Kara Kelsey of DoodyCalls On 5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business

An Interview With Jason Hartman

A family business is built, executed, and thrives through family. It is extremely different from a regular business because no matter how hard you try; everyone is personally invested and you cannot remove the emotional aspect of it. For our family, this has allowed us to create a fun, supportive, collaborative work culture that we will strive to hold on to as we continue to grow.

As a part of our series about 5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kara Kelsey.

Kara Kelsey is a seasoned professional with a proven track record in customer service and hospitality. Being a lifelong animal enthusiast, it was only a matter of time before she put those skills to work doing something that incorporated animals. She is very passionate about the opportunity that DoodyCalls has given her to serve her family, her community, and her four legged fur-friends.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Well, owning a poop scooping business is not exactly what every little girl dreams of doing when she grows up, now is it? Prior to the COVID pandemic, I was working my “dream job” as an Event Planner for several premier beach venues. Dedicated to my work, I routinely worked 60 plus hours a week to design and execute dream weddings. I loved every minute of it but my schedule was demanding, and work often kept me from spending time with my kids.

Then, in March 2020, the whole country shut down and we all had to learn to live life at a slower pace. We were given the beautiful opportunity to enjoy our families on a level that I had never experienced. It was then that I realized the only way to get the work/life balance that I desperately needed was to create it myself. The entrepreneur spirit runs in my family. My brother, Colton Moran, and I had often discussed different business opportunities that we could venture into. As luck would have it, our mother, Marla, had spent over a decade building a successful career in franchising and was working on the franchise development team for Authority Brands when they acquired DoodyCalls. Our family has three primary passions that made DoodyCalls the perfect fit.

1. Family — being very close allows us to be more present and spend more time with each other and it also allows us to leave a legacy for future generations. Running DoodyCalls with my family has allowed me the flexibility to show up for my family in ways that I couldn’t previously. I still put in a lot of hours, but now I have the flexibility to plan work around my life instead of planning my life around my work.
2. Animals — we are all very involved in the animal community and own multiple rescue dogs. Owning this business gives us the opportunity to love on dogs daily while providing a necessary service to ensure that they are happy and healthy.
3. Community — we are very involved in the community and are always looking for new ways to serve and give back. Owning this business has allowed us to work with several non-profit animal organizations and serve them through financial donations, in-kind service, discounted product, fundraising, etc.

Can you tell us a bit about your family business and your role in it?

Our family business consists of myself, my mother, Marla Moran, and my brother and his wife, Colton & Kirsti Moran. While they operate as more of the “brains” of the operation, I get the function more as the “heartbeat” as I am 100% boots on the ground. For the first year I even scooped daily in addition to overseeing all day-to-day operations and B2B development.

I also get the privilege and honor of being the one who gets to serve the community at all the different events we participate in and work on building partnerships that allow us to serve animal rescues on an ongoing basis.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this career?

When you work with pet waste interesting is not really what you want — so many things can go wrong! I remember when we signed on our first community, they already had Pet Waste Stations installed and they needed weekly service. About three months in, I was working my route and there had been heavy rain for several days prior. I get to this community and I proceed to remove the waste can liner however it snagged on the station causing the bag to tear and next thing I know, I am covered in “poop soup” Yes, I said poop soup!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Let’s just say it’s never a good idea to leave a bunch of pet waste in the back of the truck on a hot summer day. It leads to a very interesting aroma.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The heart of the people behind the operation — my family and our employees which we have adopted as family! We are so blessed to have a group of people with a heart to serve our customers and our community. When your heart is in something, you just operate differently. To us, this isn’t just scooping poop — it’s cultivating relationships, providing excellent service, interacting with and caring for pets and their owners while serving our community.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes! We are currently working on creating a “Scoop the Poop” campaign to submit to the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program for consideration for next year’s grant program. For this campaign will include installing pet waste stations in areas were the water sheds show a high concentration on pet waste contamination and will also include a great deal of education to help increase awareness around the dangers of unscooped poop. Also, a little more future thinking, we will be looking into ways to turn our collected pet waste into an energy source. My brother is a chemical engineer so if anyone can make it happen, it’s him!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

For our family, this is one of the best things about owning a family business, we rely heavily on each other to achieve success. Not just the family that is directly involved but anytime we need a sounding board or someone to run ideas by, we can pick up the phone and call. Being able to brainstorm and collaborate on that level is something we are so grateful for!

