This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Friends, listeners, community, welcome to CIDEL School. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Excited to bring you another update, another episode. And this one in fact is in our Throwback Thursday series.
Throwback Thursday, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now we have had all kinds of stories this year. We featured a guy in Chicago who leads pizza tours, as well as an actress in Los Angeles who leaves a career in soap operas to become a professional organizer. Last week we heard from one half of the auctionisters. Auctionisters are two sisters who work as professional auctioneers to help charities raise money.
So lots of fun updates today. In our latest one, we're gonna hear from Jen Cern. We first featured Jen in episode 726, I believe, long, long ago, Medical Examiner discovers new possibilities with pet sitting hustle. Possibilities, because she is a professional pet sitter. She actually left behind her career in medicine.
Pretty crazy, pretty wild, but we have all kinds of stuff here, as I said. So what has happened since? Let's hear directly from Jen. She's got an update as well as some tips for potential pet sitters. So if you're interested in doing this, she actually saved $200,000 in a few years.
She'll tell you about that. So we got some tips here. And by the way, note that Jen lived in New York City for a number of years, but is now based in Colorado. And as you hear her update, that'll make more sense. All right, here is Jen.
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My name is Jen Cern. I live in Colorado, and my side hustle is pet sitting, dog walking, and house sitting through rover.com. I was featured on episode 726 of "Side Hustle School." I've been on rover since 2012, so I have over 900 reviews, and my rates are a little on the higher side. I mostly do what's referred to as alcohol services or services out of the client's home. This can include dog walking, dog hikes, cat care, and house sitting.
And house sitting generally means that you're staying in the client's home while you care for their pets. Rover sitters can also offer services out of their own home, and this can include doggy daycare or boarding, which is where you watch someone's dog in your home overnight. Typical rates are probably around 20 to $25 per 30 minutes for dog walking and cat care, about 60 to $100 a night for house sitting, and about 40 to $80 a night for boarding a dog in your home. But these rates can vary widely depending on where you're working and how many reviews you have and how experienced you are. I signed up for Rover while I was living by myself in downtown Seattle, and my rent was over half of what I was earning from my medical fellowship, so I just needed a little money on the side.
I own dogs, and I had been involved in dog rescue for a number of years, so it wasn't much of a change to host a dog in my home for a little bit of extra money. Back then, the typical rate to host a dog overnight was around $25, so the rates have increased since then. After pet sitting in Seattle for about four years, I moved to New York City, and I had about 300 reviews on my profile at that time. My experience in Seattle taught me that people book house sitting year-round, so my plan was to house sit my way through Manhattan instead of renting my own place. And over five years, I was able to save about $200,000 doing that.
I mostly worked through Rover just because I travel around a lot and also because my rates on Rover are toward the more expensive side. So part of that, for me, is kind of testing the market and seeing how much people will pay for pet sitting. So in Keystone and Breckenridge, I have gotten a booking for like $50 per 30 minutes or like $80 per hour. So that also, for me, is an exciting thing to see. Okay, now that I have this experience, how much is that worth to people who are willing to pay for it?
To get started as a pet sitter, I would try to get as much experience as possible and also start to build a social media presence. A potential clients need to feel that they can trust you, so try to walk dogs for friends and family, take some nice, clear outdoor photos with dogs when you're smiling, sign up for dog walking apps and house sitting websites, and just try to get your name out there. I would also consider networking with established pet professionals because a lot of them are solo operations and they may be willing to refer out jobs that they can't take themselves. As your business starts to grow, don't be afraid to hone in on the jobs you want and say no to the jobs that you don't want. The jobs you love will energize you and the jobs and clients that you don't love will become a huge burden.
So since the price of overnights is typically under $100 a night, the money per time spent will never be worth it per se, so you have to make sure that it's work you enjoy. And I personally love living in homes and neighborhoods that I will never be able to afford, so that makes it fun and worth it for me. When it comes to dog walking and cat care, raising rates and decreasing your commute time could be the difference between, say, making $20 an hour when you start out versus making $60 or more per hour once you're more established. And reliable pet sitting has always been a problem. So if people can trust you to show up on time and do your job as it's been agreed upon, then you'll have a regular client base who will pay your rates and they'll keep coming back to you.
My next goal is to use Rover to book travel pet sitting gigs. I think it'd be a great way to explore different parts of the country while making some spending money. At the end of 2021, I went on a working vacation to Los Angeles, and while I was there for nine nights, I booked jobs through Rover and WAG, and I was able to make about $1,200 on that trip. But since Rover doesn't have a dedicated travel feature yet, I just changed my address about one to two weeks before I plan to be in a certain city so people can find my profile. And I usually start to get inquiries within a few days of changing my address.
If I didn't have a boyfriend in Colorado, I would probably be spending a few months in each new city, but I'll still be happy traveling to new places for about five to 10 days at a time. And I'm not sure when the lease is going to end in Colorado, but I know that I can make money through Rover and dog walking wherever I go. [Music]
All right, so first thing I think about the pet sitting business, you know, this business is not going to go away because of automation. You know, it's not going to go away because of automation or outsourcing overseas or, you know, any of the ways that lots of industries kind of evolve. You know, they're going to be pets who need care for the foreseeable future, and we want reliable humans to care for them.
So if you love animals and you're interested in doing this, you know, pay attention to Jen's advice because as you heard, she's done quite well. Not only has she done well financially, but it's enabled her lifestyle of living lots of different places. And as you just heard, she's also planning to get into the traveling pet sitting business. So that's pretty cool. Thanks to Jen for sharing her updates with us.
Listeners, check out her website, or at least, I don't know if I have a website for her, but I can see that she is on Twitter or Instagram at Dr. Jen T, Dr. Jen T. She's also on Rover, naturally. So if you go to Rover, you can see different people's profiles and see how they've set things up.
So let us know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. If you have a question or an update for us about your side hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. This has been episode 1923. I hope you will subscribe or follow, come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
