Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Sellheim.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
After high school I attended Iowa State to study Chemical Engineering. While I was at Iowa State I found a lot of enjoyment as a leader in student organizations and developed an interest in starting my own business. After graduation I took my first job, joining a large manufacturing company in MN working as an engineer. Pretty quickly, I felt something was missing and started pursuing what would now be referred to as a side hustle. I started staying overnight at client’s homes to watch their cats and dogs (and sometimes parrots and reptiles) while the home owner was away on vacation. Over the course of a few years I found I did not enjoy working for a large corporation and decided my future lay somewhere outside of the engineering profession.
In an effort to do some self and world exploration I took an eight month trip overseas to India, Laos, Thailand, Kenya, and Tanzania. When I returned to the US, I felt ready to pursue my dream of starting my own business and converted my side hustle into a registered business that expanded on my previous overnight pet sitting and included dog walking and small animal sitting as well. The new company was named Come, Sit, Stay.
At first, I needed another job to support myself while Come, Sit, Stay got off the ground. Fairly quickly Come, Sit, Stay became too busy for just me to operate. I started adding team members to the company as our client volume increased. After three years of growth, I was able to transition to running Come, Sit, Stay full time in 2013.
Over the past 15 years I have been lucky to have two very long-term managers work with me to provide continuity to our clients and team. Come, Sit, Stay has made major strides to grow operationally to support an increasing quantity of clients and employees. We have made a concerted effort to find trustworthy, reliable, and caring team members to provide our pet care services. I am proud to be leading a group of people that are continually seeking to improve our organization and the impact it has on both our human and animal clients and our employees.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Running my own business hasn’t always been an easy path–especially during the COVID-19 pandemic! Navigating the pandemic was by far our largest struggle to date. The two main factors that drive the purchase of our services are when clients travel or have long work hours away from home. Covid shut down both of those purchase motivators almost overnight. In March of 2020 we lost 60% of our business in the course of two weeks. This was the first and only time I have had to lay off employees. It was so difficult to say goodbye to some of our team. I remember the early days of the SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and scrambling to find a bank with which to complete the loan paperwork. I felt immense pressure to procure a PPP loan to provide us the capital we needed to continue operating and pay our team. When we did not receive a PPP loan in the first application round of federal funding I was devastated and it is one of the lowest points in the 15-year history of operating CSS. Luckily, the PPP program was expanded and we were able to acquire a loan to keep a portion of our team employed even when the demand for services had dropped so drastically. There hasn’t been another time in our operations where things were changing so rapidly and we were constantly looking for information to decide the best path forward or how to pivot to allow us to survive as an organization. I think it is a true mix of luck and past and real-time hard work that Come, Sit, Stay survived 2020 and built the business back to where it is today.
Outside of Covid, we have had some other struggles. When the business was first established there were not good industry-specific software systems for pet care businesses. We started with paper records and simple systems like Google calendar to operate the business. Then we progressed to a combination of systems I developed, customizing new technologies to make our own “frankenstein” system that I was very proud of. Ultimately we moved to an industry specific software to operate the business and provide a client and employee portal. Customers in our industry increasingly expect app-based scheduling and visit reports, so staying current on technology has been important to our growth. Implementing technology advancement can be challenging as each new iteration comes with thorough testing, a large data transfer, and employee (and sometimes customer) training and buy-in. Even though these changes can be a struggle, I also find so much joy in exploring how the company’s operations can be improved and implementing new solutions.
We’ve been impressed with Come, Sit, Stay, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Come, Sit, Stay provides dog walking services directly from the client’s home. We also go to clients’ homes while they are out of town and care for their small pets like cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, birds, and reptiles. Often when people hear about a dog walking company they picture the movie scene of a big pack of dogs being walked down the street in New York City. We specialize in visiting one home at a time and working one-on-one with the pets in each home. This allows us to provide dedicated attention to those pets and cater the time we spend with them to their specific needs. It also allows us to provide care for dogs beyond just exercise such as feeding and providing medications.
A lot of people may be familiar with Rover or Wag which are often called the Uber of dog walking. Having a locally owned company with employees sets us apart from these companies. We have managers that can address employee questions or client concerns. We also have a “deep bench” of team members with scheduled redundancies among our team so someone is always available. Our team members repeat care for clients which allows us to get to know the clients and their pets personally and form real relationships. We are also open 365 days a year. All these things make us extremely reliable and allow us to be flexible to clients needs. We also have a very friendly cancellation policy.
I am very proud of the brand loyalty we have built over the past 15 years. Most of our clients repeat services with us. We have clients who have been with us for the full 15 years. We have clients who have used our services for the entirety of their pet’s life. It is such an honor to be trusted to journey along with our clients and their pets.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
This line of work allows me to have a unique perspective of the Twin Cities because I traverse it a lot both by car and by foot. I have had a wonderful opportunity to drive and walk every neighborhood within our service territory. This has given me an appreciation for all the unique neighborhood pockets that are populated by small businesses. I love it when I discover a new cluster of businesses tucked between residential areas. I recently walked a dog in Northeast and when I was walking back to my car I passed a newly opened coffee shop. I stopped in and ended up chatting with the owner for a while about how she got started and how the business was going. I was able to try a new beverage I’d never had before that she recommended. It is little discoveries and conversations like this that make me appreciate the Twin Cities and the small business community it fosters.
Unrelated to work, I love the food scene and the high quality restaurants we have in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I have a group of girlfriends that try new restaurants every few months and my husband and I love going out to new (or new to us) restaurants for special occasions.
Pricing:
- 15 MInutes – $21.75
- 30 Minutes – $29.00
- 45 MInutes – $36.50
- 60 Minutes – $47.00
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.comesitstaytc.com
- Instagram: @comesitstaytc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/comesitstaytc
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/come-sit-stay-minneapolis-3