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

We have really enjoyed leveraging our business to serve animal rescues in our community. This is something we are very passionate about and the current state of animal welfare in our country is quite disturbing, so we are very grateful to be able to support rescues in our community!

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main parts of our interview. How do you define a family business? How is a family business different from a regular business?

A family business is built, executed, and thrives through family. It is extremely different from a regular business because no matter how hard you try; everyone is personally invested and you cannot remove the emotional aspect of it. For our family, this has allowed us to create a fun, supportive, collaborative work culture that we will strive to hold on to as we continue to grow.

In your opinion or experience, what are the unique advantages that family owned businesses have?

There are so many unique advantages to running a business with your family. We intimately know and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We can trust one another. We know what motivates one another which allows us to keep each other encouraged and moving towards success.

What are the unique drawbacks or blindspots that family owned businesses have?

One of the tricky things for our family is sometimes our family relationship takes a back seat to the business. This can be really challenging because we tend to communicate better and more openly with people we feel connected with, so when that connection isn’t feeling as strong as normal, we have to step back and recognize that our priorities have shifted. We strongly believe in prioritizing family first!

What are some of the common mistakes you have seen family businesses make? What would you recommend to avoid those errors?

A mistake we made in the beginning was not having clearly defined roles for each of us. This caused us to waste a lot of time duplicating work and it also led to missing things. It was the classic, “I thought you were doing that.” It can also lead to tension amongst the team and sometimes even hurt feelings. We highly recommend taking the time to set clear roles and expectations for each member of your family business.

What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders of family businesses to help their employees to thrive?

Be flexible! Keep an open mind and be willing to let go of some of your expectations. Not much goes according to plan the first year so it is important to have the flexibility to adjust and overcome.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean with a story or example?

A leader is someone who sees the vision, is able to empower their employees to carry out that vision but isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty. True leaders lead by example. I personally go out into the field to train each and every technician during their onboarding — even the CEO is not “too good” to scoop poop!

Here is our main question. What are the “5 Things You Need To Run A Highly Successful Family Business”? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Prioritize Family Relationships: When we aren’t prioritizing our relationships, our business suffers because of it. We are very intentional about setting aside time for one another that is “no business allowed.”
2. Clear Expectations: Skip the wasted time and tension and make sure everyone knows their part from the get-go.
3. Open Minded: Success doesn’t always come packaged how you think it will. You must take risk and make investments to find success. For us, we had to keep an open mind about investing in the animal rescues in our community. We were a new business and the financial and time investment was a lot. We would go back and do it 100 times over and these rescues have become our biggest advocates and our largest contribution to brand awareness in our community.
4. Resiliency: As a small family business, we recognized from the beginning that we had to get comfortable being uncomfortable! There are so many times that things do not go how they are planned or how we envisioned and we have to pull together as a family to overcome these obstacles! Sometimes this looks like the CEO scooping poop, or the Sales Manager running operations. Whatever it might be, you need to be resilient enough to keep moving forward towards your family’s success!

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 😊

I would love to enjoy breakfast with Kevin Hart and The Rock. I think they are both great examples of where hard work can get you and they do it in a way where it is lighthearted. They always make people laugh but are also very goal oriented.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 😊

I would try to inspire a movement around fully body health. I wish people could see the importance of mental, physical, and spiritual health. You only have one body, one mind and one shot at this life. Treat it that way.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

We are active on social media (@DoodyCallsSuncoast) and we send out a monthly newsletter. Our newsletter keeps you informed on where to find us in the community, what events we will hosting, special promotions, fun facts, partners and we have special highlights on adoptable dogs that might be the perfect fit for you. If you would like to be added, please contact us suncoast@DoodyCalls.com.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.

Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.

While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.