Scientist Starts a Purrfect Cats-Only Pet-Sitting Service

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Hello there, friends and listeners. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, episode 342 today. We're going to look at the question today, "How can you sell on a platform that's not known for selling?" This year, we featured a couple of episodes of people selling professionally on Instagram, even though that platform doesn't naturally lend itself to that. And way back on episode 245, we had the story of a man who sells $1,400 in coffee one weekend to his neighbors using the Nextdoor app. The Nextdoor app is essentially a hyper-local social network that connects neighbors and people in physical neighborhoods. And that guy who is selling coffee, that's obviously a

product, today you'll hear about a service business, specifically cat sitting, that gets started using that same Nextdoor platform. And it grows to a pretty substantial side income over the course of about a year before the couple who starts it decides to transition to something else. I'll tell you all the cat-tacular details in just a moment. Today's story comes from Nicole Kay. By day, she's an environmental scientist at an oil and gas company. For her side hustle, she started an

in-home cats-only pet sitting business in the dog prominent town of Houston, Texas. Nicole and her partner have five cats and had only gone on vacation once or twice in the five years they'd been together. They never wanted to leave town because they didn't trust anyone to take care of their cats. One night Nicole thought, "What if we became the pet sitters?" A cat's only pet sitting service didn't exist in Houston, so she started one over a weekend by creating a free website on Wix and posting on Nextdoor, a private social networking service for neighborhoods. She also spent a couple of hours putting flyers around her neighborhood but never got a response from them.

The Nextdoor post also didn't get any comments or likes, but it did get her a customer a few days later. From there, other people began to hear about it after reading that Nextdoor post or from word of mouth from friends, local shelters, or veterinarians. In six months, Nicole went from having zero clients to having 40, just from word of mouth and that Nextdoor post. And around that time, their website started generating leads from Google and from blog posts that appeared on page one of search results for a cat sitting Houston. They called the hustle Just Cats, and since there was no one else in Houston doing it, naturally they'd come up first in those search results, which was pretty magnificent. In fact, you could say it was perfect, and the business grew from

there. Nicole would see two to four clients a week. Each client had between one and three cats. Nobody had five cats like them. She charged $25 for a half hour visit and also offered 15 minute and 60 minute visits as well, but they weren't as popular. She would also raise her prices, charge

a few dollars more per hour during the busy season. Before the year was over, some other cat sitting businesses opened up, and Just Cats was actually more expensive than the new competition. But Nicole was outgoing and trustworthy. She would send updates with photos and a summary of her visit for free, which her clients loved. Several even said it was the first time they could go on vacation and not worry about their cats. A pretty positive experience all around.

Startup costs were extremely low. Nicole borrowed a pet sitting book from the library for free. She spent nothing on the website, no advertising, and only bought pet insurance for $99, $12 for those flyers that didn't work, and then $15 for a traveling cat toy, which turned out to be a great investment. Her biggest ongoing expense was gas or petrol. And driving in Houston was time consuming. It could take her 45 minutes to get to a house,

but she notes that the tax deductions for the mileage came in handy. Nicole was averaging between $1,500 and $2,000 a month by only seeing several clients a week. She said it made a significant difference in their lives, even allowing them to pay the mortgage entirely from the side hustle income. Cat sitting also came with a built-in set of adventures. One time they had the alarm go off in a home and the police summoned when a client said it for a specific time and day. Another time they couldn't find one of several cats in a house

and spent more than a half hour over the scheduled visit looking around when the client noticed them on her in-home camera system and told them don't worry about it. That client called back a few hours later when she got home and said she found him (that would be the cat) inside a dresser drawer. This was a particularly large and heavy cat that took up a lot of space, so she had no idea how he got in there, but cats can do some crazy things. Now right when they were on the cusp of hiring their first employee for Just Cats, Nicole and her partner had to move from Houston to Denver, but they were still able to monetize the asset they created. They sold their client list to one of those new cat sitting services that had cropped up. They then met with most of their clients,

introduced them to the new sitter, and handed over the keys. The majority of clients agreed to the switch, so it worked well for everyone. When they moved to Denver, they didn't start a cat sitting business right away. They spent some time hiking in the mountains doing other outdoor things, but Nicole keeps seeing posts looking for sitters on Nextdoor. They're planning to start up again in 2018, but this time to hire sitters rather than being the ones doing the sitting themselves.

In the meantime, however, Nicole didn't rest on her furry feline success. She started an online cat store. This came about after talking to her clients and realizing that even a lot of cat people don't know much about cats and their needs. For example, when she'd bring that $15 toy to her visits, the cats would go nuts. She'd take a video and send it to the clients who were amazed at how active their cats had become and had no idea that this toy could get their cat to jump so high in the air. That led to that online cat store to sell the best cat products on the market. And she said

she knew they were the best because they had done a focus group with more than 90 cats. That new Just Cats store operates under the slogan "Quality Products Cat Approved." Some of their store customers are their old clients and Nicole is also in the process of starting a pet sitting consulting company to teach people how to start their own part-time side hustle of cat only sitting. Oh, and she also sells cat antiques on Etsy. We didn't even have time to cover that. Basically, it's all cats all the time in that new Denver headquarters for Just Cats. We'll have to see what they manage to claw up

next. Well, indeed, it's a possum, claw-some, meow-nificent story. Nicole and her partner had the right attitude. They did not get stuck in for cats to nation like so many would-be pet sitters. And I also think it's smart that they did only cats because cat owners and dog owners are quite different. I sometimes mentioned the Meow House in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. That's where the

official show cat Liberia goes to stay when her parents are gone. It is a boarding service that is essentially a cat only hotel. And they also send out little photos and updates, which is key because peace of mind as an animal owner or animal companion is important. Just being able to go on vacation or live your life, whatever you need to do without worrying has a lot of value. And speaking of value, $1,500 to $2,000 a month, that's really significant that covered their mortgage.

But I always think it's important to think about what does money mean to you? What does extra money mean to you? It's not just a number in a bank account. What does it signify? What does it allow you to do? What kind of freedom does it bring to you? Because ultimately, greater freedom is the

greatest benefit of a side hustle for most people. And freedom can mean a lot of different things, of course. But being able to say that you created that freedom, you made that happen for yourself, also feels really great. I hope that you're working on that in some way, some kind of freedom plan for yourself, even during this holiday season, which I know is busy. Lots of stuff going on, but don't forget to take time for yourself. Think about what kind of world you want to live in,

what kind of reality you want to create for yourself as we look toward a new year. And as always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action, that's the better way to go. Today's Cat-Tacular show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/342. Thank you for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.