Pet Boss® Podcast with Candace

You had a great Saturday. 💰

So now you are thinking about hiring that groomer. Or buying the equipment. Or finally giving yourself a bonus.

Candace has watched a lot of pet business owners make a big decision off a good feeling, and she has coached the ones who made it off bad advice too. One client went to a seminar, heard “hire for the business you want, not the business you have,” hired an entire team, and nearly drowned in payroll.

So this week she brought in Virginia Gearhart, founder and CEO of Gearhar...

Seven treats and the tricks that make each one actually work. 🎃

Everything Candace and Morgan cover is already running in our pet business right now. Some of it is powered by AI and the point of sale system. Some of it is just getting consistent about something you already knew you should be doing.

So this one is about getting into action, even at 70 percent, because 70 percent beats zero percent.

Tune in to hear:

✅ The automation Morgan switched on that brought 17 customers back and generated over $1,000 in its first run

✅ T...

Are you ready for the holidays? 🎄

Do you actually know what your customers are going to want this year and how they are thinking about spending?

Candace has been digging through the 2026 holiday trend reports and there are some interesting shifts happening. People are being more selective, but they are not abandoning Christmas. They are approaching it more intentionally.

If you hear “shoppers are cutting back” and your first instinct is to slash prices, this episode is for you.

Because customers are not asking for cheap. They are asking for worth it. Tho...

This episode is a special treat. It’s an impromptu recording around a hotel fire pit in Perham, Minnesota, with wine in plastic cups, a train going by, and a surprise guest who walked up mid-recording and got handed a microphone. 🔥

Candace drove 9.5 hours each way from Galesburg, IL to spend two days inside the NutriSource and KLN Family Brands factories, and by the end of day one there was too much to say to wait for a studio.

So she gathered everyone around the fire and hit record.

What came out of it is...

Q4 is here, and for most of you that means holiday prep and chasing down year-end numbers.

For Candace it means something else entirely. This is the last quarter of the first decade of Pet Boss Nation. 🎉

Ten years and thousands of clients through our programs, and a number Candace shares on this episode that she still has a hard time saying out loud.

She also gives podcast listeners the first look at two things launching for the next decade. One is rolling out to current members this month. The other one has not...

This one is a love letter. 💌

It is Neighborhood Pet Store Day weekend, and it is also the one-year anniversary of Dante and Dory's! 

So Candace is doing two things at once: celebrating the independent pet businesses who decided their community deserved something more personal than a box on a porch, and pulling back the curtain on exactly how she built a three-day birthday bash around the holiday.

If you have never participated in Neighborhood Pet Store Day, she covers what it is, who created it, and why participation has exploded since 2023. If you...

It was a normal Tuesday, around 7 in the morning.

Candace pulled up behind the building to get a head start on the day. Before she could unlock the door, she had to step around someone sleeping against it.

Notice what that sentence does not say. Not some guy. Not some homeless guy. Someone was asleep against the building, and she had to step around them to open her own business.

That sentence is the whole episode.

Two things are true at the same time. Someone out there is living through a...

Many of our videos get hundreds, maybe a few thousand views.

This one got 1.6 million. 🎉

It was a video of a filthy self-wash tub getting rinsed out. That is it. A German shepherd had just been bathed on opening weekend, the tub looked like it was growing hair, and Candace told Morgan to film it before anyone cleaned it up.

Three weeks after posting, it hit 1.6 million views, 8,623 likes, 128 reposts, 215 shares, and brought in around 400 new Instagram followers.

Morgan pitched this episode herself, and she walks through the six editing decisions beh...

What do an animatronic dog, a bag of Tootsie Rolls, and a 17-year-old FFA chapter president have in common?

They are the reason Dante & Dory's Pet Emporium just pulled off one of its best pieces of community marketing yet! 🎉

Candace is joined by Dakota, the youngest member of the Dante & Dory's team, to break down the Pet Care Certification event they hosted at Discovery Depot, the local children's museum.  

Tune in to hear:

✅ The four-station framework you can rinse and repeat in any community space

✅ How a toy that sat in a...

This week, Candace sent her son Carmine to preschool for the first time.

He was ready. She thought she was ready too. And then something happened that surprised her - and opened up a much bigger conversation about business, control, and what it really means to be ready.

In this episode, she covers:

❤️ The difference between preparation and feeling ready (and why both matter)

❤️ What the readiness gap actually is and why it shows up

❤️ What you can control in business vs. what you can't

❤️ Why your emotional reacti...

It is a double celebration on the Pet Boss Podcast this week! 

