Stop Being Your Town's Best-Kept Secret: PR & Marketing Lessons from Pet Boss Nation
This week on The Whisker Report, Mary Tan welcomes nationally recognized pet industry expert, business coach, and Pet Boss Nation founder Candace D’Agnolo. With nearly 25 years in the pet industry and a decade spent coaching independent pet businesses, Candace shares practical strategies for helping local pet stores and pet service providers stand out in a crowded marketplace. From understanding your ideal customer and prioritizing marketing efforts to building media relationships and leveraging local PR opportunities, Candace reveals what separates thriving pet businesses from those that struggle to be seen. She also shares real-world success stories, lessons learned from navigating a major PR crisis, and why independent pet businesses can't afford to be their town's "best-kept secret." Whether you're a pet retailer, groomer, trainer, daycare owner, or animal welfare professional, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you build visibility, credibility, and long-term growth.
Listen to Episode #41 Now:
BIO:
From struggling pet retail store owner to respected industry leader, Candace D’Agnolo’s journey shows what’s possible with the right support and strategies.
By age 30, she was running three brick-and-mortar pet businesses with 27 employees. But success came with a price– $400,000 in debt during the 2010 recession. She was struggling with her health, wealth, and happiness in her business, and needed a change FAST.
The turning point? Investing in mentorship!
This decision transformed her business into a multi-seven-figure operation with diverse revenue streams and allowed her a multiple seven-figure exit when she sold to industry leaders Bentley’s Pet Stuff and Destination Pet.
She is living proof that business transformation is possible.
Today, Candace is a sought-after speaker and consultant in the pet industry, sharing her hard-won wisdom at major pet industry trade shows and events. Her unique combination of real-world experience and proven success makes her a trusted voice for pet business owners ready to transform their own stories.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Whisker Report. We're a podcast dedicated to helping anyone in the pet industry, whether you're in animal welfare or running a for-profit pet business, get some PR visibility and buzz for what you do. Hello everyone.
I'm Mary Tan, one of the hosts of the show and the principal and founder of Whisker Media, a pet public relations firm based in Buffalo, Minnesota. I'm also joined by my fabulous producer, Mark Winter of Pet Life Radio, who gets us to each and every week. Mark, how are you? I'm Mary.
I'm good. I'm good. It's hot down here in Florida.
And of course not, but it's like really hot this week. Oh my goodness. Yeah.
I don't envy you in Florida during the summer months, but I am always, as you know, very jelly of you in the winter. And you know, that's just something we have to do here in the Midwest. And you know, what's really cool is that my next guest is just, I believe, two states away from me.
If you go down to like Wisconsin and then she's in Illinois. Our guest today is Candace D’Agnolo, a nationally recognized pet industry expert, business coach, and the founder of Pet Boss Nation. Through her coaching programs, events, and retail expertise, Candice has helped independent pet business owners across the country strengthen their brands, grow their communities, and create more profitable businesses.
With years of hands-on retail experience and a passion for empowering entrepreneurs, she's become one of the leading voices in the independent pet space. She also is the new store owner of Dante and Dory's Pet Emporium in Galesburg, Illinois. Please welcome Candice.
Hey, Candice. Hi, Mary. Hi, Mark.
Thanks for having me today. Yes. So everybody in the pet industry knows you.
I mean, you are just the queen of independent pet stores. And I love how you call all the members of Pet Boss Nation, your pet bosses. And so people who don't know you or what you do, can you talk a little bit about yourself and how you got into what you're doing? Sure.
Sure. Well, I, I've been in the industry for almost 25 years now and just the pet industry. And I, when I launched the coaching part of, of my career, it was about 10 years ago, actually Pet Boss Nation is turning 10.
And when I launched it at the time, there really wasn't anybody who understood exactly what these kind of mom and pop businesses go through. You know, there were people willing to help them like the manufacturers and a lot of experts, but they hadn't, you know, walked the walk. They hadn't, they didn't know what it felt like to get that bad, you know, online review or to have people not show up for work or to see a brand that you got really behind, you know, and support for years, just go to the mass, you know, big box stores and what that felt like.
So I knew what they were experiencing. And I knew that when we invest in ourselves and in our business education, that new doors open up, you know, we can run profitable businesses. And, you know, there's the expression, especially in a lot of coaching worlds, but in ours specifically is that, you know, a lot of people get into the pet industry because they're passionate for the pets or whatever pet they had or whatever issue they were facing and they couldn't find a solution for.
