When we left off, I was juggling fulltime work and fulltime pet care, trying to decide when I was ready to launch out on my own.

For others that may have the support of a spouse or other family members, this might have been an easy question, but not only was I single with a child, I have no parents/siblings that I’m in contact with. This made the prospect of working for myself very, very scary.

I ended up scaling down on the non-pet work. I went from full time insurance work and full time pet care, to part admin and full time pet care, and at just about the year mark of my business, I went to *gulp* pet care alone.

In order to make this work, you have to WORK. And I mean, 12+hour days, seven days a week. That’s why the quote from Henry Ford in my title is my favorite. You need to build a reputation to become the go-to pet person, and the only way you can do that is (for those first couple years at least), take every pet care request you can, and when you’re not doing pet care, work on your social media. Visit pet businesses and vets and introduce yourself. Shadow dog trainers. Take classes online. Do everything you can to do better.

The first question I get from folks considering pet care as a career is “can I make enough money to live?” Well I don’t know! Do you support other people, and what is your lifestyle like? Are you willing to go without for awhile to build the bigger picture?

Tomorrow I’ll break it down for you, what you can expect to make and what common expenses you may have from that pay. Its not pretty, but its something you need to think about before moving forward.