Episode 250 of the Pet Boss Podcast is also the debut of the Pet Boss Trade Show Awards. 🎉🎉🎉

Candace and Morgan are back from SUPERZOO 2026 in Las Vegas with awards for the booths, brands, products and people that made them stop in the aisle.

Tune in to hear:

✅ The booth that took interaction to a whole other level

✅ How packaging borrowed from outside the pet category makes people stop and look

✅ The trend showing up in more booths than...

Last week, Candace shared the first five lessons from Dante and Dory's one-year anniversary. This week, she's revealing the final five and these are the ones that didn't announce themselves until the store was actually open.

This is Part 2 of the two-part episode, featuring lessons six through ten.

She also shares her bigger vision for Dante and Dory's future - not just for this year, but for decades. And she invites you to think about what legacy you want to build too.

Plus a...

December 16th, 2024. Candace received an email: Pet Supplies Plus in her town was closing in less than 30 days.

She rushed to the store, bought what she needed, and saw the sadness on everyone's faces. And she thought: "Should I do this again?"

Crazy? Maybe. But on that day, she posted a question on Facebook: "If you had extensive experience in the pet industry, owned a building already, and the PSP is closing - would you open a pet business?"

Now, 85 weeks and 3 days later, Dante and Dory's Pet Emporium is approaching its one-year...

It started as "Candace's Favorite Things" at the Global Pet Expo.

A friend said "You need to make this official.” So we did! 

Today, Candace officially launches the Pet Boss Trade Show Awards! 

This isn't just a fun list. It's a recognition system built by people who actually run pet businesses, for the brands, booths, and reps who deserve to be seen - not because they have the biggest budget, but because they genuinely stood out! 

Tune in to hear: 

🏆 Why this award matters and why we want your votes

We're headed to Vegas, baby! 💃

In just two weeks, Candace and Morgan from Dante and Dory's are flying to Las Vegas for SUPERZOO 2026 - one of the pet industry's largest trade shows. And whether you're going, thinking about going, or already panicking about your trip, this episode has you covered.

Candace walks through everything from her speaking schedule, to events you won't want to miss, to the exact app features that will save you hours on the show floor. Plus, Morgan shares packing tips, tech essentials, and logistics that nobody thinks about until it's too lat...

The way your customers search has changed. Not gradually. Dramatically.

And most indie pet businesses haven't noticed yet.

A year ago, if someone's dog had itchy skin, they'd Google "best dog food for itchy skin" and scroll through 20 links. Now? They're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity the same question in a conversation: "My seven-year-old Labrador has itchy skin and keeps licking his paws. I think it's food-related. I want a locally owned pet store near me that actually understands nutrition."

That's not a keyword search. That's a conversation. And that's AEO (Answer...

July has always been known as one of the slower retail months so Candace made a strategic decision: go big or go home.

Dante and Dory's threw a patriotic pet sale from Friday, July 3rd through Monday, July 6th. The result? $3,000 more in sales than Memorial Day weekend (about a month earlier), driven by 100 additional transactions.

This episode is a complete behind-the-scenes walkthrough of how she planned it, executed it, and what she learned - plus strategies you can apply to your own holiday sale.

Listen now to hear:

💰 Why slow mon...

It's July. America just turned 250.

And Candace is pulling a powerful thread through this month's focus in Pet Boss Nation: Work Smarter, Earn More, Adapt Faster.

In 250 years, this country has survived wars, depressions, booms, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the automobile, the telephone, the internet. Entire industries disappeared. Entire industries that didn't exist a generation ago became the backbone of the economy.

The pattern? The businesses that lasted weren't the ones who had it all figured out. They were the ones who kept adjusting. Who paid attention. Who weren't afraid to...

Matt Aldrich, founder of Pet Engine Marketing, has a front row seat to pet businesses and their patterns - the ones growing and the ones stuck. 

Between Pet Boss Nation and Pet Engine Marketing, they've seen 1,000+ pet businesses over the years. In this candid conversation, he and Candace talk about what growth actually looks like when the economy is tough, competition is everywhere, and business owners are burned out.

They discuss: 

✅ The pattern most pet businesses get wrong (and why you're probably doing it)

✅ Why activity ≠ progress (and how to tell the diff...

We have an exciting new episode for you this week and this is one you are going to want to pull out a notepad and pen for! 

Candace is sharing the full training she delivered at Launch Your Box's Subscription Summit and turns it into an actionable playbook specifically for pet businesses. Whether you sell products, services, or both, there is already a subscription opportunity inside your business right now.

She covers:

🙌 The 3 types of subscriptions and how to identify which already exists in your business

🙌 The auto-replenishment model and why you sho...