So they created something and we're all passionate about it, but not a lot of us know how to read profit and losses and know how to manage the money and the cashflow or know how to do marketing. And so I, at the time, you know, was going through my own ups and downs and I invested in a lot of those things to make my businesses successful. And, um, over the years I ended up being able to successfully sell three separate brick and mortar businesses.
And at the time, most places would just close or kind of retire. And so I thought that that was definitely something different. I was doing something different.
So when I was no longer like competitor of people's, I could start to help them with their businesses and realize that it wasn't so much even that they were, um, you know, maybe they knew what to do or had tried stuff, but there was a sense of, you know, even loneliness, the community, they needed a kind of access to talk to somebody, not just a software they could tap into and learn from. And so that's really where Pet Boss Nations began to evolve. It became this awesome community of now thousands of people, um, not just in the US, but in Canada.
And we, you know, and my podcast, Pet Boss Podcast is streamed in 81 countries, you know, like we're, it's, it's really become this identity, which is why we call them Pet Bosses. Right. Um, so that's, you know, obviously there's been a lot in the mix.
I write for the trade publications. I speak at the trade shows, but at the house retreats and different work in personal workshops. But at the end of the day, you know, I wanted to support mom and pop businesses and local communities because local pet owners need access to people who are very knowledgeable about their pets, health and wellness.
And also just because I love, I love local, local businesses. Wow. Well, you are an incredible resource for independent pet stores and you know, it's just interesting when you go to the trade shows and I talked to some of them, I feel like they're all really tired.
Like they're excited about what you do, but they're exhausted. And then when I talk to them about PR and marketing, it's just like, Oh, just another thing I have to deal with, you know, besides trying to compete against the big box stores. Now I know in the big box stores, you know, they got huge marketing teams and, you know, their PR teams at, you know, the big stores are huge.
You know, and they got 40 people doing social media. So how do you tell your pet bosses to approach marketing and PR? You're right. You know, we are exhausted.
I can say we now because I'm back in it with my new brick and mortar business and we're seven months in and I keep saying to myself every day, like, I do not know how people do this, right? Like, it's like the demands of your time and your energy are very high and information comes at you a lot, right? Like all of the influx of, you know, that what was doing our business, brands, customers, you know, your employees, and it is a lot of noise. And so I like to kind of relate that just back to what consumers probably also feel, right? There's all this noise to them. And it's about, I think for any business, how frequently you can be seen and be heard in that noise to stay top of mind, however that looks right.
And, um, you know, there, we also like to say that you can't be your town's best kept secret. I mean, what, that might be like an old traditional like marketing tagline. Um, but really we don't want you to be a secret to be out there in your communities.
And so I think when there's a lot that you can do and we focus on this inside our programs, like we've got a Boston university and we just are actually revisiting some of this now, but it's really understanding who your customer is first, right? Like not every pet owner is your customer. And, um, we recently, um, with Dante and Dory's, but also with our Pet Boss Nation clients did a customer survey and we, you know, we at Dante and Dory's had about 140 people take the survey over a one week period, which I was really impressed by, was not expecting that. And what we found in the survey was that our majority customer is between the age of 25 to 44, which is a lot younger than I thought.
And they have multiple dogs. Almost 60% of the people who took the survey have, um, two or more pets. Sorry, I shouldn't say dogs cause they're pets and their family.
And 25% had four or more animals. And I would, I was really blown away by that. So then the point of, of, of really getting to know that customer and who you're really serving and who your ideal customer is, is that now you can create that marketing around it.
And it was really surprising to me because now while yes, I could cater to pay a new pet owner, my core customer in my local community is a, you know, a female between 25 to 44 who has multiple pet household. Right. And now I can kind of speak to that person.
So I think getting clear on who you're marketing to and then going where they are, right? Like you've got to be where people, where that customer is. You, you shouldn't try to be everywhere. Um, and then we encourage people to just, you know, get really good at that, that one direction they pick.
Like maybe it's that they are going to be at every community event or that they, and they're going to have a great booth and they're going to talk to people and they're going to sell products and invite people back to their business, whether that's a trade show booth or a community booth. Right. Depending on what kind of business you have.
