Get your shit together as a dog trainer: Sustainability & Money Mindset

In this episode of The Mind Your Own Dog Business Podcast, Kristen Lee and Ashely Emig, a Dog Biz School student coach, talk about getting your shit together when it comes to sustainability as a dog trainer and business owner. Because, at the end of the day, we, as the dog training industry and dog training business owners, need to focus on sustainability when it comes to running a dog training business without wanting to burn everything down in a few years.

We also cover money mindset as dog business owners and how to start getting in a better mental and business space when it comes to money.

So sit back, take some notes, and get your shit together when it comes to running a sustainable and profitable dog training business, dog business.

REGISTER for our live, Get Your Shit Together Webinar on Wednesday, May 24th at 5 pm EST.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LdoVz4rcSDSNpvoRr0SZ5A

Episode Links:

Work with Dog Biz School

Dog Biz School Website

Ashely Emig 

Instagram - Kristen Lee

Instagram - Dog Biz School

Transcript

0:02

You're listening to the Mind Your Own Dog Business podcast. I'm your host leading expert in dog business strategics Kristin Lee. Guys, get ready for your journey. Your journey to cutting edge marketing and sales, creating a standout kick ass dog business brand, along with mastering your mindset that's gonna smash all this glass ceilings that have been holding you back and catapult your dog misses to the next level with actionable steps. You can take right away. We're going to empower you. We're going to grow you as you step into your authentic self, not only as a dog trainer, dog walker, or whatever slice of the pet industry you find yourself in, but as that badass entrepreneur, my mission is to disrupt the current norm. Cut through the noise, cut through the bullshit, and empower the incredible women of the dog business industry to step into the spotlight, reclaim control, and transform not only their businesses, but their lives. It's real, it's raw, it's uncensored, and it's what this dog business industry needs. Let's do this guys. All right everybody. Welcome to this episode of Mind Your Own Motherfucking Dog Biz podcast. Uh, as explained before in the previous episodes, I'm a little rusty. It's been like seven months. It's been seven months because like I said before, roses are red, violet are blue. Puppy suck, but how are you? Um, but I'm actually really excited today to kick off the series, uh, basically unfucking your bus dog business and getting your shit together because I have a very special guest with me today. You might have heard her last year. Around this time I have Miss motherfucking Ashley. On the, on the horn, I would say, God, I sound like an old corporate person. Like on the horn, on the Zoom call, I was like, on Ashley Emig. But in reality, Ashley's here, um, Ashley and I are gonna have a conversation, and this is one of those conversations. I truly want a lot of my listeners that are maybe slightly new, kind of wet behind the ears when it comes to running their dog training business. I'm talking to the people that have been in business for maybe, you know, about a year, two years, three years. Uh, I think everybody's gonna get great value out of it, but especially the newbies, because yeah, you might feel like you're nine years old and you've been training dogs for fucking 80 years, but you've been in business. For two years, welcome to the motherfucking dog trading industry, right Ashley? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So what we wanna do today is just have a, have a conversation and any of my listeners out there, if like y'all are really resonating with us or you want more information on anything we talk about, if you're like, holy crap, I disagree, holy crap, I love this. You know, make sure you tag me. Or Ashley. Ashley is Little Rascals on Instagram and TikTok, right? And it's Little Rascals dog training. Mm-hmm. And I am. And on Facebook too, if any of y'all are still on Facebook. And I am at Badass Dog Biz on Instagram. And what is, what is our, what is our TikTok? I don't even think we have a TikTok. We do kind of, um, I'm not, I I don't follow that. You on TikTok, so, oh, excuse me. If you have one. I don't know about it. I know we're so behind this. I'm a consumer of TikTok. I'm not a creator of TikTok, cuz I just do not have the. Fucking time do it. Um, it's dog to school on TikTok. Anyway, I digress. Ashley, thank you for being here today. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm very happy to be here. I'm excited to talk to you about all the stuff like sustainability, hustle, crisis mode. Mm-hmm. Money, mindset, ultra wealthy success, hustling, hustle and hustling and essentially getting your shit together after, you know, being in the business very new. Cause like being a business owner for two years, it's one of those things where we see people. Get really, really caught up in different cycles of their business. Mostly like the hustle crisis cycle. Or the people that get super overconfident, which I've seen many times, and they get, go into that whole Dunning Kruger effect of like, I know everything. So I've been training dogs for two years and yeah, I am the best business owner in the world and this is how I'm gonna do it forever. But I'm mostly talk, I really wanna talk to the people that are like, okay, cool, I'm already recognizing a pattern. I did decently, but now shit can get better. So Ashley, I know you shared your story before, but do you wanna this, that was like last year. Like do you wanna. Share more of the evolution that has happened and the transformation that's happened over the last couple years with you? Uh, yeah. So, so the story I shared before was just my, my moving to North Carolina story, which was a kind of a burn down your, your current business and. What, what were we calling it? The Phoenix, the Phoenix rep. Yes. Yes. So kinda like a, a small burn down and then rebuilding again. But, uh, I, my business is about five years old now. Uh, anniversary in April. Yay. Um, And, and I started out as a horse trainer before I was a dog trainer. And I did it for, you know, the love of animals. We all get into that because any, any animal job, you know, you get into it cuz you love it so much. You love