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What’s your biggest pain point right now? Is it cleaning puppy pens and adult pens? I swear there is always more poop to clean. Is it social media? Are you thinking to yourself, “Yes, I have been meaning to tackle that…”? Maybe it’s your email newsletter? You’ve done the hard work of creating it, you have the sign up form, you’re collecting email addresses, but maybe you have been struggling to get those emails out?
Now hold that pain point in your mind for a second. What if you outsourced that very thing and it was done. Wouldn’t that feel good?
When outsourcing is done right … this is the feeling you get. BUT … to be honest, that’s not usually what happens. In accordance with our “Why breeders are bleeding money” theme, we are going to discuss why this beautiful idea of outsourcing is often the very thing that takes a profitable business and capsizes it, like not a little bit of water in the boat, but like a storm with waves that flip the boat.
Here is what I usually see when breeders outsource. It usually starts in a moment where the breeder thinks to themself, “If I just didn’t need to do this, OR if this was just taken care of, then I would have ______” and fill in the blank: more free time, more income, less stress, or more puppies sold.
Again, I want to reiterate, it looks good on paper. But, what really happens?
Often the breeder is in a state of overwhelm when they are looking to outsource. They’re usually in over their head, they know they have added this thing to their to-do list, but it isn’t getting done.
Now, when you notice this is a problem, that’s a great thing! Because our pain points, frustrations, and annoyances, are EXACTLY the things we should look to fix first. However, here’s the rub: there are no magic pills; you can’t simply hire someone and it’s magically done. That simply doesn’t work.
Most of the time the breeder is not in a position to immediately hire someone, and I don’t mean from a financial perspective, but from a readiness perspective. The system to hire someone usually isn’t in place.
Let me give you a social media example. Say you have struggled to post on social media: you’ve randomly posted 1-2 times per week the last month or so, you posted sort of whatever you felt like posting, and you are seeing some more traffic to your website, but you’ve only sold a dog or two from it. You know this has potential, but you are struggling to consistently get it done. You think, I will hire someone! If I pay them, they’ll get it done!
Now, if you hired them right away, two things will happen: they’ll be constantly bugging you, asking you questions you don’t have the answer to, and you’ll be frustrated because they’ll want pictures, information, or other guidance that you simply don’t have; AND the very thing that was supposed to be saving you time, is adding more to your list of things. OR, they’ll try a bunch of things, and you’ll feel like it’s very off brand because it doesn’t sound like you, isn’t what you actually say to buyers, and the whole thing feels wrong.
This is the most common thing that happens with outsourcing with breeders when it doesn’t work. They don’t have a plan to share, there is not great guidance, and because you have to guide the person, you are still losing the time. I remember I once hired a girl to come out and help me clean, back when I had dogs and farm animals, and she would come out for eight hours, and I would pretty much do all the work because I didn’t explain the plan, nor standard well, and so she sort of just walked behind me and talked to me while I did the work, occasionally offering a hand when I asked her to help. It was not ideal. Was she the wrong fit for the job? Yes, she was, she wasn’t in the physical condition for the job; but more so, it was more my failure, as I didn’t outline the job well, and so she didn’t know what to do. I further made it worse when I didn’t correct her with all the little things that I was expecting and she wasn’t doing. It wasn’t great.
If someone you’ve hired isn’t working out, there are really just two reasons: either they’re not the right fit, or you didn’t give them what they needed to succeed.
In coaching breeders, I occasionally get to work with their employees to understand things better. Most of them are incredible and want to help; they want to see the business succeed. Ironically, many of the breeders I work with are frustrated with these same employees. The frustration is rarely because of the employee, but most of the time it’s the mismatch between the breeder’s expectations and the process and understanding they’ve shared with their employees.
For example, they want the kennels cleaned a certain way, but they have never shared this expectation. They want the walls wiped down daily and the bedding changed, yet, because they’ve never expressed this standard to their employee, the employee doesn’t do these things. The employee believes they are doing things well enough, but the breeder is dissatisfied—often thinking the employee is lazy or doesn’t care. Rarely is this the case; but that gap between what is communicated and what is expected, that’s where the problem lives.
Another thing I hear a lot from breeders is how their employees don’t care. This is nuanced. Let’s be honest. Rarely will an employee ever be as invested in the success of the business as the owner. It’s very uncommon. Employees are generally there to make money, and they will value their time, so they’ll be looking to do the least amount of required work to achieve the minimum passable standard. That’s human nature. This is why it is so important to be explicit about the standard, because that minimum standard you set will generally be what you get. Sure, you’ll occasionally find someone who has a high standard for themselves, but I wouldn’t expect this as normal. For example, if you say the whelping boxes need to be cleaned as needed, that’s not a great standard. But if you say, “all the poop needs to be washed off the walls of the puppy pen daily,” that’s a standard. I pressure wash adult kennels once every week, with daily poop-scraping and rinsing of the concrete to remove urine or any other gross stuff the dogs have left. This is a manageable standard and understood. The pressure washing is done by my stepson now and he knows that he needs to do the block walls, the panels, the concrete, the walkway, and all the walls and floors of the interior every time he pressure washes. He has good work ethic, and will get everything off the panels in and out. This was fairly natural for him, but we had to set the standard that everything needs to be washed every week like this.
