The PNGP Saga - Ch. 6 - The Times Of Mourning, Healing and Parting of Ways

(Changed Title from Previous Chapters Note) 
  The start of this new era of PNGP, began with the creation of the PNGP Vendor Network Group on Facebook. This is a new, free group/page that is designed to help other small business owners who utilize events for marketing, to find events that allow booth promotions. To promote this new quasi-service, we began to research heavily in the local events area to find any events that allowed service vendors, and promoted their details heavily on the page. We created a specialized flyer for the group that vendors could print out, and we could hand out at events. This was soon followed, by a month of weekends promoting our services at event booths.
   We attended the events that we were able to, and began to hand out information, promoted directly to the vendors attending the events we were at. We received some very good feedback from this, and the page numbers began to grow, as did the feedback through the page. We also promoted the group via online directories (too a lesser extent than our main service), and other such methods. To this day, this has been an excellent way to get to know the community, other service providers and event hosts.
  Sadly, with the peaks in life, come the valleys too. Our valley, began when I received news of my mom's Great Dane, Lizzie passing away. I'd spent most of my time with her when I lived with my mom, prior to moving out into the world on my own back in 2010. The news of her going over the rainbow bridge in the sky, to run freely and happily, and most importantly of all, in peace,  was a huge blow to me. The grieving period was long and weary. In the end, I came to a conclusion that we all should know that our loved ones are never really gone, just hard to see, but always looking out for us from above.
  As if in sync with the changes, poor Digby began to have good days and bad days again, adding to the sadness still hanging about in the air. Despite the emotionally trying times, the business continued to grow and expand around us, beginning to grow more dynamic, and the household began to follow suit.Amidst all these company changes, various needs and interests within the household began to change too. Much self-searching, self-exploration and self-discovery followed in the wake of Lizzie's passing for me. I believe the same held true for both, Katrina and James individually,  throughout July in their own ways. In the healing process, new needs came into existence too, for all household members individually and these too, each specific to themselves.
  A critical time in the PNGP family had been reached, and the new needs had to be discussed and handled accordingly for the better of all involved. The end decision was eventually reached mutually, and brought into being, a new PNGP Era. The decision reached was, PNGP remaining as it was but, Katrina and Digby, would be parting ways with the household. They had to follow their own new calling and path in life that would better suit their needs.
      This decision came about for many reasons, but none of them made it any easier for anyone involved, nor less painful. Our choice was not due to any form of a failure of the company or of us as partners. We accept our choice, and acknowledge that our company was successfully started, run and improved over the course of the previous year and a half, and has continued to do so since. We are at peace with our choices, and thus, PNGP has begun to move into a new phase of the PNGP Saga, The Times of Exploring the Unknown.

The PNGP Saga - Ch. 5 - The Times Of Change and Reborn Creativity

  After several months of trying new marketing techniques, new booth setup styles, and the slew of other ideas we gave a try, our company began to take a new shape and form. We became more professional and organized, more efficient and experienced. We began to establish ourselves in the vendor networking world and with a with more local small businesses. We tried and kept several ideas, and likewise tried and discarded equally as many. A few ideas that we tried and found wanting, were our door-hanger campaigns, as they didn't seem to be a huge hit in our trial areas, based on lack of response. And, our first edition of our Bi-Weekly Newsletter was a flop. While its' design was amazing, it was created in a beast of a program, that wasn't very user/creator friendly via emails. Most of our ideas however, we tried in a few different ways, and found to be very helpful! These ideas included a new start to revising our website and marketing materials, a new edition of our logo, a new promotional photo album for our booth and much more!
   We went through some tough times in the household, including things like the pains of Digby going through (and recovering) from kidney failure, Lauren's moms' dog slowly giving in to old age, and other sad and tough times of that nature. We hit a few slower times and a few fast-paced, busy times that added to the stress, but the household adapted new methods to work through them, persevered and pushed ahead. I am happy to say, that Digby made a good recovery and pulled through the tough times, as did Lizzie (at this time), Lauren's Great Dane.
   Towards the trailing end of the stressful times, the light at the end of the dark times began to shine through, as Digby recovered and Lizzie began to stabilize, business continued to flourish and the household began to settle into a calm, balanced routine again. New ideas began to surface again, such as ideas of hosting future events, creating a Small Business Vendor Networking group,  new ways for our booth setup and more! With the wheels and gears turning once again, PNGP charged ahead into its new era of Growing and Expanding!

The PNGP Sage - Ch. 4 - The Industrious Stage

   Throughout the next several months, we setup our booths at various types of events that allowed promotional booths for services, and began to perfect our setup and approaches to marketing via these events. As events are fairly spread out in timing, and some months have many options for ones to attend, while others hold very few events being hosted, we also spent a lot of time perfecting our running of both household and company structure.
   We tried new methods of marketing such as door hanger campaigns in various areas, new online niches like meetup groups and professional online groups. We set up dozens of new charts for recording key information needed to be remembered around the house, such as cleaning, dog belongings, medicine logs, yard maintenance tasks, etc, to make us more proficient, organized and professional. Hours and hours seemed to be poured into our service, and thus far, we are in awe of the support of our clients, friends and family that has lead us to where we are today!
   Our brain-storming of new ideas that we could add in to our current service, without taking away from the quality of our main service either, continued throughout this time. Over time, we began to learn more and more about the quirks of the business world, and about its' various types of Ups and Downs. Our business knowledge and experience, began grow along with our company, and our ability to provide more services was expanded through these too. Through the feedback we were given, we added our first additional service, our Day Visit Program! The addition of this service, led the company into, the Expanding and Changing Stage of the PNGP Saga!