the animals, you wanna help people. But I didn't know how to run a business and I ended up, um, Being really, really poor. Um, I, what it turned out to be was I ended up, I ended up giving so much of myself that I'm basically ending up paying for these people to have horses, you know, with my, with my time and my, just not charging enough to meet my needs. So I really. I ran the business, my horse business, out of love and passion and that it didn't work, didn't work at all. And, and I eventually got totally burned out, resented training, resented horses. I wanted nothing to do with it. Um, and then I figured that well, dog training's kind of adjacent, so I'll head in that direction. Maybe I'll hate my life less. Um, turns out I freaking love this. Yeah. And, and it's not very much different than horse training, but now that I have, um, some now business skills under my belt, I am running my business totally differently. Um, and I'm able to support myself and I'm comfortable. And I don't hate my job. I love my clients. I love going to work every day. Not everybody can say that. Um, yeah. But I, I really came from like living in a trailer with no running water to like being Okay. Yeah. Um, so that's, that's kind of the evolution of my business. I, the very first year I was in business, I made $10,000 for an entire year. For dog training. Correct. I was, yeah. Dog training. Yes. Before. Before signing on with grassroots and long business. Um, but now, now I've reached six figures, and that's in the course of it's grassroots, brought me to six figures. So that was in. About a year of work with grassroots. Yeah. Well I think too, and we're gonna talk about like the whole money, money, money thing in a little bit, like towards the end of this conversation. Mm-hmm. But I think too, one thing that really stuck out to me when we were gathering our notes for this is getting set up for sustainability at the start. And it's one of those things, and this is what I wanna really kind of hammer into everybody here. Is when we start a business, no matter what type of business you're in, it doesn't matter if you're a business coach. It doesn't matter if you are fuck a car detailer or a dog trainer or whatever else. We get so caught up into like the whole thing of like money, money, money, money. And I talk about money a lot, but we don't talk enough about the sustainability as we start to scale up our business, as we start to learn business skills, as we start to build our business chops. And I think for you, this is one of those hard lessons you learn like early on when starting to work with us in the beginning was like sustainability. And you said yesterday, if you don't mind me putting words back in your mouth, if I'm, if I'm. If I am, please, please correct me. But one thing you said yesterday is like, we need to get people. And Ashley, by the way, if people do not know, Ashley is one of our student coaches right now. And her and I had to sit down in the beginning of the year. We're like, okay, cool. What could dog this school be doing better at grassroots be doing better with our students? And one of her things were sustainability from the start, getting people not caught on a hustle crisis cycle. So let's kind of chat about sustainability. I know it's not. Sexy as like those seven figures or six figure, like seven figures, six figures, whatever else everybody's trying to fucking pitch to you guys. But I really wanna hone in on sustainability because sustainability is that thing of where if more people, if more dog training professionals focus on sustainability and not. Fucking their lives over so much was like always being on call, always having to fill their, fill, their marketing, quote unquote funnels and stuff like that. Like I believe there would be so much less burnout. There would be a lot more happy people, there would be a lot more dogs not in danger that you would see on the news from dog trash. So let's, let's talk about sustainability for a second. Yeah, so, so one thing I noticed, uh, in my journey of being a business, um, and, and learning from different people, all, all the marketing out there I see is, is talking about the numbers, which is really exciting because that. Sounds good, but I was thinking last night, um, how, how much does it cost to get there? Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. What I, that's, that's where the unsustainability comes from. Yeah. You can get to six figures or seven figures. That's amazing. But. Do you know how much it costs to get there? Mm, a freaking lot, right? Um, if, if you are not thinking about sustainability from the very get-go, you can certainly get to those numbers without burning yourself out. But what I see the majority of, of coaches out there and, and that I've paid for as well. They're not telling you how much it costs to get there. You have, and by the way, Ashley's, I'm gonna interrupt Ashley. Ashley's burned through most of the major coaches before she came to us. It was actually kind of one of those resistance points for us. She's like, why are you different? Yes. Anyway, I'm just throwing her under the bus and fucking around with her. But keep talking, Ashley, keep talking. Yeah. So, so what I found, uh, I guess maybe like two, two to. Three years into my business, I'd say, um, I did, I did start making more money. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, I was feeling more broke and more burnt out than I had ever had because I had to. Spend so much money on ads. Mm-hmm. Um, as well as paying the marketing companies to, to do that for me. Um, and then I gotta run through all of these sales calls, and I, my sales skills were not that great at the time. Um, so I am, I'm paying for all these leads, but I'm only able to close, like, what, 10% of them. Mm-hmm. Um, so this is, That's now costing me a lot of money and a lot of time to be on the phone, not making sales. Right. Um, and, and then I also, when I am making sales, now I have all of these lessons to put in. Um, and then again, that's, that's more time. So my systems were not set up to be. Sustainable. Um, it, it cost me a lot of money and it cost me a lot of time, and in the end, I'm, I'm kind of exactly where I was when I was making nothing, you know? Right. Um, at least you had more time and energy when you weren't making anything. Exactly. I had less responsibility