Um, it could even be then that, okay, I'm going, I know that Facebook is still like we surveyed our customers, right? And had them pick their top two most used, like where they spend the most time on the platforms. Facebook still one hands down, like 70% of people still picked Facebook as one of the top two. And then it was Instagram.
And then Tik Tok and YouTube were like neck and neck. And so, okay, well then I'm just going to prioritize Facebook and Instagram right now. I'm not going to stress out that I don't have a TikTok account.
I'm not going to start either. So I'm going to leave that for later. But I'm, I'm very clear cause I know I can't do it all because we don't have those big budgets to be everywhere, but what we can do, I know we want to do well.
Um, you know, then with the PR part, I mean, there's so many opportunities, you know, now, um, I mean, especially in, I guess it probably really depends on your market. But, um, you know, I'm, I'm having success here in local market in a smaller market. I know you have clients that have been in large markets that have leveraged PR.
Actually, when I go back and think about my career in Chicago, I worked with a PR um, company, uh, early on who got me on all of the local news stations for all of the pet costume stuff, all the pep parades, all the adoption stuff. You know, we were there with holiday guides. We did all that back in like 2006, maybe 2009, that was a long time ago.
But, but in, you know, in those markets, you have to get up early. You have to get to those news stations really early because I have to go live before, you know, the, the national news comes on. I remember a lot of, you know, 4am like calls get there, you know? So, um, I, you know, we've, when you were on my podcast recently, you know, we taught, we shared some, you had so many great ideas too, about how local businesses can just tap into that local media network because they're all looking for content.
And I think that that's one of the biggest, um, hurdles that we can help our local pet businesses or really anybody get over is like, just put some information together and find the newsworthy spin and put it out into the universe and see what happens, you know? Yeah. And, you know, just for another idea, like every time there's a trade show, I will pitch to the media, like, Hey, I can come on and talk about, you know, the top 10 pet trends I saw at Global or SuperZoo. And the manufacturers are more than willing to send you a sample that you can showcase.
And I think every pet owner has just, every pet store, independent pet store owner has like so much knowledge and could easily do this. And I just feel like, yeah, like you're so busy, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're so busy managing people, you know, getting the bills paid, do getting inventory and stuff that I feel like a lot of times the PR and marketing is at the end. It should be a priority, right? I mean, well, it's a, yes, yes.
Because, you know, we can't make any money if no customer for coming through the doors or appointments, you know? And I, again, I think that's where a lot of times in, well, a lot of times business, any business, they could even be an online business, but it's like, they think that they'll build it and they will come. Right. And that's just not the truth.
Um, you know, I've seen it in my own brick and mortar too, where we were on a corner spot in downtown and we were, we opened, but we were waiting for, for our exterior signage to get up. And, um, it took two months to get what we needed. Um, it was, there was a delay, but once the exterior sign came up, you know, our, our sales tripled almost instantly.
And you're like, okay, wow, I had signs in the window too. And I had my Google business profile and we were doing social media and I had my website, but it was like, people just needed to know, like they were actually right outside. And then, you know, thinking about what other things like right now I, I have, we've got, you know, the store's getting dialed in, we've got these things happening, but I can't control.
And this is any, for any business really, right? Like we can't almost control how many people are going to buy from us in a given day or week or month, unless we have really, uh, have a, have a strong like subscription model kind of thing or consistent retaining, you know, clients that you've retained. But we have days where we might have 10 people all the way up to a hundred people. And, you know, you want more days where you have a hundred people, but if we're not actively getting out in the community, right, getting online, running ads, doing different things, getting that press, doing the marketing, those new peak customers are not going to be coming by.
We are just waiting for them. We're not being strategic and intentional about it. And then if we're not marketing to the existing customers that we do have, that have visited us a couple of times, then somebody else is going to capture their attention because our competitors are, are marketing too.
So while it is oftentimes put on the back burner by many businesses, it is critical. And I, you know, think that maybe people are afraid to be the spokesperson for their business. They're afraid to go on camera still.
I mean, we, you know, Mary, we've seen a huge shift. There's been a huge shift and people being more comfortable with that. I mean, now, especially with younger Andre coming in and it's, we see a massive change from when I, you know, we both first started, but yeah, there is still, there are still people who don't want to have their, you know, they, they still have the animal on their Facebook profile instead of themselves, you know, they still have, I'm like, you know, nobody knows what you look like, you know, how are they going to recognize you around town or in your store, you know, or they won't connect their businesses page to even to their Facebook, you know, their personal Facebook page.
