A Day in the Life as a Small Business Owner | Running a Dog Treat Business, Single Ingredient Treats

Hi, good morning, I'm Tiffany. Welcome to my channel. I am the owner of The Doggery, a dog food company I started six months ago. I specialize in single ingredient treats. It's been an amazing six months. Everything I've learned so far, I'm kind of learning as I go and I'm hoping to start sharing all the behind the scenes of being a small business owner, making all of our treats, and maybe one day opening up a storefront here in my hometown. And this is Leo, one of the reasons I started it all. He's my three-year-old Australian shepherd who just loves attention. I will be sharing all things small business related, behind the scenes, and dog mom. I'm also a fiancé and we're getting married in two and a half months in Mexico. So yeah, this morning I just made my coffee. But yeah, this morning I'm just actually going to kind of plan out my day. There was quite a bit of stuff that I didn't get done yesterday that I really should have, but I made about three batches of treats yesterday. So I made some chicken jerky, apples, and beef jerky, so I'll have to bag those. I have a wholesale order going out. I have a wholesale inquiry, which I have to make a quote for, and I'm sure there's lots of other stuff, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. I do have to meet my dad this morning. We are going to be having a meeting today, so that is probably the only time sensitive thing that I have going on. But yeah, anyways, this is Lil. We just happen to be dog sitting her this week while her mom is in Mexico, which is fun. All things dogs around here. Yes, okay, yes. Hi, I see you. So I did just kind of make my to-do list. One other thing I forgot is I have to deliver orders today from my Black Friday sale. I've already delivered probably half, so I only have a few left, but I still need to go out today because I already said they would. So that, and then I do work full-time for my parents' small business as well. I kind of said I was going to be in the office all day getting stuff done because I'm a little bit behind with some paperwork because I've been swamped with Christmas and all my dog treat stuff. This is my first holiday season with this new business. So yeah, I don't know. We'll just plan logistics-wise. I like to kind of lay it out on my Google Calendar just so I know because I'm a visual person and I can see how much time everything's going to take and where I should be when. I do like to have this typically done on Sundays, but there was just a scheduling thing at the office so I wasn't able to kind of pre-plan my week. So I've been feeling a little bit chaotic and going day by day, but it's fine as long as I don't miss anything. Yeah, we should be First things first, I should probably take these guys for a walk. Did I just say the magic word? Yes, I did. Okay, we'll see you guys later. You guys hungry? Yes? Sit. No, not jump. That's the exact opposite. I said sit. Are you hungry? Sit. Good job. Okay, let me get your food. Eggs that I have to do. So hopefully I can get 50 mixed eggs. I do about 12 ounces of chicken jerky per. Sweet potato, chicken heart, beef jerky. We're just missing the chicken jerky. So I need 15 for this morning, so I'm just going to do 15 for now and then I have an order for another 50. But I'll have them by the way. I just need more chicken because this is honestly not going to happen to me very often. So that's why I do have to go pick up my chicken order later today. And yeah, let's make these. So these are supposed to be about 60 grams. So each one, it depends a little bit, everyone, on how much chicken jerky they get. Because it depends how much the chicken hearts. And the sweet potato, which is just a set. Weight different every time, of course. My dad, because it's really messy out and I don't have snow tires, my dad actually just went and picked up my chicken order, which was really nice. So yeah, now I just have to bag up my Christmas baggie order and my mom is coming later to help me cut chicken because there's so much of it and I'm very behind and I have to go back to the office for two o'clock. So it really takes a village. What are you doing? Come on. Thank you. Thank you for coming inside. This is my toast that I forgot I made an hour ago. Yeah, toast from an hour ago. I cut five kilos of chicken. My mom was helping me cut the chicken hearts and I can get those in tonight. I finished bagging my Christmas baggies. I do still have two orders that were supposed to be delivered to the little shop that I do pickups at, but those aren't going to go out today. I'm going to email those people just because the roads have gotten really bad. My mom did the other two deliveries and then I think that's about it. I have caught up on a lot of stuff. I do have to do invoicing for this business for the rest of the afternoon, but everyone else has kind of left for the day just because the roads are so messy. But I walk here so I don't have the driving to do, so I'm just gonna get everything done hopefully while it's quiet. Are we gonna go for a walk? Hey bud, you want to go for a walk? Get ready for your walk, bud. Got your coat on, girly. You do not look impressed. You look so unimpressed actually. You don't need a coat. I