and it was actually a kind of, A less scary spot to be in. Like, yeah, my needs aren't being met, but at least I'm, I know what I have and I'm comfortable with that, and there's not, not all of this pressure to, to now keep up with these bills that I have, that I'm paying to get more customers. Um, it, it was a uncomfortable, scary spot to be in. Right. Um, Right. But, but I learned some processes, um, program, program design definitely helped, uh, with, with saving my time so that I'm not burn out and I don't hate my clients. Um, cuz you know, that's, that's what happens. You, you work so hard and there's just not enough downtime for you that even if you love this job, you're, you're gonna feel like, yeah, I hate dogs. I don't wanna work with them this week or next week, or, mm-hmm. Or like vacation, you know, or like, my clients aren't doing the fucking work. Why do I even do this? Yeah, yeah. You, you start getting angry at your clients because you're burned out. You don't have enough patience anymore. Um, and that's, that's not the relationship you wanna have with them. You wanna come from a place of love and, uh, understanding and, and helping. Um, and you, you just can't come from that space when you're burned out. Right, right. Well, I think too, it's, you know, Dog pit school. We do, we teach a lot of marketing, right? Like I'm, I'll fucking say that. Mm-hmm. We teach a lot of marketing and sales, but when, and by the way, I'm, I'm not gonna, I, Hey, I'm gonna call ourselves out here. We're not being hypocritical. We do have things around money, right. Um, but if you ever download any of our thing around money, or like, like for example, we have like a seven figure dog trainer guide. All that shit isn't actually focused on money though. It's focused on systems to support you to get to something like that. But what happens is, and I see this happening a lot, and it it as a marketer myself, like that's my, that's my jam. It hurts me when. I see such a heavy influence on filling up your calendars. Like how would it feel to have a full calendar of dog training appointments and consults? I if that makes me anxious and it gives me anxiety, like if I have a full fucking calendar, I get anxious. Right? But like if we see that with our students, like if we see somebody saying, oh my God, I'm so booked in time. I have so many sales calls, I'm so struggling. We're like, okay, cool. What the fuck is going on with this? Right? Because. When you get to a certain point, like you can hu like, listen, if you all wanna fucking listen to that shit, if you all wanna hustle and grind your way to the first a hundred K, 150 k to hit the two 50 mark, be my fucking guest, right? Like, I've done it, Ashley's done it. Grassroots has done it. Most of our students have done it. But I can tell you what's gonna happen. It's gonna give you anxiety, it's gonna get a really, a really dysregulated nervous system. And you're gonna hate your job more than ever, right? Mm-hmm. And. When I see things like that where it's just heavily focused on making money, making money, and like great, making money's great. I love it. I think everybody needs to make more money, especially women and un margin and marginalized communities needs to make more money, especially in dog trading. I. It doesn't factor in sustainability. So for example, you go, you get a marketing guru firm, whatever to do lead generation for you, and you such suddenly get a fuck of leads coming in, which is great. Right? Before maybe the faucet was dry and you were like, holy crap, where am I gonna pay my bills? I don't have, nobody's emailed me. Let me focus on seo. Let me do this, lemme do that. Oh god, part of the clouds. And now you have a whole bunch of leads right on your calendar. And then you get on the phone with these leads and then you get the runaround around pricing. Maybe they no show. You maybe do this, maybe do the do that, or maybe sell one or two, or you're struggling with the pricing and the programs. And what happens is you start questioning yourself and your energy is dispersed in all the different funky waves to where it's not sustainable, to the point of where now it's like, cool, maybe you have a couple closed clients. A couple new boarding trains coming in at like maybe $3,500. Maybe that's a big price increase you created. You just don't have the time and the energy to do that. It's just, it's a cluster fuck. Yeah. And what starts to happen is you get stuck in something that we've fucking termed at dog. This school is the hustle crisis cycle and the fucked up thing about the hustle crisis cycle is it's addictive as shit. And I've been in it. It really is. It really is. Especially cuz like what? Like I would say the majority Ashley of dog trainers are neuro divergent at some aspect. We are. Yeah. Right. We're always, I, I would agree with that. Yeah. Like, and that's not a hit, like I think neuro urgency is actually a superpower if you're able to tap into it. Absolutely. But we're always stuck. Absolutely. We're always stuck on looking for dopamine and looking for that hit. So do you wanna talk about, do you wanna explain what the hustle crisis cycle is, Ashley? What we talk about with our students too? Yeah. So I, I. I put myself in a hustle crisis cycle for a solid probably eight months. It's very, very clear on my, my income tracking sheet. It's, it's clearly me and not the market. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, so what I find happens is we, we get really excited about marketing because, you know, we wanna start bringing clients in, start making money. We hustle really, really, really, really hard for a month. Um, because that's just the way the timing goes. Uh, and then, and then you kind of like, You hit a wall because you, you've spent a solid month doing nothing but sales calls. Now you have filled in all of these lessons, and then the next month now you have to do the work. Cause programs that are longer than a month long, um, So now you have all this work to do and people to onboard and, and then you kind of, you switch into taking care of the clients. You just signed on still, you don't have time for anything. And then you get through that month and then the next month you're like, oh shit. Now I really, I need to catch up because I didn't work on sales the month before cuz I was taking care of my client. And then