It's like, these are three easy little things. Yeah. And the key here is the most important thing I think in PR and independent pet stores is people want to know the face and the person behind the business.
Yes. I feel that that's even more important than the mascot, you know, the animal that it's named for. People want to know what qualifications does this person have to sell me these products? Well, when we come back, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk to Candice about prioritizing PR and marketing.
How do you do that? We'll be right back. And we are back with Candace D’Agnolo and Candice, tell us, okay, so you've got all these things you got to do when you own a store. How do you help people prioritize? What advice do you give them to make sure that they are doing PR and marketing? Well, you know, if it's not on the calendar, it just doesn't ever get done.
So we have to start blocking time out for sure. That's like, and I know that that's like simple. It's like, okay, this is stuff.
I mean, I feel like that's not, not that's not simple, but it's kind of like, you know, the, the basic thing is get it on the calendar. But I think if we can create some frameworks for our time to say, you know, on Monday, I'm going to work on all my marketing plans and save time for, um, when you make that block of time to go, okay, I'm working on what are my immediate deliverables for this week? And then how am I thinking about the future? Because the work that people are doing, like the work we're going to do right now, the work you and I are doing right now, right? Recording this podcast, putting it out there, this isn't going to necessarily turn into like an immediate sale for us, but it's building that relationship that where somebody might go, Hey, I want to work with one of them. You know, if seeing us now that feel more comfortable with us, they're going to do that.
So the work that we're all doing as businesses on our marketing in this immediate day is going to be impacting our future sales and the work that then so that what, how our today's sales are impacted is what we did yesterday and in the past. Right? So like that's what we have to pray. We have to like spend some time on what are the immediate, like what pictures do I need to take for my posts that are still going live today that I didn't, or who do I need to respond to? But then you have to think about that future planning.
So putting it on the calendar, having, you know, and holding it sacred if you can getting support. Like for me, I love working with people. So I will get more done when I just pay to have someone next to me that we could like work together.
I would just sound silly, but like, I just do like, I need to bounce ideas off people. I need to be typing, you know, I, we have to be taking the pictures, the ideations, we're contacting people while it's all happening. Like it's a very like group dynamic kind of work session and I thrive in that.
So, you know, I, but I have to plan for that because I have to rely on other people's schedules to be there with me too, you know, so that's, but I just know that now about myself. But I think, you know, prioritizing it is that you have to create a schedule just like if you would prioritize anything, losing weight or, you know, seeing your friends and family or paying down debt. Like we have to make a plan.
You just can't wing it. Okay. And then once you have that plan, good things will happen, right? That they just will because like if we go back to PR, right.
And it's like, you know, your PR, I mean, I'd love to end up hearing your definition of it, but you know, essentially it's actually, go ahead and tell me what's your definition of PR? Well, I consider PR really kind of a testimonial when other people say good things for you and, and you didn't pay for it. So it wasn't pay for play, but maybe it's a news station. Maybe it's a pet blogger that you reached out to a micro influencer.
It's when people say good things about you and you didn't expect it or you, you know, you sought after, but they gave you a glowing recommendation and there's nothing more flattering and more effective than somebody else saying something great about your business. Right. Yeah.
I love that. So when we are, you know, working on our business and getting out into the community and, and, and not just paying for that booth space and, but going and talking to the other vendors, thanking the person who coordinated the whole thing, you know, you're just being like a person that other people want to do business with kind of, you know, I think, and then you're, you're building those relationships, you know, PR is a lot of relationship building. And so you just never know where those will lead.
And I've seen it happen in both, you know, I'm not like, it's kind of like networking, I guess, but I've seen it in both like the pet boss nation world, as well as now in Dante and Dory's in the Dante and Dory's world, what has happened is because I did send a press release out and we had like, we, in the very beginning, working with you, right. We sent the press release out, our local radio station had us in for one of their morning segments. So I came in with my manager, brought Dante and Dory, the dogs into the studio so we could, you know, capture some other content.
And, you know, I have, because of what I do and just with some of the skills I've had, you know, I'm very comfortable talking off the cuff, you know, on, on camera, on microphone, whatever. I don't get nervous by that where a lot of people might, but I go into that situation, we have the interview. It goes well, right.
They're like, this girl's great. This woman's great. And then it seeds for him.
