No More Flying by the Seat of Your Pants

SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS never fail to astound me, every day wearing more hats than I have pegs on my rack. You guys are amazing; you do everything in the running of your businesses.

But doing it all day in and day out doesn’t always mean you truly know how to do everything. There’s always going to be that element of flying by the seat of your pants and hoping for the best.

So we thought we’d do what we could in that regard with this issue’s Big Story (page 32) and help fill in the gaps where things might be a bit hazy. You know, like what to do when you wake up one morning and a fish in a tank has gone rogue overnight and has started eating everyone. Or how to give first aid to an ailing bird. Or how to pack more dog food varieties on your shelves when your shelves positively can’t fit another bag.

Enter the wisdom (and wit) of crowdsourcing. We reached out to members of the PETS+ Brain Squad, the PETS+ Community on Facebook and to our team of expert sources, asking for special skills they could share. And what we found is a collective skill set even more astounding than we’d been giving you credit for. You guys really can do it all!

You’re not going to use these how-tos every day, just as you don’t use high school trigonometry every day. But let’s just say this morning you woke up with a revolutionary new idea for a dog toy, you’ve got to get the word out to the press about your pets-with-the-Easter-Bunny photo shoot, you still haven’t figured out the right backdrop for said photo shoot, you’ve got a complaining customer on the phone who costs you more more than she makes you, your mascot Fifi is stuck in the tree out front, and you don’t know whether that ladder will reach the limb … well, then, you’ll be glad you studied trigonometry and have read “How to Do Everything.”

Wishing you the best in business,

Ralf Kircher
Editor-in-Chief, Pets+
ralf@petsplusmag.com