you hustle again. You make all of this money and the cycle starts again. Now you have to take care of this, these people that you signed in, you don't have time to do anything else. And, and this cycle just keeps going and going and going, and it's, it's quite difficult to get out of. Mm-hmm. When, when this has become your pattern, because it's. It's an, it's an easy pattern to get into. Right. And it's also self reinforcing too. It's self reinforcing. Yeah. Cause I, the, the big reinforcement is Yeah. When you, when you go into your, your sales month, you, yeah, you're making a lot of money. Um, if you're hustling really hard, But then you, then you hit the crash. Mm-hmm. Cause now you gotta do all the work. Cause I back it up. Yeah. And that's where like, and I see that happen with a lot of people. It's like they hustle, hustle, hustle and it's like, and then you get to like that enough, like kind of, I think of it as like your. You're like putting water in a cup of like the husband crisis cycle, and it's like, all right, cool. Now we're at the top and there's like water spilling over and you're like, okay, enough, enough, enough, enough. I'm gonna spill it on the floor. And then you, you're like, okay, you go run because you ran a fucking marathon in a desert. You drink all that. Yes. Now you're fucking, you know, you're dying of dehydration again. Yeah. And all the things that have been, like you were saying before, put in the back burner of like your business because you're now, you're focused heavily on client and content delivery to your students and your dog owners. Yeah. You're behi, quote unquote, behind in marketing, behind in content, behind and updating your own fucking program stuff. And it just, it, there's just, there's no balance in it. Right. There's no sustainability in that. Yeah. There's, there's no balance whatsoever, and it's, it's hard. Yeah. And then one little thing, and this is what I see, a huge marker of somebody being a hustle. Crisis cycle is one little thing that can happen in your business, which is normal, like we're business owners. Emily says this all the time, it's like you're always gonna have many crisises in your business, but one little mini crisis will set your fucking. Set you off like it's the world's ending. Like a dog. Yeah. For example, might get sick in your care, might get fucking kennel cough. Oh my God, I have a kennel cough outbreak. It's like, it's like the worst thing in the fucking world. Yeah. It sucks. Or maybe a client wants a refund or you're dealing with a really bad client. It, it, it just, it magnifies like an issue that still sucks, but it makes it a thousand times fucking worse. Yeah. When, when you're in a stable place in your business, when these. Crisises, many crisises come up. They don't. Feel nearly as bad as when you are in the hustle crisis cycle because you, it's trigger stacking. You've got so many other things on top of you that one little thing is, is gonna be the, the straw that breaks the camel's back. Right, right. I, you know, I, you know, one thing I love about dog biscuit, even though you know I'm one of the owners of it mm-hmm. Is the way that we set up. Our own business that we've had, like what, probably 10 really big emergencies in our business. Yeah. From, you know, Maggie getting really sick. Most people don't know she was, uh, poisoned by toxic mold. Um, she's going through a lawsuit with that. That's, you know, kept her attention away. Um, going through emergency custody with her child, then getting pregnant on top of it. Like, but there's no, there's been no blips. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, cause we have the systems and the sustainability set up. Now again, we are more privileged than others to have those things set up because they were set up from the beginning. So this is why it's super important that like, If you do decide to be like, okay, cool, I wanna work with dog with school, I wanna work with them, or whatever el, you know, I don't even fucking care who you work with at this point. We're not selling shit. But if you're like, okay, I can't live like this anymore, or something needs to change, and then you're like, okay, I'm gonna forget about it, and then go right back into the mode of that. You have to focus on sustainability, right? Like I, yeah, I know from start, from the fucking start. Money factors in there. I'm not saying, don't fucking worry about the money. Yes, absolutely. Money's part of survival. It's part of our hu it's our nature. Like we need money to live. Um, especially in today's day and age with inflation and everything else like that. But we have to really have that focus on sustainability too. I'm not, again, I'm not saying. Ignore money because you also use money to buy sustainability as well, right? Yes. And I, I also feel like if it, it's totally not sexy to market this, but if you take the attention off of the money and more on. Building a sustainable business. The money comes as a consequence or side effect of having a really well run business. Oh, agree. 1000%. 1000 fucking percent. When, oh my God, that is such a huge thing. And that's a money, that's a, yeah. You wanna talk that money mindset. Well first let's talk, let's talk really quickly about sustainability. Cause we're throwing this word around like to you, Ashley. What? And I. I'm gonna test you as a talk to school coach, uh, to you. If one of our students just say, we have a new student come in, right? Yeah. What would you talk, what would you coach around them with sustainability? Like, what are like the two, the three things without giving, you know, IP away. Um, okay. But what are two, like what are two of the biggest, like two, the three areas that you would have 'em focus on the most? I would, I would first start with budget to make sure we know exactly how much we need to make to actually be sustainable. So that gives us our starting point. Um, and then I would go into program design so that you are able to, uh, maintain as many clients as you need while still preserving your time. Um, and then I would go into marketing, um, but not. Not in a hustle crisis style. Um, building a kind of ecosystem for your marketing, um, which is, which is something we talked about in, in Dabas school. Um, I made a nice little triangle of too. I know. I love it. I love it. Guys. Can't see that on the podcast, but