Paws, Trust, and Franchise Growth with Nicole Peel

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment. So we're talking about pet care today, and how a college side hustle became a full-time business and franchise, and how word of mouth can become a growth engine, and how founders can scale without losing the care that made the business special in the first place. So Tullio, introduce our guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:47)
It will be my pleasure. Our guest today is Nicole Peel. She's the founder and CEO of Pawsitively Spoiled. Nicole started the business in 1990 while going to college and working in a part-time job and what began as a way to make extra money grew steadily through word of mouth, trust, and consistent care.
In 2016, Nicole took a leap of faith, left a full-time job, and made Petsitting her full-time business. She worked intensively to build a brand, and in the 2020 she began franchising the concept. Today, Pawsitively Spoiled offers in-home pet-sitting, dog-walking, and dog taxi services. The company has cared for pets for more than 30 years, and invites franchise owners who love animals, want a flexible business venture, and are dedicated to above and beyond customer service to join her. Nicole, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. We're looking forward to our chat today.

**Nicole Peel** (1:45)
Hi there. Thank you for having me.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:48)
So, Nicole, as Tullio mentioned back in 1990, you're looking for a way to make extra money while you're in college. What was the moment though later that you realized that this could be more than a side hustle?

**Nicole Peel** (2:02)
Well, for several years, it was just a side hustle.
I was going to college, I was a bank teller, it was just a way to make a little bit extra money. But it was a good side hustle. I was making extra money, it was allowing me to do things to my home, fix things up, put extra money in savings. It allowed me to have a down payment to buy a nicer home, that kind of stuff, that I never would have been able to do without the pet setting business.
But I didn't really advertise it too much because I was almost afraid that it would get too big. I had quite a little following in my town of people that consistently called me and wanted me to take care of their pets. But because of my job, which was a full-time job then, I didn't really advertise it too much. It was just side hustle, working a full-time job, and just balancing the two, and always in the back of my mind, wondering, could this ever be a full-time job, but holding back from it because of things like worrying about insurance and worrying about retirement, and done things like that, that held me back from it.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:31)
Now, there are a lot of people that worry about that.
They're concerned about the safety-ness of the W-2 employee with the benefits and all that, although today there's none of that is safe. So in 2016, you left your full-time job, and you committed to positively spoiled full-time. That was a leap of faith. What did that leap of faith require from you personally and professionally? If you could walk us through the mindset you had to go through, the fears you had to go through, because I'm sure there's a lot of people listening, wondering, I've thought about it, but I don't know if I have the courage to do it. So we'd love to hear what you did.

**Nicole Peel** (4:11)
I think that changed. Yeah, I guess I just got to the point where, at one point in time, so I was working for the Yankee Candle Corporation, and at one point in time, I loved that job.
I was the store manager of a store here in Indiana, and at one point in time, I loved that job and loved going to work and loved my district manager, and working there, had a bunch of store managers that I was friends with and loved it. Then there were some corporate changes that took place, and they fired the district manager that I liked working for, and a couple of the store managers left, and just everything about the corporation changed. A lot of things about that corporation have changed, and everything just changed about it.
I just kept thinking about doing the pet setting business full-time, and just kept thinking about it. Actually, I heard a motivational speaker or a pastor speak one day, and he said, what would you do with your life? If you could just do what you really wanted to do, what changes would you make, or whatever, before you got too old and look back on it? And I said something to my best friend, do you think I could ever do the pet setting business and not fail? And she was like, just try it. We talked about it for 20 years, just try it. And I was like, what if I can't eat?