Chapter Three - The Company - In Motion

   After gathering our cookies, lists, schedules and everything else, we began to promote our service to our current clients, local businesses and everyone we could think of about our new company. We then launched our mostly completed website and hit the market! At each store that permitted it, we would leave a few of our items and tell them a bit about ourselves, thank them and make note to stop by again in the future.
    During this marketing campaign, we encountered what we found to be one of our best tools for marketing - vendor events! We found several flyers for different local events that allowed services to set up promotional booths, usually for a donation or fee. If you are interested in this marketing sector, check out the Pack n' Go Vendor Network Group, a  Facebook page set up to allow local NE services to share event information and locate potential vendors to share booth space and fees with. This can be found at www.packngopets.com/vendors.
   During this time, we gained much new knowledge about the world of business, how to live and work with a friend and business partner, along with my significant other, who had to do likewise, as well as learn to live consistently in a pack of changing dogs. It was truly the beginning to a new phase in our lives and a new beginning riddled with possibilities of the unknown. But the three of us worked together and tried many a things to come up with new ideas and ways of doing things. Hours of research were poured into learning more on our business niche and just business related things in general. Thus began the industrious phase of the PNGP household.

The PNGP Sage - Chapter 2 - The Grand Opening!

   After another solid month of non-stop preparation and moving everyone into the house during March, by April 1, 2011, Pack n' Go Pets Exclusive was registered, insured and solidified and was able to finally celebrate its' Grand Opening! We had our first round of client paperwork finished, a completed website (compliments of James and his good friend, Chris), business cards and customized dog treats for marketing! That very first week of April after opening, we even had several new clients already boarding their dogs with us. What a thrilling, yet scary feeling to start ones own business and take on a new house.
    We began pouring through phone books, online directories and anywhere else we could find pet-friendly businesses and compiling a on-going list of places we would go drop off materials at, events we could attend and neighborhoods we could potential market in. We use an online website called EditGrid for a good chunk of our record keeping, as it is a wonderful tool to help keep things organized. It is a handy spreadsheet based program good for lists, charts and budget work. Anyhow, we compiled the start of this list and began to group the list (at the time) of 60 some odd pet related businesses we would visit, by location and picked a few days over the next few weeks driving to each one, introducing ourselves and asking if we could leave our marketing materials with them.
    I forgot to mention, we had also joined forces with my stepsister, Nicole and her baking company called, "Nicole's Cookie Jar" to help both of our companies market. To do this, we designed a homemade, healthy, but yummy dog bone shaped treat, pre-packaged in a cute plastic casing with a oaktag label sporting both our company's information and a list of ingredients. We had two sets of cookie packages - one had a single treat, these were to give out at events or to visiting clients, and the other had a package of 5 or so treats, meant to be given as a "Thank You" gift to stores that accepted our business materials. These we gave out during the above mentioned marketing. I can say, they were a huge hit! Thus began the marketing campaign for our newly born business.

Attention Clients!

Attention Dear Clients! We are excited/sad to say all at once, that the weekend of 7/20-7/22 we are fully booked! A wait list is available, should any cancellations occur prior to the dates, for clients who are still interested in booking for those nights. Feel free to call anyway to just verify and we will keep our posts updated :) Thanks for all your wonderful support to make it all possible here at PNGP! -  Posted on Pack n' Go Pets Facebook page 6/19/12.

The PNGP Saga Chapter 1

After several months of James (my wonderful boyfriend), Katrina (my good friend and business partner) and I, began pooling together ideas and resources to form the Company (with our new chosen name), Pack n' Go Pets Exclusive. At first, we had planned on being a multiple service company offering In-Home and In Our Home dog sitting, as well as Dog walking.  However, after much research via asking friends/family/business owners/etc, online guides, books and more, we realized that while the sky was the limit for a dream company, we were only 3 people and between us, at the time, we had 5 dogs of our own to manage.
      Thus, we nixed all of the variety, and cut it down to simply, "In Our Home" dog sitting. We realized then, that to do this feasibly with all of our dogs, renting a place would not be a likely or do-able option. With much discussion and decision making, James and I, decided we would buy a house together for the company to run out of, as well as, to house us three humans and our 5 dogs. James and I spent months pouring over  houses for sale across CT and RI for the perfect house that would be convenient for me to drive to (at the time) my current job at a CT Dog daycare and training facility, as well as, for a good client base and location. In the end, the perfect house in Hope Valley, sprung up and threw itself at our feet. With much help from James and my family, James and I purchased our first house in March of 2011! The birth of Pack n' Go Pets Exclusive, had officially begun.