Can indie pet stores really out-compete Amazon, Chewy, and Petco?

Pearce Tibbles, CEO of Wholesale Pet, says yes - but it takes strategy, technology, and intentionality.

In this interview, Pearce walks through how Wholesale Pet spent over a year gathering feedback from retailers and vendors before completely redesigning their platform. The result? AI-powered search, curated collections, new vendor tools, and a focus on helping independent stores compete on their actual advantages—not by trying to be Chewy.

You will hear: 

✅ Why Pearce is optimistic about indie pet stores 

✅ The structur...

A squishy palm-sized toy with no celebrity endorsements and no big marketing budget just sold an entire year's worth of inventory in 9 weeks - and Candace watched it happen right outside her front door.

In this solo episode, Candace breaks down the NeeDoh craze: how it started, why it exploded, and - most importantly - what the mechanics behind it mean for your pet business right now.

She covers:

⭐️ How the NeeDoh Advent Calendar sparked a TikTok wildfire that turned an 8-year-old product into this generation's Beanie Baby

⭐️  The 5-part Pet Boss Nati...

This is a very special episode! 

Candace is inviting you into a recent Pet Boss University marketing training - a true fly-on-the-wall peek at what's happening inside the membership.

This training is about customer personas: how to stop making blanket statements to broad audiences and start marketing to one specific customer type instead.

She covers:

🙌 What a customer persona IS (and what it's NOT)

🙌 The difference between demographics and behavior  

🙌 The specific questions to ask about your persona 

🙌 Why marketing to everyone means marketing to no one

Pl...

It's the start of summer - can you believe it? Half the year is already over, and Candace has some exciting announcements to share.

She's covering 3 education events happening in June that you don't want to miss, plus a BIG announcement about what's coming for Dante and Dory's that took a year to make happen.

She shares:

🙌 Why you should pitch yourself as the local pet expert in your community

🙌 The 3 educational events you won’t want to miss that will elevate your pet business

🙌 Where you can find and connect...

This is part two of last week's episode where Candace talked about the five ways off-location events make you money.

After another week at the Dante and Dory's farmer's market booth, she realized there were some things worth sharing - adjustments to the booth setup, the living SOP guide they're building, and an on-the-spot coaching moment with a new 17-year-old team member.

If you're running events, managing a team, or trying to get systems out of your head and onto paper, this episode is for you! 

What if your best new customers aren't finding you online - they're walking right past a tent at a farmer's market, and you're just not there?

Pop-up events, farmer's markets, street fairs, 5K runs, community festivals - when done right, they're one of the most powerful, affordable, and underutilized tools in an independent pet business's playbook.

Candace is sharing exactly what Dante and Dory's is doing at the Galesburg Farmer's Market this season: the booth setup, the pricing strategy, the leave-behinds that work harder than business cards, and most...

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. The financial squeeze is real - and if you're feeling it, this episode is for you.

Candace tackles the most pressing realities that independent pet business owners are facing right now: fewer customers walking through doors, shoppers stretching every dollar, unpredictable weather keeping people home, rising expenses, and growing competition.

She shares:

🚨 The surprising lesson from a 66-transaction day 

🚨Why you can't wait for things to get better  

🚨 Creative partnership ideas you haven't thought of yet 

🚨 The cash flow management habit that keeps you ahead of the squ...

Candace sent out a customer survey for Dante and Dory's - and when the results came in, she had to stop and sit with it for a minute.

Because everything she assumed about her customers was wrong.

In this episode, she's pulling back the curtain on the entire process: how they built the survey, how they promoted it, what questions they asked, and most importantly - the 5 findings that genuinely surprised her and will reshape how Dante and Dory's markets, merchandises, and operates moving forward.

She shares:

✍🏼 Why assuming you know your...

Want to see your pet business featured on the evening news but think you need a huge marketing budget to make it happen? Think again.

Meet Mary Tan, award-winning TV reporter who covered major stories for Fox News, CNN, CBS News, and NBC News for 13 years - and now runs Whisker Media, a boutique strategic communications agency focused on pet-related businesses and animal welfare nonprofits. She's revealing exactly how she secured $40,000-$50,000 worth of free advertising for one pet retailer - and how you can do it yourself! 

They d...

SUPERZOO is coming August 12-14, 2026 in Las Vegas, with an education day Tues, Aug 11, - and if you sell products, make products, or work behind the scenes in the pet industry, this is your must-attend event.

Candace sits down with Mike Karsting, Senior Vice President of World Pet Association (WPA) and the driving force behind SUPERZOO, to talk about what makes this show essential for independent pet retailers, emerging brands, and anyone on the product side of the business.