still don't have my snow boots pulled out of storage in the basement, but I have my winter coat and my insulated pants, so that's a good start. We're ready to go. It says it feels like minus six, but I am freezing. I am so not ready for the cold. Take me to Mexico. Second guess but I currently feel like I'm going and making treats without any sense of direction because usually the ideal week is that all of these totes are full, but currently this is the only one that has any treats, and so I need to figure out what the heck is in here. So either I will just open a bag of treats when I'm at market to use for samples, or I'll use if I have like a leftover amount that would fill the whole bag, I'll use that, but otherwise you can have the chakri board full that catches so many people's attention when I'm at markets because people stop and they're like oh that looks so good looks like I could eat it or they're they have their dog with them and they're like oh here try this and I'm like perfect um because a lot of people are also like my dog's so picky like they won't like any of this their dog tries it and they're like oh my god he never eats treats and so they get all excited that he likes a treat and they buy them yeah that's kind of my marketing strategy at markets to get new customers and anyways this is not very many treats at all this random bag of beef heart and I swore at the last market I sold out um but then I found this and if I knew I had it I would have sold it because these are always the first of all because I never can get very many because obviously a beef heart is only like five pounds on average and so it only makes a certain number of bags especially when I use it in beef kind of the end of their life too I try and sell everything within a month um that way customers can still get two months um of the product being on the shelf and they don't have to worry so much um after that I typically tell them to put it in the fridge or freeze it I don't know if you noticed this is my clipboard it says pups plants and coffee my best friend bought it for me at a market she went to that was so cute I would really want to start doing decals um I think it'd just be another great thing to carry I think they're so fun people use them for everything I would love to start carrying some I thought I would have time for the holiday season but so far I haven't um so we'll see what the next couple weeks brings um if I'm able to yeah so I think I have everything so in total I have four five six oh no I am down with those okay so four five six seven eight nine ten I have 20 bags of treat and so I am out of chicken jerky I am out of apple mussels chicken sprinkles and I have one chicken heart one chicken yeah it's time to resume this bag and get um the chicken that I cut in the machines today I'm hoping to start playing around with um this vlog and editing it I obviously am still a newbie so it's probably going to be a bit of a learning curve and I'm not going to be the fastest um but hopefully I can come up with something fun because yeah this is going to be my channel I'm just hoping to share the behind the scenes of running a small business everything related to dogs um with natural treats you know one day I hope to kind of look back and see where where I was in business and how it was running out of my house um but yeah so Jordan is throwing snowballs at me what are you doing okay so I ended up buying a potato peeler because I am currently peeling my sweet potato by hand I'm hoping this is going to help um that's one thing I do have to figure out you might need to go here so okay no it's a good size I feel like that's a good size and then some come like this so um so it might be able to fit should probably read the instructions before I start playing with this but let's see what what it do you think it's going to work yeah that is not doing anything I was very hopeful for this potato peeler but I don't think it's gonna be a solution put it in a bucket that hopefully that catches the skin a little bit better because it's just going everywhere this is the second attempt it's gotten a good chunk but obviously say that potato peeler didn't really work obviously very well um I ended up having to like hand peel a lot of it but this is just super satisfying it seems like it should be used for something but obviously I have no use for it so I am going to put it in the green bin but yeah thought I'd share what it looked like my god my kitchen is feeling a little bit chaotic right now but it's fine it's kind of what we're used to around here um but I just wanted to show I am I actually only had enough chicken jerky for two bags because I used the rest of that batch I just made um for some mixed bags but these are what I use for the silica I actually just got those this actually it's a really full bag um so they're filtered and they're going in the bags just to help with moisture um and the next thing I am bagging is mussels so I try and be as careful as I can because obviously seafood quality um but I do disclose that my kitchen seafood just like kitchens that contain peanut butter so yeah try my best so let me get my mussels this is my whole batch of mussels that needs to be bagged I'm really crushing them I think I should get them I think I should get them oh they stink so