In the News!

She leaves corporate world for shot at canine caretaker:
Love for animals is inspiration for new beginning
Brian O'Connor / The Detroit News

I am His Majesty's dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir,
whose dog are you?
"Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, Which I Gave to His Royal Highness"
- Alexander Pope

These days, Liz Blondy is her own dog.

What's more, after leaving the corporate world, she's also leader of the pack.

"People always ask, 'Who's the alpha dog?'-" says Blondy, who now runs her own dog day-care, boarding and grooming business in Detroit. "I always tell them me and my employees are the alpha. If a dog comes in here and thinks he's the alpha, we've lost control."

Control is something Blondy savors in running her own business, after seven frustrating years as a saleswoman in the corporate world.

"I was making over $100,000 a year with no degree, and I just wasn't happy," she says. "Working for someone else was very trying," says Blondy who, in various jobs, sold telecommunications, Muzak and wireless phone service. "And trying to convince somebody that they needed something - no one desperately needs text messaging. It was just destroying my soul.

"I'm still a salesperson. I sell people on dog day-care and my business every day, but I love it."

Where she came from: After graduating from high school in 1992, Blondy quickly decided that college was not for her. She ended up in a job that involved managing telecommunications, only to end up moving to a sales position with one of her service providers in 1998. From there, other outside corporate sales jobs followed.

"I was really, really good at sales," Blondy notes. "I was in the top 20 percent in the country when I was at AT&T, and I was a top seller at Verizon Wireless. I loved sales."

What changed: There was just one little problem Blondy had with her career: "I loved sales but I hated corporate America. I'm a really casual person in the way I interact with people, the way I dress and talk. It got to the point where I thought, 'If I have to put on high heels or lipstick or put 500 miles on my car next week, I'm going to go crazy.'-"

Still, with no degree and limited work experience, Blondy didn't see a viable way out. She had been an animal lover all her life, but the idea of heading to school to become a vet or biologist was out of the question.

Moment of truth: It was at a party around Thanksgiving of 2003 that Blondy found another option. Two friends who live near her in downtown Detroit were talking about having to drive to a dog day-care facility in Farmington Hills when they were working long hours. Blondy had never heard of such a thing as dog day-care, but the idea instantly intrigued her.

"Within two weeks I had decided, 'That's what I'm going to be when I grow up,'-" Blondy jokes. She knew she could handle such a business and either had or could acquire the skills.

Her next move was research. She visited about a dozen dog day-care operations in different parts of the country and Ontario, even volunteering at one in Plymouth for six months so she could learn the realities of the business. She studied the pet business, created a marketing plan and wrote a complete business plan, while saving money from her sales job and taking out a home equity loan. She talked to everyone she could about the idea.

Blondy's market researched shows there was a need for dog day-care service in Detroit, so she leased a downtown building that had been vacant for nine years, renovated it and opened Canine To Five: Detroit Dog Daycare in May 2005.

"If you ask anybody that's known me for a long time, even my fiance, they'll say I'm a different person. And I really think that I am," she says.

The business is breaking even and Blondy is able to pay herself a small salary. She's expanded from dog day-care and boarding to grooming, by purchasing the grooming business next door. She has eight employees and plans to buy the building that houses the business.

"I probably work four times as hard as when I was in sales and make a tenth as much, and I'm four million times happier."

Stumbling blocks: Poop. Dogs go to the bathroom about twice a day and Blondy handles as many as 30 dogs, so it's definitely an issue.

"It's not like it's me and 30 puppies frolicking all day," she notes. "It's a lot of cleaning."

Another aspect of the business that's been hard to handle is bookkeeping and payroll, Blondy says, so she's recruited help on that front. Her mother has run her own frame shop in Grosse Pointe for 27 years, and has been a good source, along with her future father in law, who worked at a Big Six accounting firm. "I'm not good at balancing my own personal checkbook, so I'm very fortunate to have people to help me."Another change has been going form being a solo salesperson to being a boss.

"I'm the bossiest girl I know but probably the worst at being a boss," Blondy admits. "It's hard for me to tell people what to do."

Online message boards have allowed her to share concerns and get advice from other dog day-care operators, too, including how to handle and evaluate aggressive dogs.

Words of wisdom: The best advice Blondy has is one that comes straight out of any good book on starting a business: Have one year of your own living expenses on hand, in cash.

"That's essential," Blondy says. "You have to have a year's worth of living expenses." Still, saving it up was tough, because it meant postponing her dream to staying on at her old sales job. "Every single day I wanted to leave there, and every single day I would wake up and think about dog day-care."

Another important factor is to have a vision, she adds.

"Have confidence in yourself," Blondy advises. "You don't have to work for someone else to be successful, but you have to believe in yourself to be successful."

Now all that confidence is paying off.

"Animals make much better clients than people," Blondy laughs. "Everybody calls dogs man's best friend, so how awesome is my job? I get to hang out with man's best friend every day."