On this episode Bella spends time talking with Tracie Hotchner, author of The Dog Bible: Everything your dog wants you to know and The Cat Bible: Everything your cat expects you to know.
Tracie Hotchner
Tracie is the host of 10 pet talk radio podcast shows on her own Radio Pet Lady network, including her NPR show "Dog Talk (and Kitties, too)". She is also the founder of the NY Dog Film Festival which she travels with around the country after an annual premiere in NYC in November.
Bella and Tracie discuss how Tracie's successes came about and the importance of positive attitude and a willingness to step through open doors.
You can find out more about Tracie and listen to her shows at RadioPetLady.com.
You can find out more at the NY Dog Film Festival, including a list of cities it is coming to, at DogFilmFestival.com.
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Transcript:
This is episode 40 of Bella in Your Business.
Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready—Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump.
Welcome to Bella in Your Business. This is Bella Vasta, and I am here today with Tracy Hotchner. You guys, I don’t even know where to begin with Tracy. She first came into my life at the PSI conference years ago when it was here in Arizona, where we totally bonded. It was around the same time that she was coming out with one of her first books, The Dog Bible. And then she also had Dog Talk Radio going on then. But now, Tracy, you have to fill in these gaps for me because from then till now, you now have this conglomerate of Pet Lady Radio. You’ve got like twelve different shows on there. You’re not only doing that—because I don’t even know where you get this energy—but you’re also the founder and director for the New York Dog Film Festival. There’s just so much.
Bella: Tracy, welcome to the show.
Tracy: Thank you, Bella. It’s great to be here and so fun to have stayed in touch with you all these years. You’ve done great things as a businesswoman yourself, and I really admire you for that. The Dog Bible morphed into The Cat Bible, which morphed into the NPR show Dog Talk that now many people listen to on podcasts, but it’s still on the air in the Hamptons live on Saturdays—almost ten years. I had Cat Chat on Sirius XM for seven and a half years on the Martha Stewart Channel. And yes, I did add these other pet talk radio shows just because I could. So it is a little bit of a pet empire, because then I started the Dog Film Festival on a whim three years ago in New York. One of my sponsors said, “You’ve got to take this around America.” So I said, “Oh yeah, sure.” And it went from five cities to ten cities in 2016, and it’s already going to be seventeen cities in 2017. Soon, we’re starting to download the Netflix for dog lovers so that people can download specially curated hour-long versions, and a portion of it goes to a national animal welfare organization. That’s going to be launching soon. You’re the first one to hear about it.
Bella: Oh my gosh. We got the exclusive! That’s awesome.
Tracy, what I love about you is your can-do attitude, and you just blow past everything. You not only have incredible ideas, but what I find in life is that a lot of times people either have really great ideas but don’t do it, you know? And you’re a doer. And I want everyone and all our listeners to understand and hear about all these stories. Now, you guys, usually I do show notes, but for this show, because Tracy is so dynamic and exactly what you just said—building an empire—I knew we wouldn’t run out of topics to talk about. So let’s take it back to when I first met you, Tracy. You were doing Dog Talk on NPR, and then I didn’t even know you were on the Martha Stewart Channel. Tell me the evolution of everything and what drives you to do this. I’m just going to open up the whole microphone and let you go because this is totally your w...