No, they can't see it. They can't see it. A third school. Yeah. Um, but yeah, there's. We, we like to create a marketing ecosystem so that we don't get into this habit of turning on the faucet on full blast and then having to shut it off. We want, we want a nice little trickle. Mm-hmm. Um, so, so that everything comes in evenly so that you can manage your time better. Yep. Yep. And the thing is too, it's like going back to, I don't wanna go on too many tangents here, but when we heavily, heavily, heavily focus on marketing and lead generation for pure survivalship and cash coming into our business, as Ashley was saying before, um, when you have a nicely well oiled machine focus on sustainability, when you know your numbers, for example, like she was mentioning. Mm-hmm. When you really focus on your program design, get really uncomfortable with fucking scrapping everything the industry's been telling you. You're not going to, it's not gonna be ride or die when it comes to your marketing and leg gen. Meaning if you put in a hundred dollars into an ad, You're not going, oh my God, I need to make a thousand dollars off of that, if that makes sense. Yeah. It's not putting all that pressure on yourself to really have good sales calls. Because here's the thing too, around strategy like sales is, is kind of difficult to learn the way we teach sales. So we never put somebody into lead gen unless they have a really, really solid understanding of numbers. They have their programs done and they're learning a sales process. Cuz the last thing you wanna do is put your last fucking dollar. On a lead generation or a marketing campaign and pray and hope that you're gonna make your money back or So you can pay bills. Yeah. Or have money to pay your facility or payroll, because that's the worst way you can fucking do it too. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. That's sustainability. That's what we're not just saying like word salad here, like just sustainability, scalability, profitability, bro. We're saying No, listen. Shut the fuck up. We know it's not. We know it's not sexy. We know sustainability and strategy aren't the sexiest words in the world, but they're the best things you're gonna do for your business when it comes to all that type of stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So money mindset. Let's talk about it. Let's unfuck your money mindset. I was actually gonna be doing a separate podcast on this in the series, but let, let's go in on it. I wanna talk about money mindset. Okay. Yeah. That's so hard. It's, this has been such a journey for me because I, yeah, there's so, so many beliefs about money and good ones and bad ones. Um, but I think for the most part, most of us are conditioned to believe that being wealthy is evil. Hmm. That's like, at least for me and the, the people that I've been surrounded with, this is, this is the root money is evil. So you are a bad person if you are ultra wealthy. Um, And that's when you have that in like the depths of your soul. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Not, not in your conscious mind, but in your subconscious mind. You, you are gonna feel bad for raising your prices or, and it's not raising your prices is technically asking for your needs to be met. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you. We, we come up with the price based on what it actually costs to run the business and to preserve your time. So when you're, and, and taking care of your needs. Um, so when you're, when you're giving your price, you're actually asking, Hey, in exchange for for meeting your needs, I need you to meet my needs. Mm-hmm. Um, and that. When you're not used to asking for those things, that's like really, really, really hard. Um, and this, it has taken me, it has taken me the solid five years of being in business to, to feel absolutely comfortable asking for the numbers that I'm asking for because I did have all of these, these. Things, these hangups about money. I'm, I'm a bad person for, for charging this much. I, I wanna, I don't actually care about dogs, you know, I wanna, I'm gonna actually interfere, interfere, interrupt you with something too. Okay. Um, the majority of my listeners are probably more on the balanced spectrum, but Ashley is a force free trainer. And she and historically, now I'm not saying this as a dig. No, it's under the bus. I'm not saying this as a dig at, at the force re you know, like we actually train force free too as well. Um, But historically on that side of the fence, mm-hmm. A lot of forestry trainers are in the voluntary poor club. And I'm sorry. Yes. If you're gonna rape me, if you're gonna rape me a one on that one, I understand. I, I feel for you, it sucks to be in survival mode, but I feel like a lot of forestry trainers that are in the industry for the animals like. Your clients are being met, your dogs are being met, your family's being met, but you're not being met. You're being met. Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I noticed that in the, the force free community too. We are, and I'm not, I certainly don't wanna shit on balance trainers go or anything. I don't have a song. You're fine. I feel, I feel like. In particular, the, the force free community is, is even more people pleasers Yeah. Than the balance community. And we are often the, the types of businesses who rely on our spouses for a second income because we are not asking for our needs to be met. Yeah. So it's really, and as a single person, I, I don't have a spouse to rely on. It's, it's even harder cuz I don't have a second income. Um mm-hmm. And this is, this is 110% why my worst training business failed. It wasn't for lack of love and passion and being good at what I do. It's because I couldn't. I was charging freaking $15 a lesson because Jesus, I felt bad. I felt bad for this lady because she said, she told me she was struggling to afford a board. And then she went to freaking Spain for like a three week vacation, and I'm like, Hey, I'm living in a trailer with no electricity and running water, and I'm, and let me guess, she had, she had like an Oden Berg horse or like some whole, like a really beautiful, fancy warm, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So no, I'm, I'm, I technically wouldn't have been a bad person to ask for my needs to be met there. Right. You, I'm, I'm subsidizing you. Being able to afford to have a horse. Yeah. While I live in smaller. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought that was the right thing to do. Why is that the right thing to do? I don't know. It's what I've been told. It's what's been reinforcing to me around my communities and everything else like that. Exactly. Yeah. Everybody's money bullshit things in our heads. We get into each other. Right. And that's the thing too, like the balance side of the industry, which I have a lot of experience and I'm married to a balanced trainer. A lot of my, a lot of our dog to school, uh, fra, uh, clients are too as well. They also get that messaging too. And it's a lot of influencer messaging of like, you shouldn't charge so much. Just do you know, like in the beginning it's, this is where the whole, you get knocked off into the whole fucking hustle crisis cycle of like, where it's like, we'll do a couple free lessons, do a couple free consults. Yeah. And things like that. And that's where people get stuck into like living basically under the poverty line. As a business owner, like, I don't know about you, Ashley. I don't know about my listeners like. I escaped corporate America coming from a really great paycheck. I did not come here. I did not go into entrepreneurship to not have my needs met financially, emotionally, soulfully, or anything else like that. Yeah. And I didn't, I never knew, I never knew what it was like to have my needs met. Yeah, exactly. And now that, now that they are, I want to protect this with everything I have because it, it feels nice to be mentally stable. It does, it does. Well, I, you mentioned something really like, we were having a coaching session with our group. Oh, God, I don't remember when it was. I, the last six months have been a blur. Mm-hmm. But it was like, A couple of our students were actually in survival ship mode. Right? Yeah. Survivalship hustle crisis. And you said something really, I think of it, you were talking to Britney, I'm not gonna use her last name on here, but she was stuck in kind of a survival mode and she's like, I just need to get my mindset met. And you said something around you can't fix your mindset if you're in survival mode. Oh, yeah, yeah. Mindset work is really, really hard to do when you are just trying to survive because you're just, you're just thinking about meeting your basic needs. Yeah. And you, you can't go into the advanced mindset work because you don't have a mind at that point. Yeah, yeah. You are just, you are just surviving, putting one foot in front of the other. Um, what would you, what would you say to somebody that's in that situation now? Like, just say there's a dog trainer listening to this, uh, couple years in the business, they've been struggling financially. They're getting by. But they feel like they're in consistently hustle, crisis cycle. Like what would you say to somebody because you're now, you're like, don't worry. No, come on your mind. Don't worry about it. You're in survival mode. Like what would you say to them? Like what would you say to Ashley from five years ago that was stuck in that system? Like that situation? I would say number one, we have to manage the environment and who you are surrounded by. Ooh, it's like a messy dog. Exactly. Yeah. I, yeah, I really feel like, so, so I specialize in reactive dogs. Um, I feel like the process I went through to get out of. Survival mode is the exact same program I put my dogs through. Number one, manage the environment. Yeah, well talk about that a little bit more. Cause that's really important because a, again, dog trainers, as a community, we all, we always see community. Our community sometimes beats us up over the fucking head 24 7. But like talk about managing the environment a little bit more. So, uh, and this, this looks different for everybody. It does, yes. In everybody's different situations, cuz you have like maybe family or friends who are not as supportive as they could be or they just, they have their own ideas about things and they mean well, but they're not, they're not in business mindsets, so they're, yeah. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Um, So it's, it's really important to be mindful about who you spend your time with. Um, so, so finding friends, um, or, uh, what, what do you call 'em? Colleagues? Yeah. Community associates. Yeah, yeah. Um, people with who are doing the things you want to do. Um, you, I find that being the, you don't wanna be the smartest person in the room. If that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Because there's no growth from that point. You wanna, you wanna situa, uh, situate yourself at the bottom or the middle so that you have somewhere to go. You can, you can gather this, uh, excitement and energy. Um, From, from the people who, who are doing the things that you want to be able to do. Um, and then also, I mean, self-care is so important. It sounds like bullshit. Who has time to go, like take a bath or read a book or whatever. But that downtime decompression is absolutely critical. We know this for dogs too. Um, So managing your space and really, really protecting your time off, um, or allowing yourself to have some time off, time off. What's that? Dog trading, I don't know, a little bit more, having different programs. I can help you get time off. Yeah. Here's some systems we, we gotta change. Got you. We have. We got you. Hello. If you we're sitting over here like, Hey, we have, if you're falling off the cliff, we're me and Ashley's and Maggie and we're all like, Hey, we got you. We got you. You're not pulling us over, but we got you need help. We love you, you and I, I know that is, it's really hard. Uh, like I, I was so lucky, as terrifying as it was when you guys said, yeah, you're gonna like, shut your business down in Pennsylvania and you're gonna move to North Carolina all by yourself. Um, that was terrifying. But it was actually, we rehomed, we rehomed you. Yeah. You, yeah. Rehomed. It was terrifying, but, but I had my environment. Best situation. Yeah, yeah. Right. Suddenly my environment was managed. I was only surrounded by grassroots or not a cult. I swear to God. Yeah. I joined a cult. It was cool. It's fun, but, but it was so nice. To, to actually be surrounded by people who were doing the things that I aspired to do. Right, right. And now I'm doing