I want to bring her back. Like, I want to have her come back sometime. So then once our store opens, he's a cat dad, like the main, one of the main reporters, he comes in and he's like, I would really love if you, you know, or it actually didn't say, he's like, would you ever be interested in maybe like a pet tip of the week? Like just a quick little soundbite.
And here I'm going, you're not going to charge my business this for sure. I'll do that. Right.
So we kind of, well, it gets better, Mary, it gets better. So he goes, okay, well let me get, I'm just, this is my idea. I need to get it like approved by the radio station.
Right. I'm like, okay. So it kind of gets started back in his court.
He does talk to some people I'm checking back in and he goes, you know, we've just all been so busy. I know they're interested. Why don't you just record some stuff? Cause I was like, I could record at home.
What do you need? Like 90 second things, three minute things. He's like, just get some stuff down. And yeah, then I'm going into the holidays.
I didn't have much time to really focus on this. And you know, the business was starting to grow and, and then it became this thing where I was like, oh, there's this free opportunity I have not taken advantage of to raise awareness because I was so busy. I was so busy.
Right. Just like everybody else. I would run into him now and he's like, Hey, you know, I really want to revisit that again.
Even other people who worked at the station were like, Jay was really interested in that. Like what's, where's the status of that? And I'm just kicking myself. I just didn't have the time.
Now, when I recently made a new hire to help support the business and marketing and operations, one of the things I tasked with her was like, I just need you to get this on the calendar. Like contact this guy, get this ball rolling again. I need to get in the studio.
I need to know what the plan is. Do not let me drop the ball on this. So just because somebody put some, you know, attention to it, we were able to revisit it.
We had the meeting and in the, at the radio station at that time, they decided they wanted to turn it into a podcast. They want to make a podcast that would drop, you know, on their website. And that would go on to Apple podcasts.
And then they would just pull snippets of it to maybe drop throughout the week where they needed some content. Well, I'm like, great, that's fine. We'll do weekly 10 minute, 15 minute things.
So I pick it. We find a day to go and record. I go into the radio station to record.
And when I sit down there, now this next radio host has now talked to the general manager for the three stations and they want to turn it into a weekly show that they put on air. I know that they now they're like, so the commercial break, they had to teach me all those commercial breaks and stuff. And, and it was like, we recorded like you've got, there's going to be ads, just record it.
And then we'll pull, we'll break that down and put it into a podcast. We just don't know where yet it's going to go, but we want you to have a weekly show. I was like, Oh my gosh.
Like again, for free, I, you know, I'm giving tips. It's still Candace from Dante and Dory's and, um, you know, come in. We're happy to talk with you about any of the questions you have.
As long as it doesn't get too salesy, I think we're good. But here's the thing, Mary, is that I know that they know that I have contacts. And so do all these listeners here of people who could become sponsors, right? So they probably know that down the road, they're going to get some ad sales from this, from pet food brands or whoever, you know, might be things I carry.
So I know that they see they're not, and I'm donating my time that I'm to pay me as a, you know, a personality or my time. Right. But they're getting, you know, it's a, it's kind of a barter for now knowing that there could be future money, you know, if it goes well and they're excited because it's just their station right now is all like agriculture and sports, like local sports.
So they're excited because they know that pet ownership, you know, is, is dominant, but they're like, I know they're excited because they're like, our listeners are going to just like, love this. So all that to be said, now we know, okay, now if I can own the rights to the show and how do we regionalize that? And then how do we, you know, bring in, oh, I could go now maybe to those other markets, the bigger markets like Quad Cities and Peoria and say, go to those TV stations like you were recommending and do the post show gift guides. But now because of that radio show, I have more credibility with those stations and they're like, okay, you know, so it's all, but it layered, it didn't start there though.
Right. It just started with that first press release about a year ago, but you know that we were going to do this and then it was the relationship building and taking up opportunities, you know, that come to you. So you just never got where you go.
That's an amazing story and it's proof that you can do PR for yourself. Yeah. You know, that is, that's one of my missions too.
I can't help everybody, but you know, there's a lot of independent pet stores can't afford to hire a PR firm on a monthly retainer. That's just insane. So that's kind of one of my goals, but we're going to take a quick break again and when we come back, we are going to get a few more tips and tricks from Candice.
