Meet- Sheena Evolution, Founder at House My Pet, A global pet business directory that connects pet owners with trusted pet professionals in their local area.
Sheena Evolution is an innovator and entrepreneur with over 20 years in business leadership. She is experienced in all aspects of business formation- operations, finance, management, sales, marketing and business development. She is also a visionary product developer and effective communicator who identifies and leverages assets in her teammates to reach organizational goals.
We were eager to learn about her entrepreneurial journey and what led her to create House My Pet and we were very pleased to have her share her story.
Sheena was born in Manchester, UK, and developed an interest in computers at a very young age. Her first computer was a commodore 64 and she considered herself a gamer at a very young age she told us that she credits all those hours playing video games for some of her success. It wasn’t cool for girls to like computers or programming that was a ‘boyish’ hobby, however, it was even my favorite subject at school and I was given the responsibility as an I.T prefect!
Sheena wasn’t always one of the popular girls. Within minutes of arriving home from school, you would have found a ten year old ‘Sheena’ seated cross-legged on the floor a meter or two from the computer. She was clutching a commodore 64 joystick, playing her favorite first game Dizzy, an action packed cartoon adventure where you somersault around Fantastic Mystical Kingdoms.
Sheena’s childhood perfectly reflects the 1980s image of the divorced, split-parent household. Both parents were too busy or distracted to engage with her in the way that she craved. Dizzy became the kind of game-based babysitter that parenting gurus are always complaining about: permissive parenting.
At the age of 17, in 2001, Sheena attended college where she studied for a BTEC national diploma in graphic design. As she got into adulthood and started living on her own at the age of 18 she felt that there is a predetermined path that people were meant to take: The first university, then a lifetime of working diligently for one company until you retire at age 65. By the time she was in her late teens, she started to read and listen to a lot of personal development books, philosophy and spiritualism and decided she was going to break the chains of convention and surge onto the battlefield of business and follow her own path.
In 2007 she decided to leave the UK and travel the world on a quest to find her fulfillment. She wanted to achieve this through her journey of self-discovery and learning new cultures and meeting all types of different people. This is when she met her pet dog, Summer.
“I rescued Summer in 2010 but I believe she rescued me too. I was living in Spain at the time and I will always remember the moment I laid eyes on her. She was abandoned by her previous owners and was 3 years old, I knew I had a duty to give her the best life! It wasn’t long before she became my sidekick – going everywhere with me from work meetings, day time social events and even to bars and restaurants” she recalls.
Life in Spain is very different, you can take your four legged friend pretty much everywhere with you. However, it wasn’t until Sheena moved back to the UK in 2018 that she realized how strict the pet travel regulations there were.
Summer was nearing the age of 12 years now and due to her past experiences (when she was abandoned by her previous owner), she suffered with separation anxiety even more than before. This, according to Sheena, was adding to the difficulty of traveling and the need to leave her occasionally.
“Fortunately I am blessed to have a wonderful mum that also loves our furry friends and would happily have Summer whenever she could. But mum couldn’t always be there and I had to cancel travel plans on occasions to stay with Summer as there hadn’t been a reliable pet sitting service available,” she says.
That’s when Sheena had a lightbulb moment- why wasn’t there a trusted pet sitting matchmaking service in her area? In the UK in fact? Following this, in 2018, the ‘House My Pet’ idea was born and things have been moving pretty fast ever since as she finally found her passion.
The official House My Pet digital platform went live in 2020 and with this, Sheena’s mission to provide trusted pet sitting services around the UK fully took action.
However, things didn’t go as planned in the beginning- “Unfortunately, we launched just before Covid so the past two years has been a struggle. My beautiful girl passed away in February 2020, just before I launched too which gave me the worst heartache I have ever experienced. I was close to giving up but I felt I still had a duty of care and a mission to accomplish a sort of legacy for my dog which gave me the energy and strength to push forward my vision for House My Pet”
Having to pivot her business during the Covid crisis to adapt to the new way of living, Sheena created a professional pet business directory where pet business owners in the UK and overseas can virtually showcase businesses and services to their local pet owner community. From fish sitting to dog holistic therapy. The platform was designed to protect pets from rogue carers by connecting pet owners with local reputable pet services. Today, it’s one of the world’s leading pet business directory for pet sitters, dog walkers, groomers and more. Pet owners can search and engage with trusted pet businesses locally for FREE.
Over the years, Sheena has learnt that risk and reward in life is her fuel and the ignition, always propelling her towards new opportunities to create and succeed on a grander scale. To truly live the life of an entrepreneur, she needed to focus on where she wanted her energy to flow- by helping animals.
“Now that I understand my true nature, I will never stop taking risks to make my vision a reality. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life, create a life you love by doing the work you love- the most entrepreneurial trait there is: energy and persistence. It conquers all things!” she says.
Her ultimate goal is for House My Pet to become a household name so then pets are protected and she can then focus on building the Summer Sunshine Foundation, a charity in her dog’s name to protect and shelter abused and abandoned animals world wide by building animal shelters in countries that need it the most. We support Sheena’s mission to protect animals and we hope to see you support the cause too by using www.housemypet.com or sharing the platform to pet owners and pet businesses to join the pet loving community and help protect our animals.