When Should You Hire Help?
Have you ever needed a loan, but couldn’t qualify? I’ve been there. When I first bought the ranch, we bought it as an owner-carry, as our credit wasn’t great and the home didn’t qualify for a VA loan. So we were kind of stuck with a crappy interest rate. It was expensive. I remember at one point I only had $46,000 left on my mortgage, but I had a loan payment of $1500 per month! It was killing me, especially when I was broke. It was the irony of the situation: if I could refinance the loan to a lower rate, I could save a ton of money, and it would’ve allowed me to pay off other debt. Let’s be honest: my divorce killed my financial situation. However, the point I’m trying to make was that it was really hard to get financing when I needed financing; but, now, it’s easy to get financing because I don’t need it. They’re unlikely to give you a 0% balance transfer on your credit card if it’s nearly maxed out.
Anyways, I give this example to relate to hiring an employee. Just like you won’t want to scramble to get financing when you’re broke, you don’t want to get an employee when you’re struggling and in the middle of crisis management. It’s a bad idea to get an employee when you’re stressed and overwhelmed. You won’t have the bandwidth to hire them properly, or set up the systems to get it flowing right. The caveat is if you already have the systems in place and you just need to hand over some of the tasks.
The best time to hire an employee is when you’re getting to the place where you realize your time is a little overworked and you would like to get some of that time back. BEFORE you hire the employee, you’ll want to write down all the steps you take and what you do, to make sure you have it all outlined properly. Make a list of the tasks, how you do it, and what the standard of “done” is.
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What About the Costs of Hiring?
Another important factor when thinking about hiring someone is the cost of hiring them. How much is reasonable? Great question.
For me, I like to look at my income and expenses with my breeding program in relation to how many puppies it will “cost” me per year. While this helps me keep things in perspective, it isn’t always helpful without a bigger picture of how many puppies you plan to keep and how many you can afford to spend.
What’s often better is to think, What percentage of my revenue will this take? For example, if someone costs $1,000/month, that’s $12,000 per year. If your puppies are $2,000 each, that’s the equivalent of 6 puppies. But that looks very different if you sell 20 puppies per year vs. 80. At 20 puppies per year, that’s a major expense. At 80 puppies per year, it’s likely a great deal.
I recommend taking the cost of the employee, multiplying it out so you have a full year’s cost, then running that against your gross revenue — the total amount of money you expect to take in for the year. If the cost lands somewhere around 15–25% of your revenue, you’re generally in the right ballpark. Just make sure you’re still taking home a healthy chunk of that total revenue — or at least reinvesting it wisely into your business. If you aren’t sure about these percentages, check out part one of this little series and grab the cheatsheet where I break it all down.
A good approach is to start small. You don’t have to commit to a full-time hire — in fact, most breeders shouldn’t start that way. You might hire someone for just a few hours a week. My first virtual assistant, who helped me with social media, only cost $80 per week. She gave me about 4–5 hours of help, and it took a huge load off my plate.
You can also consider hiring seasonally. For example, you might bring someone on for the summer, or for your busy litter season, with a clear end date. This gives you a trial run to see how you like having the help, without feeling bad if you choose not to continue after the initial time frame. And of course, if it works out, you and your helper can always discuss an ongoing arrangement.
Another important consideration is your cash flow. Breeding income isn’t always steady. If you know you’ll need help during slower months (when puppies aren’t going home), make sure to plan ahead — set aside money during busier times so you can cover payroll later, without feeling stretched thin.
Lastly — and this is big — please make sure your business is already running at a profit before you hire someone. Many business owners hire with the hope that an employee will improve revenue. But in a dog breeding business, this usually isn’t the case — not directly. The employee likely won’t be bringing in sales. What they will do is free up your time — so that you can market more or take on additional revenue-generating work. If you don’t use that freed-up time to grow your business, hiring may not add to your bottom line. That said — sometimes what you’re really buying is quality of life, and that’s valuable, too.
One thing I’ve noticed when working with coaching clients is that many hire help before they have real direction — not just in the task, but in their business as a whole. They often aren’t sure what size program they want, what income they need or want, or even what a successful program looks like for them.
Getting clarity on those things will move you forward much faster than hiring an employee. If you’re stuck — if you’re not sure where to go next, what to focus on, or you feel like you have a million things to do and no idea where to start — I’d love to help.
I offer one-on-one coaching for breeders, and we can work together to create clarity and peace of mind that you’re on the right path. The truth is: there’s no one “right” way to run a breeding program. There are many ways — and the right option is the one that gives you the breeding program and the life you want. The two have to work together — and that’s exactly how I approach it.
You can take the next step towards applying for coaching by going to honestdogbreeder.com/coaching. I’d love to work with you.
So what do you think? What’s your next step? Are you going to download the cheatsheet and plan out what it would look like to hire some part-time help? Are you going to go back and evaluate your hired help and give them more clarity? Or did you realize that maybe it’s you who needs more clarity first? I’d love to know! Leave me a comment and tell me what you think!
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast, with me, your host, Julie Swan. I’m so glad we get to spend this time together. Thank you again, and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode, the third part, where we discuss the marketing money leaks and how you can fix them in your marketing processes.