And we're back with Candice. So Candice, tell me what was one of your biggest, we just talked about this amazing story that you just told us about how you got PR for yourself. Have you ever had the opposite happen? Have you had any negativity, you know, negative reviews, which is all kind of PR as well? Very, this needs to be a whole nother podcast probably.
Yes. So I think one of the ones that was the worst and like physically, you know, physically, I'm like getting sick even thinking about it, but, and it was interesting because it came from an angle of, I was getting advice from attorneys. I had my own feeling of, you know, doing marketing.
I was like, I think I know what I should be doing, but because there was some legalities in it, the attorneys were like, I think that you shouldn't sit and make a statement almost. Right. So it's like crisis PR, right? You're, you're right.
You know this. So I had a business in Chicago called Dogaholics. I owned the trademarks for every reason for that word to be used in the pet industry, except as a dog rescue because I didn't have a dog rescue.
However, and so I'm in Illinois, in Chicago and in the, and then over across state lines in Indiana, there was a rescue that started called Dogaholics Rescue, spelled slightly differently, but they would pull from the Chicago pound, like they were very integrated into the Chicago rescue world. And when they first started, you know, I didn't think it was a big deal. And, but then we started getting a lot of phone calls for owner of relinquishments to our, our phone numbers.
We started getting people asking like what our hours were for adoptable dogs, people in the Chicago, I already had a business for 10 years in Chicago. People thought that I started that rescue. And so now there was this confusion in the marketplace and I didn't know those people.
I didn't know like if there was a light, like if they did something bad or something that would be my brand reputation, you know, it was kind of foggy. So we approached it with trying to get ahold of them, calling them, leave a message, emailing them, telling them that they were infringing on our name and that we would do anything we could to help them transition to a new name. Like I knew cause I was in the rescue world too.
I was on the board of a dog. Wow. That's so nice.
Oh no. Yeah, it was nice. But then they weren't so nice.
So I ended up offering, I was like, I know how expensive it is to, you know, you probably have your logo on merchandise. You have your logo all, you know, your website's been done, you know, you're going to have these costs now and changing. So I will pay for all of that.
I will pay to re what? Yes. I offered, I was like, I will pay for you to get new stuff, but you need to change your name. Crickets.
No message. I think somebody responded that was, I think maybe somebody was like, we don't have to do anything and you'll just hear from our attorney. Like somebody said something like that.
And then we, then I got my attorneys involved and we started sending just them some letters and we were like, please respond to this. Here's what we're doing. We need your response.
We need your response. Maybe six months to a year ago, but no, they're not responding to anything, but now it's escalating, right? The phone calls, the drop-offs, the confusion is escalating. And so my attorneys were like, I really think that you need to, now we need to go to a judge.
We need to get them in court. And so we just need to heighten it to get their response. So the letter that the attorney sent was like, we will see you in this court and you, the judge, they, we didn't say this, but the judge might require you to pay, you know, our attorney's fees.
Well, that got them to speak up. I go to bed. I wake up the next morning.
I look at my cell phone and my social media person is like, get on the internet. Like basically like you need to get online immediately and shut down what's happening. And I'm like, what's going on? So they decided, this rescue decided that they would go to their followers and make a statement.
The Dogaholics in Chicago was forcing them to change their name or they'd have to pay me $10,000. And they were like, so what should our new name be? And their followers and everybody went crazy. Okay.
So I'm waking up to all these bad reviews, right? Everyone's leaving us bad reviews. We've never been in the business. Everyone's leaving us Google, Yelp, Facebook bad reviews.
They won't respond to my messages to them. I think I should make a statement on their post. I don't.
So then I'm trying to talk to my attorneys. They're like, just wait it out. It'll be a few more days.
But now it takes over a week. It took about a week of this whole experience. Over this week, they are now calling new stations in Chicago.
Their people are going to come pick it outside of my doggy daycare. I have an aunt in California who sees it and is like, I think that this is my niece's business. Oh my God.
It's getting crazy. So then I decide, okay, what can I control? So I do make a statement and I put it on my Facebook page. I did this earlier, probably that day because I could see everyone commenting on everyone else's posts.
And I said, people are really angry. They need a place to come. And so I put my own statement out and I said, comment here.
You know, this is where it's at. And so everyone got to be really mean all on that thread. And then when it was over, I could just delete the thread.
Right. But it gave the people who wanted to be haters a place. Now, then eventually what ended up happening, I didn't eat all week.