them a whole year later. Um, Which is awesome, but that, that decompression and the environmental change, um, yeah. And I, again, not everybody could just get up and move to a whole new state. Right. Um, but really making sure that you, you are managing your environment to protect your mental health is really gonna make such a difference. Yeah, totally. And that's the thing too, it's like, Entrepreneurship is like, it's, we're kind of rare entrepreneur, it sounds, but it doesn't feel rare. Cause we surround ourselves by other business owners. You know what I mean? Yeah. But like to the average Joe Schmo, to our family members, to everything else. Like we're kind of a, I'm gonna bite off Emily's business name here. We're a rare breed essentially, because it's, It's a lot of, I'm trying to, I'm watching my puppy poop, by the way, outside in front of my window. So I got distract. Remember I told you about distractions. I'm like, watch my puppy poop. How is your poop? Um, but it's, it's rare and not the average person can understand that. So the way you manage people's other, other people's influence around you. So like with dog bi school, if we have a student in, right, and we see that particular student struggling or having a really hard time implementing like program design for example, and pricing that goes in line with it and then really starting to struggle on the sales. We don't necessarily blame the student for not doing the coursework or whatever else. We look at the whole environment. Who's influencing you? Yeah. And if you have a partner or a spouse or a friend or a family, a toxic parent, or even not a toxic parent, it's really easy to get influenced by that. Like super easy and like we don't understand that and it cuz they don't understand either. So like a partner or a spouse or a friend could be like, oh my God, that sucks so much. You're struggling. Oh my God, is it really? Do you really need to be do doing that way because they want you to see comfortable. Yeah. Because when you level up yourself, they get uncomfortable with that too as well. If that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, it's, it's a really, it's a weird situation in PN and we see that a lot with like, people that have spouses that aren't in the industry, people that, um, that have business partners. Sometimes we have silent business partners and they get uncomfortable and things like that. So really managing your sphere of influence and also really being like, really being cognizant on the shit and the, um, the things that you're consuming. Like we were joking about TikTok before, right? And. Our, our society as a whole, we are again, neurodivergent, most of us in the industry. And we mindlessly doom scroll and things like that. And you see somebody doing this and somebody doing that, and you start to like, oh my God, this person has so many talks out, or so many Instagram. Like, I don't understand how they can do all this stuff and have such a booming business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get really caught up in a lot of shit. So again, managing your environment. Also manage managing what you're consuming, like what the Yeah, I think, I think managing what you're consuming on social media is also really huge. Um, especially since. If, if you've been on social media in the past couple months, we just had like the biggest dog trainer war ever. I didn't even think it was that bad though. I'm like, you don't think it was that bad? I thought it was. Thoughts hilarious. Was so nasty. Like it was, so it was annoying. Yeah. But, but all I'm. At least on, on my feed. And I'm not, I, I follow like a couple dog trainers, but I don't really follow very many. Um, but I started getting these suggested posts mm-hmm. And they were all like, really inflammatory. Either they agreed with me and all the comments didn't agree with me, or it was a mm-hmm. Somebody who disagreed with me and all the comments agreed with me, whatever. It's a big, big fight. Whatever. Yeah. Um, But like that was starting to drain on me too. Yeah. I don't, I don't actually care. I wanna just do my job and help. Right, right. And, and I'm gonna keep my head down and do my own thing. Right. And it's like, don't feel bad if you're not able to like do all that content either, is what I'm saying as well also. Yeah. Who has freaking time to do that? Yeah. Like were dog trainers, not content creators. I say that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. What I was seeing, um, like. I, I've been able, like, working as a coach with grassroots, I've been able to see behind the curtain a little bit, um, with, with other businesses, and I'm not saying any names or anything, but what I'm finding is that the people who have really, really great, like social media marketing are not marketing, but like a, a big, really big presence on there. Mm-hmm. They're being subsidized by their spouse's job, or that is absolutely not their main source of income. Correct. So, It's, they're, they're really not doing as well as you think they're doing. And you don't have to aspire to be that because it's not making them money anyway. Right. Borrow, don't pay the bills Exactly. Or what they do. Okay. There's two, there's two different sides as a coin on this one, and I'm not gonna go off on a tangent cause we've been talking for a while, is I get it like, Creating content can be fun, right? I love the podcast, but I also know when, okay, cool, we need to put this in the back burner and we need to focus on business, right? Yeah. Hence the six months. Well, there's also a puppy in there. Um, but. When somebody you see has a lot of content being pumped out, they're either, there's two things happening or maybe three things. One, they're not as busy as they allude to be, right? Mm-hmm. It could be videos that they've stored, things like that. It's not as busy as they allude to be, and I'm not saying this as a dish to anyone. I don't wanna have hateful comments coming after this one. If that, if you are a content creator and that's your passive income and you're making, you have like the TikTok Creator Fund, I know IG is not paying anymore. Good on you. Like, More power to you. That's your fucking passive thing. Like that's awesome. Congratulations. That's just not how we kind of roll here or, and this is gonna sound horrible. And this is something that