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#856 - That’s the Spot! Dog Lover’s Hustle Becomes Fur-ever Biz

2019-05-06

A customer service agent engineers a side hustle trans-fur-mation to full-time dog training business.

Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are.  Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeau

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome friends is critical about resourceful school I used to have you here for a brand new week in reverse. Month of May, but those listening in real time at least you're wasting later. Of course, we try to keep our stories relevant for as long as possible are probably eighty to ninety percent of Titusville School Catalog catalogue,
is evergreen, meaning that you can listen to it a year from now and still learn something still get an idea of some inspiration or maybe a tip or a tactic. That's our goal because we have lots of blisters who discovered the show think back through the archives. So that's you and your catching up awesome! Welcome! Hire you got here now entered a story. A customer service agent engineers, aside hustle transformation transformation to a full time. Dog turning business will look at how she does it, and also talk about this concept of a word of mouth marketing. We often hear that phrase you know so, and so is business grew from word of mouth. What does that actually look like? What are some practical tips? You can do to gain more word of mouth exposure. I also want to mention that there is now a brand Show a new car cast on the unwary project. It's called do the thing with whole thirties, Melissa, urban. I mention this the other day. The whole principle is that we all have a thing we ve been working on, but despite our best intentions, we just can't make it stick, so I think, could be eating healthier. Exercising setting boundaries
Managing your money, starting a business in whatever it is this new podcast from Melissa, Hartwick Urban, the whole thirty co founder in number one York Times, bestselling author- is all about helping you finally change the pattern and level up forget. You should check that out. We're every listen about gas and stay tuned prehistory were calling it that's. The spot dog lubbers hustle becomes forever. Is but Frisco Canoe knew she wanted to run her own business. She even knew Zactly without business would beat, but like most of our stories and because she had to pay the bills it needed to start as aside hustle.
But traceable passionate about animals from a young age. Ever since volunteering at the humane society, hoping to train dogs at the shelter to become more adaptable, she was hooked on training. She devoured every book, video and resource she could find to learn more about dog behaviour and how best to humanely train it. Interesting the dog trading in it up being much more about training the humans than adopts she gained experience working at a dog he day care through college and then as a dog trainer at a local pets. Director graduation betrays a specialty, became young out of control, docks and highly reactive dogs whose owners were at their wits end. She made herself the top dog, but she knew very little about business. So she started out simply while working for time at a customer service job. She wasn't much about. She began offering private training sessions, this required no overhead and she would go to the dog owners house into the work there after a year or so she realised that are full time. Job was standing in the way of building her dog training. Hustle
the job is draining leaving her little energy for after hours, work about was keeping our afloat financially. Something needed to change following a brief search. She found more flexible work as a personal assistant and Gardner for psychologist ran her practice out of her home. This a lot to create our own schedule and focus more on the business which he now. In good paws dog training, get a work done for the psychologist in the morning, and evenings and weekends were dedicated to in good pots. Helping people train their dogs to be the well behaved family member. They always want it when she got her first dog training clients she didn't do much celebrating. She said she was a but also nervous. She found herself over analyzing how to act and what to say in those early days then afterward. She would review everything that happened and how she could have done better.
She says now that overcoming those fears was one of the most rewarding aspects of starting a business. In her words. Prior to this experience, I didn't know I had as much gumption as I do. One unexpected challenge we face was finding a facility where she could hosts group classes, the search for quite a while, but she finally found a place you can, rent by the hour. Training in groups allowed Patrice to serve more clients. She offered to specially classes, control unleashed a behavior modification class to teach dog self control amidst distractions and knows work a sport for dogs. That's like hide and seek. But you know for dogs with noses after two and a half years, Patrice had a little money set aside was ready to trust in our hard work would pay off as a full time trainer.
And in good pause out of her home holds classes at different rates facilities and as private, trainings and other people's homes. This kind of business grows a lot by word of mouth. Past clients become Patrice, cheerleaders refer to others. She is also developed. Relationships with the local pets, apply store a dog working company Anna grimmer. Google reviews have also been important. The more reviews in good pause gets on Google, the more it drives local traffic to produce this website. Expenses are minimal. She had to get a business licence liability insurance, a website in business cards that was pretty much it and your profit from twenty eighteen was twenty three thousand dollars a forty percent from twenty seventeen now she's going online. Hopefully it will continue to grow up trace recently brought on another dog train or to do private sessions as an independent country,
This allows us to increase the number of sessions the business provides without adding any risk to her, since that other person is an independent contract or not an employee. Eventually, she would also have to bring someone on to do more at the admin work, so the business can keep moving whenever she takes a vacation. What's fetching about Patrice Historic that she knew her end game from kept that ball in sight. She took purposeful steps, including switching her full time, gig to be more accommodating to growing her side, us up all the while she gained more experiencing competence until she was ready to roll over into a photo. Business now, of course, she's barking to the bank So what does word of mouth really mean that uses Fraser Paramount and most people understand where its mouth is referral, but here's a statistic for you: plot people don't understand.
This. According to Nielsen. Ninety two percent of people trust recommendations over any other type of advertising, but only thirty three percent of businesses actively solicit recommendations case there's a huge gap here, because what amount is so powerful and it's free, or at least it's very low cost, even if you're providing some kind of incentive for something, even if there is a tension or energy or some other resource that goes towards it to slay a pretty good investment. Now, there's a difference between organic word of mouth and amplified work mouth case organic word of mouth. It just kind of what happens if you, if you're, making a good service a good product people talk about it, that is we're gonna work, mouth
amplified word of mouth is where you have a bit more of an intention behind it and you have a strategy, and maybe you do some active encouraging or maybe there is an incentive for people to leave a review or make a recommendation, or otherwise you're, just kind of recognising and putting some attention on the fact that word of mouth can be so powerful you're actually just doing something active part as opposed to just letting it happen organically or passively. In this case, this story, Google Reviews effectively serves as free Lee generation perpetrates. Because she has. Google review should essentially getting clients. Okay. So that's why? If you have a local business like dog training or something else, you really need a strategy for that. You really deftly want to encourage those who abuse, because even just having a few of them can sometimes you stand out depending on your industry. I want to go and look up your competitors, your potential competitors, thinking about entering a particular market and then look and see what they have. Sometimes
I noticed this all the time in looking at Google Earth use and other sources? Maybe some businesses only have like one or two rebukes, so you get a few of them. You ve already got them beat and in some cases a crowded market. There's a bunch. People want to have competitors which reviews, but then there's one business that really stands out. You got, you know several businesses with five refused, maybe ten reviews and you ve got one would like fifty and if those reviews are good, it's like overall you're working it. Like fifty reviews. Forced Arafat's our average like not what that's where I want to go, you probably glance and all the other businesses or, if you do, is just like basically per km nation that you're making the right choice by going with the leader so as other ways to encourage word of mouth, but I think just having this intention
I'm thinking about what is an amplified strategy I could use. I can actually put some attention on this. Especially agenda is a local business really is going to be key for growth. Are, I hope you enjoy this story today? Congratulations to Patrice look forward to hearing what develops next in her barking business. Everyone inspiration is good, but inspiration. What action is better today show now it's our it's out of school dot com, Eight five six episode, eight hundred and fifty six. Thank you so much I'll be back again back again it tomorrow, my name. This is side about this, is school. From the onward projects.
Transcript generated on 2020-04-26.