Pet Business 101

In the first post we defined the “80/20 Energy Rule” and in general how it has applied to my success in the pet industry, in this segment I will show you how you can use this rule TODAY to start your own journey to becoming a successful petrepreneur in 2008…

How You Can Live An 80/20 Lifestyle
When you start to analyze and breakdown your life into elements it’s very easy to see 80/20 ratios all over the place. The trick, once your key happiness determinants have been identified, is to continually optimize your activities and avoid wasting time on those 80 percent activities that produce little satisfaction for you.

The message is really very simple - focus on activities that produce the best outcomes for you! This applies to both your business/working life and your family/personal life (I think they both vitally important, and actually should be looked at as a whole, but people often prefer to distinguish them for clarity). The problem for most people is how to make a living from what you really enjoy, so lets focus on that…

I’m sure you have heard the phrase “struggling artist” or maybe in your case “struggling petrepreneur”. The stereotype where a pet person, musicians, actors, writers and artists, struggle to get discovered and work long hours on horrible day jobs, often in retail and hospitality, until hopefully they finally break out, get discovered and become famous. With the background of the first part of this blog series it shouldn’t surprise you that the ratio of pet fanatics who actually turn their passion for pets into enough income to live off also follows closely an 80/20 distribution - only a few of the overall total manage to get that far.

Does this scenario apply to your past success? How many of you now reading this article are working day jobs, jobs you probably don’t like much, while you work hard after-hours to get your dream pet business up and running?

In truth, and this is a sad fact, most people in the world work jobs they don’t like and only truly live their passions on weekends and outside of working hours. Only a small sample actually live their passions day in and day out, how they want to and when they want to. If you want to join me as one of the special few living the life of your dreams on your terms here are a few things you must focus on…

Focus On Passions, Not Possessions
The simple fact is not everyone can be a famous artist. Not everyone will start a million dollar pet business. I’m not going to tell you stop striving for those goals, I have been working on them myself for years, however you can align your work TODAY to find greater fulfillment, and that is what living an 80/20 lifestyle is all about. As positive consequence of being in alignment, your likelihood of becoming a successful petrepreneur is greatly enhanced because you tap into what you do best more often.

The first thing you must decide, and many of my coaching clients find this is often the hardest step, is to determine what it is exactly you are passionate about within the pet industry. Some people can answer this question easily - “I want to be a positive reward dog agility trainer”, “I’d like to run my own exotic fish farm” etc. Others may have a general idea “I don’t want a day job” or “I want to run a pet business” but the specifics are not sorted yet. If you are not sure what your passions are you MUST test yourself. It’s usually easy to determine what you DON’T like so keep new things within the industry, until you find what it is you really ARE passionate about.

Outputs <> Inputs
It’s important to clarify outputs vs inputs before moving on. Most humans (especially us Americans) are good consumers (my wife is a champion) - we are good at acquiring inputs into our lifestyle. If your like our family, chances are you can easily rattle off a bunch of things you enjoy about your life: eating out at nice restaurants, dark chocolate brownies, reading books and magazines, going to parties and dance clubs, watching movies and DVDs, listening to music, meeting new people, surfing the net, having sex, playing sports and shopping. All of these activities more or less are inputs which means you consume the outputs of other people (with their consent as appropriate).

You may consider the activities I just mentioned passions but it’s hard to find a sustainable passion if all you do is consume. To foster an 80/20 lifestyle you need to locate activities that are passions for you because you create output for others to enjoy. Yes you can get paid to have sex, watch movies, eat at restaurants and read books, but chances are you won’t find it fulfilling or sustainable for very long OR you will be required to provide something back as part of your involvement - that’s your output, the value you create.

It’s okay to love eating out at restaurants and claiming your passion is food, if your intention is to also create output by starting your own restaurant, or a restaurant reviews website or a newsletter or magazine or becoming a chef. If you enjoy listening to music you might also enjoy producing your own music or covering the music industry as a journalist on your own blog.

Only by producing output for other people to enjoy or make practical use of can you expect to convert a passion into a sustainable income. You should understand this already as I suspect the times in your life that you have created something for others or worked on something that benefited other people you experienced the most fulfillment. If you suffer from a lack of direction now, if you are depressed because you don’t even know what your passions are to start applying the 80/20 Rule to, you need to do one thing - start being creative and giving back - produce output! You won’t find fulfillment only by consuming.

A Petrepreneur’s 80/20 Lifestyle Blueprint
To start living 80/20 today you have only to do one thing - focus your energies on what you enjoy.

Part time work - Part time passion

Many people work a full-time job and work after hours on a business or passion or ‘hobby’. If this is you I suspect your ratio is not 80/20 and probably closer to 20/80. You spend way too much time at a job you don’t like, you are probably not very motivated to do it well so you don’t fall into the vital 80/20 employees for that company, and by the time you get home you are too exhausted to spend time starting or building your ‘passion’ pet business. You feel like you are getting nowhere fast. This lifestyle is not good for anyone since all the relationships fall into the 80 percent that produce 20 percent of the value. You get very little from it and the people you work for get very little from you.

If this currently describes your situation what you need to do is start changing those ratios as quickly as possible. Reduce the amount of time you spend at a job you don’t like and increase the amount of time you spend on your passion. You may say you can’t do that because you need the money but I suspect you don’t really need as much as you think you do. Most people can live off part time work but choose to work more because they want more things. You may see your peers enjoying material goods which creates desires in you. Your wants start to outweigh your needs, which is probably the biggest pitfall in our modern, advertising driven, materialistic society.

I’m not saying you have to live like a pauper (in fact when you are making money from your passion it will actually feel like you are living the life of a king) but I am confident that your real happiness comes from spending time doing things you enjoy the most, not from earning more money. Chasing the dollar for the sake of the dollar does not work. Chasing passion often leads to a greater income because the quality of your output is so much higher. Focus your energy on increasing investment in your core strengths and you will reap rewards.

Drop your working hours to three days per week and spend more time attracting more clients, developing more products, finding more time to write your informational reports or to find investors to fund your doggy daycare, or whatever it is you really want to do.

For those of you who have no intention of turning your passions into money generating enterprises this is still a good option. If money isn’t your primary concern but your passion for training dogs is, why do you spend so much time working to earn more money than you need? Yes you need to plan for the future and build assets, but clearly for your pet loving soul it’s not something that needs to take the majority of your time and energy. You can be happy without that mansion by the sea and you never know, if you spent more time on your pet business the eventual consulting or product sales may one day lead to that mansion by the sea. If not, at least you will be a lot happier for following your enthusiasm rather than the dollar.

If financial freedom is important to you and a big part of your plans, look at this step as phase one and work to convert your passions into income generating propositions. Grow your business client-by-client, report-by-report or sale-by-sale. Keep adjusting your work vs passion time ratio as your business grows to support you and you no longer need your job income. Look for 80/20 activities in everything you do and drop any inefficiencies as soon as you can.

Don’t Let Fear Stop You
The biggest factor that stops most people from chasing their dreams and working towards their real goals is fear. Fear of the lack of security, the reduced paycheck and of the unknown future keeps people locked into routines that are not satisfying. That path leads to sadness, depression, poor health, low income and ultimately an early death. Who wants that!

Don’t let fear be the reason for not achieving your goals. Stop, reassess your real passions, remove the money equation long enough so you can think without worrying about finances, and make plans to move towards your 80/20 lifestyle activities. Maximize what you are good at. Find the activities that produce the most results for you and your business and put your energy where the big rewards are.

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