Recently I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in probably twenty years. While we were catching up the topic of what we did for a living came up. I explained I owned a pet sitting service and that we provided professional, in your home pet care and that I had seven employees. She told me she was a school teacher.
She proceeded to ask how much we charged for a visit. I told her our per visit rate. Her response?
“Wow, that’s some racket!”
Seriously? Pet sitting is a ‘racket’??? It’s not like I’m sitting home, watching tv and eating bon bons while I count my money.
Let’s see what a racket it is.
First of all, approximately 30% of that fee goes right to State and Federal taxes.
What other expenses come out of that fee?
- Unemployment Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- Worker’s Compensation Insurance
- Liability Insurance
- Bonding
- Employee’s Hourly Wage
- Mileage Reimbursement To Employee
- Payroll Processing
- Monthly Subscription To Scheduling Software
- Advertising Expenses
- Criminal Background Checks On All New Employees
- Continuing Education (Pet First Aid) Courses
Anything left after that goes back into the business and also compensates me for my time doing the scheduling, returning calls, marketing, doing social media and overall managing.
Yeah, it’s a racket.
Compared to a school teacher who gets summers off, snow days, paid holidays, paid sick days, paid vacations it sounds to me like teaching is the racket! Knowing what teachers deal with I wouldn’t want that job either!
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence huh?
Pet sitters work 365 days a year. We don’t get snow days or paid sick days. Our summers are the busiest because that’s when most people travel. We work morning, noon and night shifts. We work holidays. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE our jobs, but it’s certainly not a racket!
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