eyes. I had to take a very very very long shower (one hour and forty-five minutes, not a record, but close) this afternoon to quiet the brain down and my heart's been pounding even more than usual, which means I'm under stress. It's just that this sort of thing is so much more interesting than doing nothing! All in all, though, I've done pretty well this past week in keeping my activity level within my limitations, which is why I was able to take care of any business at all!

Next on my (eventual) business matters agenda: figure out some of the vexing wrinkles in my Google Analytics data, such as why it continues to count my own visits to my shop despite the fact that I installed a filter, according to instructions, for it to exclude all visits from my computer's IP address, and why in the area where it tells you what keywords brought visitors to your site, all but three of the nineteen search terms are utterly inapplicable to my site, and seem, rather, to be the results for a seller of vintage goods. Figuring this out is much less interesting than, say, giving myself a raging migraine by designing things in Illustrator; if I'm going to be starting at a computer screen, I like to at least be enjoying myself! But it will ultimately be good for business if I figure out how to make Analytics report proper data and then guide various decisions regarding shop content accordingly.

Oh, and if you're the returning visitor who typed "sascalia" (another Etsy seller, according to my research) into Google and somehow got my shop and spent nearly ten minutes looking at ten different pages, could you explain to me how that worked? Thanks!