They discuss:

🐾 Why SUPERZOO is "the melting pot of...

Candace and Morgan are back from sunny Orlando after a long week at Global Pet Expo 2026 - and this episode is packed with behind-the-scenes insights, favorite product discoveries, and Morgan's fresh first-timer perspective.

They discuss:

🙌 The brand that dominated with marketing everywhere - a masterclass in visibility)

🙌 Interactive booth experiences that win  

🙌 Smart founder moves  

🙌 Unique product discoveries that are eye-catching, space-efficient, and conversation-starting

🙌 Product trends worth watching for 2026 and beyond

Plus the challenge of walking the entire show floor (Candace still missed entire sections!, the deals that ha...

Recorded live at Global Pet Expo on Day 1 (education day), this episode features a conversation Candace never planned to have - until she sat in Luis Zamora's session and realized this was exactly what Pet Boss Nation listeners needed to hear!

Luis presented "Profiting from the Pet-Inclusive Economy Through Strategic Partnerships" at the Pet Summit, and instead of being a sales pitch for his platform (PetsVivo), it was packed with actionable strategies for small businesses to build partnerships that actually work.

Because most pet businesses are stuck doing casual...

Global Pet Expo is just days away - and if you're investing the time and money to be there, you need a content creation plan.

This episode brings a brand new team member Morgan Seabloom (Marketing & Operations Coordinator for Dante and Dory's) alongside Candace to share their pre-show prep checklist and 5 content buckets to help you capture everything worth capturing!

Because trade shows aren't just about placing orders. They're content creation gold.

They share:

🙌 How to prep your phone before the show and the camera settings to turn on NOW

🙌...

A message came through Dante and Dory's website contact form. It was detailed, critical, and specific- complaining about pricing, construction timelines, employee compensation, and the value of shopping local.

But something felt off.

The team ran the message through an AI detector: 100% AI-generated.

In this episode, Candace unpacks the entire experience - from the initial reaction to the deep dive into what it could be (competitor? phishing probe? mass AI blasting? real person hiding?). And more importantly, she shares what Dante and Dory's is...

Be honest: when was the last time you looked at your calendar and knew exactly what you were promoting, posting, and doing in your business three months from now?

Do you even know what you're doing next week? Or do you wake up on Tuesday and think: Wait, did anyone post today? What am I supposed to post?

If this hits a little close to home, this episode is going to change how you run your marketing - starting right now.

Spring is here...

How many donation requests have landed in your inbox lately? Today? This week? This month?

Silent auctions, raffles, gift baskets, event sponsorships - can you donate a gift card?

And if you're honest, how many of those people ACTUALLY buy from you?

It's easy to feel frustrated. One-sided. Used. Like people only remember you when they need something.

Because what if donation requests aren't charity decisions? What if they're marketing decisions?

In this episode...

Is email marketing dead?

Well, Candace sure hopes not - because she's been sitting on over 2,000 customer emails from Dante and Dory's for the last 5 months and has done absolutely nothing with them.

And as a business coach who sends emails like a well-oiled machine at Pet Boss Nation, that admission is a little uncomfortable to make.

But here's the truth: email marketing still delivers an average ROI of $36-$42 for every $1 invested. And 60% of consumers say email influences their purchasing decisions.

<...

It's cold. People are sick. Business feels quiet. Sound familiar?

Candace is coming to you fresh off 10+ days sick with the flu - three of them completely in bed - and using this slower winter stretch at Dante and Dory's to get honest about what the numbers are really saying.

This episode is about what actually happens when sales dip, and what smart pet business owners do instead of waiting it out.

She shares:

🙌 Why slow sales aren't a story - they're fee...

It's 4am and Candace's toddler just woke her up. So instead of lying in bed hoping to fall back asleep, she's recording this episode.

Because sometimes leadership shows up tired. Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes you just get it done anyway.

In this quick episode, Candace shares:

⭐ Why sometimes responsibility shows up at inconvenient times

⭐ Global Pet Expo announcements - where you can find (and celebrate!) with PBN

⭐ New keynote booking - she's speaking at the ODD Ball (Owners of Dog Daycares Conference) in January 2027 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

⭐ Su...

Right now, some pet businesses are booming. Some are holding steady. And many are feeling like sales have slowed down and they need to make a change.

But here's the truth: When revenue feels uncertain, that's exactly when how you manage your money matters MORE than how much money is coming in.

In this episode, Candace shares real money decisions she's making at Dante and Dory's - and why being more aggressive with money doesn't mean being reckless! 

She shares:

🔥 Why passive money management (not reckless spending) is the real problem