I mean, it was horrible. It was horrible. Because then I realized, you know, I'm getting more damage to this brand I built in this short period of time than it's worth to even deal with this.
So I finally got the rescue people on the phone after about, I think it was four or five days. And then I caved and I basically was like, okay, they think they changed it to like, I don't even remember now. It was like dog.
Oh, I don't know. It was like the spelling that changed it enough or something. But I was basically like, shut your people down.
Like, like, you could calm them down. And so anyway, it ended up being it didn't really hurt our business. I don't think because I mean, it's still continuing to grow.
But it was a time and that energy of like the online trolls and anger of it all. And I felt like I didn't know who to turn to from a professional perspective. Like I knew at the end of the day, as the owner of my business as the only one my employees were nervous for that, like, right, they thought people were gonna like really show up and pick it or like bother that people were calling like, they didn't know how to handle it.
And I had to the attorneys are like, don't say anything, we'll just get them to court, they'll be forced to change. And I'm like, it was just a lot. So at the end of the day, what ended up happening to is that those relationships, some of the other rescues in town that knew that I you know, they were basically going to bat for me, which was awesome.
They came almost every rescue in Chicago went on their social media pages and made statements about me that they were like, the owner of this business would never do that. She loves rescue, she's given more to rescue than any of you have ever probably ever done in your life, you know, like, so it was great, because they and she has every right, they would stick back up, she has every right to do this, because it's her brand and her trademark, and they were infringing. And, you know, so it was it was nice to see that the community did like, you know, that those common sense people that got it.
Yeah, emotionally charged, you know, like that. But it's still it was it was chaos. Yeah, it was really rough week.
You know, can I just tell you from my experience, I feel like the animal rescue community is some of the worst on social media. Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen it a lot lately, because I have I'm not in that mark. I'm not in that a lot anymore.
But yeah, yeah, I remember it is. Yeah, I see so many crisis situations come out of animal rescue. And you know, it's just because people are passionate.
Yeah. So yeah, that's the bad side of PR. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. I actually just had a situation where in a boarding facility, an employee killed the dog. That was another crisis communications, which also falls under PR.
PR is very enveloping. It's it's so many different things. And I love to pawn social media off to others.
But it's really become when it becomes a situation like what you went through, it really is PR. And I can just tell you right off the bat that I often get in arguments with attorneys. And we can usually though, you know, find a go between typically Yeah, I mean, I think getting ahead of getting ahead of it.
Now I know any, any situation can be an employee, it doesn't matter what it is, like, you have to be, in my opinion, you've got to be the first one out to make a statement. But that at least that is like, I this is this and get here's the facts and to also be if it is your fault, like remorse, like what, you know, be honest, remorseful and have empathy, like whatever it is, you know, if you need to, but just control at least be the first one to start controlling the narrative. It's like, absolutely.
Yeah. Well, we could talk about this for hours. But I wanted to ask you, how can people get ahold of you become a pet boss? Or, you know, tell us where your store is and how pet parents can support you there? Sure.
Awesome. Okay. Yeah.
So if you're a pet professional, and you want to, if you're a professional, and you have a local business, you're looking for support and community and education to grow your business, please visit PetBoss.com. There you have our different programs, different levels, you know, we've got group coaching and online portal full of resources, I do one on ones. And that is really geared towards that local pet business owner. Now, but if you work in the pet industry, and you're listening, no matter, you know, distributor, sales rep, whatever you are, we have our Pet Boss podcast that you can find on all platforms, as well as a free Facebook group community that you could join.
And, and then for pet parents, we have, you know, we're in Galesburg, Illinois, Dante Andores is in Galesburg, Illinois. And honestly, if you should come because we have a pancake house, Judy's cafe and kitchen that has gone viral. That is our number one tourism attraction.
And she's just down the road from me. And I even have a little Judy's dog pancakes. So my God, and then stop and see us at Dante Andores.
But you know, you can shop online to over there. Oh, so awesome. Well, thank you so much with sharing all your wisdom.
I mean, you are a true pet pro. Like you go to these pet trade shows, and everybody knows Candice. Well, that's a wrap for this episode of the whisker report.
We're so excited to be doing this for all of you out there who are working every day to make life better for animals. So do you have a question you want us to answer? Or we can pass questions on to Candice as well. Or do you want to be featured on a future whisker report episode reach out to me at Mary at whisker media.com. And as we always say, bark loud and purr smart.