Butterfly Home and Pet Sitters

Combining a love of animals, new places and a business idea with the help of the Group 2 Group Peer Network Programme

Caryl Lynzy, from Colchester, created her business Butterfly Home & Pet Sitters in early 2023 after falling in love with the flexible lifestyle that home and pet sitting offered. Quickly building up her own customer base, she established her own company – and found support from the Group 2 Grow Peer Network Programme from Backing Essex Business to create a business that thrived.

Caryl was inspired to pursue house sitting as a means of satisfying her desire to travel and see new places and earning some additional income after a trip to the southern tip of India in 2018. She came across another traveller who told her about an emerging trend of people downsizing their homes in the UK, and then volunteering to house sit in other countries as a means of saving on accommodation costs while seeing the world. Having recently been made redundant, and now working freelance, this way of life appealed to Caryl, and on her return home, she began to register herself as a house and pet sitter on various agency sites.

Her first ‘official’ trip, Caryl visited Copenhagen for Easter – looking after two cats in their owner’s home while they were away, giving Caryl the freedom to explore a new city and also indulge her love of looking after animals. This gave Caryl ‘the bug’, and a drive to do more.

““You’re not only looking after their pet, you’re looking after their houses, their homes.””

Caryl began to increasingly apply for opportunities to house and pet sit abroad – India, Malaysia, Kenya - seeking out sitter opportunities for the likes of business people, ex-pats, and everything in-between. This led to opportunities like house sitting in the Caribbean and Christmas.

The sitting opportunities abroad didn’t offer paid work, but instead offered the benefit of free lodging while caring for the homes and pets of the owners – which still created the means to see new places far and wide that otherwise would have made for expensive trips. Sitting opportunities in the UK offered renumeration via agencies – making weekends and short breaks away even more attractive.

A lightbulb moment for Caryl in starting her own business was when she began to receive enquiries from pet owners who met her sister (who has two dogs) whilst out walking their dogs. This customer base showed potential for Caryl to make a go of it alone – but being now semi-retired, Caryl knew she didn’t want a ‘big’ business – just something big enough to sustain itself. Having built up a positive reputation as a reliable house and pet sitter, she now wanted to establish herself, and officially started Butterfly Home and Pet Sitters in February 2023.

Having seen a lot of success in specific areas where she had done previous house and pet sitting trips, Caryl knew that there was a lot of value in word- of-mouth recommendations for the ‘sitting’ industry. If home and pet owners were going to have somebody stay in their homes and look after their pets, they wanted someone they could trust, and somebody that came with recommendations. This fuelled a drive to begin to market herself and the business – and inspired the creation of a new website, which has brought in quite a few customers, and a Facebook page for Caryl to gain some traction and online credibility to coincide with her positive reputation gained from word-of-mouth recommendations. She hoped to translate these online, to show other potential customers her expertise and reliability, and to receive more enquiries.

“‘With house sitting, customers want to trust you. If it’s somebody they know or they know of someone else who has hired you, they feel more comfortable doing that.’ ”

Her endeavours paid off – quickly receiving more requests than she could fulfil herself for house and pet sitting in the UK. Caryl decided that it was time to take on some more reliable pet sitters to sit under the ‘Butterfly’ banner – allowing the business to take on more opportunities, and also offer this new lifestyle to more people like her. With her own positive reputation already built, if she received more enquiries, she now had the means to recommend other trusted house and pet sitters that she knew, and was creating her own network!

““I had to take on more sitters just to cover an area because of the word-of-mouth recommendations. That gave me the flexibility to say, ‘sorry I can’t, but I know someone who can!’” ”

Caryl felt that she wanted to further establish the business – now that she had other sitters working with her fulfilling requests for ‘Butterfly’, she felt she needed some guidance on running the business.

She came across the Group 2 Grow Peer Network Programme, a free initiative from Backing Essex Business, who are a business support organisation funded by Essex County Council. Group 2 Grow, which has been running since 2021, focusses on bringing together business owners from across Essex to learn together, talk through common challenges, and also connected with an expert business coach who can help them with the needs of their business.

Run over 8 online sessions which are 2.5 hours long each, Group 2 Grow gave Caryl the opportunity to figure out where she wanted to take Butterfly House and Pet Sitting – who her key and target customers where and how she could reach them, and how she could effectively run the business.

Caryl has even taken on one of her Peers from this group as a sitter, who works from home running her own business. So, thanks to Group 2 Grow for that addition!

Working with business coach David Adlington, Caryl identified that for ‘Butterfly’ to thrive, she needed to focus her marketing efforts on professional clients – those who travel often and need someone to rely on to keep their homes and pets happy in their absence. These clients could then potentially turn into repeat bookings and enquiries, and open up new possibilities of referrals. Working with David gave Caryl the confidence to know what level to pitch the business at – helping to shape her future marketing and give her ideas on which channels might be worthwhile pursuing online, like LinkedIn.

Going forward, Caryl knows where she wants to focus the business – and is still planning to do some UK house sitting bookings too with the new house sitters she’s taken on as part of the business. Butterfly Home and Pet Sitters seems to only be going up from here, with more and more people wanting to travel and be sure their homes and pets are in safe hands, as well as pet and travel lovers wanting to combine their love of travel with a flexible lifestyle.

We’re looking forward to seeing what Caryl and Butterfly Home and Pet Sitters go next!

Do you have a business idea that you need support launching, or already have a business that you want to grow? Our free support and expert advisors at Backing Essex Business have experience in working with a variety of sectors, and are ready to help you!