I, this is a trend I'm seeing with other coaches now and I really gets on my gears is their outsourcing their work to, um,$2 an hour VAs, which is horrific. I think that's actually horrible, um, to exploit different communities. Um, I know there's a need for jobs overseas and things like that, but, When we start to exploit that type of stuff, it's just horrific. And I, I'm not a big fan of that. Um, if you are gonna provide jobs overseas, pay them a livable wage that is equal to what you're making in the United States. Um, but that's, again, neither here nor there, so don't feel like you need to be caught up with all that type of stuff. And that, and sustainability when it comes to content creation too, like I can, you can see like when I get, and this is my hustle crisis cycle. Like, people have seen this with me, like Ashley's probably seen it with me. Maggie's called me out on this before, is when I get into a hustle, crisis cycle, I go on the fucking blitz with content, with fur, everybody. I'm like, okay. Memes Legion. Yeah. Uh, podcast, which we're doing a whole series on, but we're getting caught up with some stuff and that shit can burn you out so fucking fast as quickly as you know everything else. So, Of course. And I wanna add in when, when your whole business system is set up to be sustainable, you will then have time to screw around with making TikTok videos. Cause yeah, everything is taken care of. It's, yep. It's not the first thing we wanna do. That one is exactly at the very top of the, the pyramid. Yeah. Yes, I agree 1000%. Wow. We went all over the place with this. We didn't even talk about the other thing. We didn't even talk about the other thing. Maybe I'll have you on for another episode. That, that's fine. Yeah. Cause I wanna talk on like about, around like how everybody's like trying to get all, all the clients in when you're like, no. What about the fucking low hanging fruit that you have in front of you right now? Oh yeah. Yeah. That's an important one too. That's really important. Well, Ashley, holy crap. Um, yeah, that's a lot. We talked about a lot, money, mindset, sustainability. What are some key takeaways you want everybody to listen to from this episode? Get your shit together. Get your shit together. And don't, don't focus so heavily on the giant numbers. Focus on setting up. You were gonna say the the giant dick. You're gonna don't focus on the giant dick. No. Don't focus on the, the giant numbers, the six figures, the seven figures you're gonna get there if you do the work. Yes, you will. But if you, if you focus more on. Setting your business up to be sustainable over the long term. If you make that a priority from the start. Mm-hmm. We'll avoid that. That unfortunate hustle crisis cycle. Oh, the hustle crisis cycle. And then when you come in from the hustle, crisis cycle to us is so hard to unfuck you. It really is like, we love you and we wanna do really cool things with you in your business, and we really want you to do like. Like do like whatever the fuck you want, but like when you're all wound up and like you're in this big knot of like fuckery of like, Burnout, survivalship million people telling you a million things to do and then you doing a million different things and then saying, this doesn't work. And then like getting, not knowing where your value lays is so much harder. It's so much harder. So if you, if you've been, if you're in business for the last couple years, I mean, it doesn't hurt to talk to us. It doesn't. Yeah, like we don't bite. I mean we do bite actually, but we got a rabies vaccine to date. Our rabies are up to date. We were. Cause we are the feral raccoons of the business world. Hmm. But no problem. It's a good tribe. It's, huh. It's a good time. It's a good time. I mean, we actually do have really bad taxi. Jeremy Raccoons. We do in little dogs. Yeah, we all have one. Yeah. It's a little creepy. I love it. But no, for real. But for real, like reach out to us. Um, we're also gonna be doing, now I say this, I'm like, where else are gonna be doing a webinar? We're gonna be a new do no obligation webinar. No chan, no need to sign up or do know. So we're not selling shit, but we are gonna be doing a webinar, um, I believe on that 24th or the 25th. I will know by the time this recording's up. Um, and I'll post this, the link below, but it's basically we're gonna sit down as a team collectively. Me, Ashley, Maggie, and I think Emily's gonna be there too, to literally get your shit together to literally help you get your fucking shit together and see, okay, this is where you're fucked. This isn't where you're fucked. How can we make this look a little bit better? How can we start moving you in the right direction and get you kind of going and feeling good about yourself? And this is for people that have been a business for me, like two, like a year, two years, three years. Um, not necessarily for people that are trying to start a business. I mean, you're welcome to attend if you want to. Um, but not gonna be really your thing. So it's gonna be either 24th or 25th of May. And like I said, we gotta get you guys unfucked and we gotta get your shit together. I think that's the number one thing. People come to us was like, get your shit to, well, could you get my shit together? And sometimes getting your shit together is literally just moving one thing over a tiny venue. You're like, oh wow, this is actually fixed. Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes, um, but depending on where you're at with your minds. It's not as easy. So I always like to say, if you ever reach out to us for help, I know people are probably not listening right now, but come to us with an open mind. Drop your fucking ego or we're gonna drop, kick it for you dudes of the industry. Yep. We had, I had, oh, funny story. I'm gonna share a funny story before we wrap up. So I don't know if Maggie shared the story with you, Ashley. Um, this dude came, we have a, a Facebook group. We barely are in it like Facebook groups are, you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, And he joined. We have one for business coaches too because this is just kind of like, we wanna like kind of flush the toilet sometimes and see what's out there, um, for the industry so you're not drinking enough dirty poop water. Um, so it's kind of like our septic system. And this guy came in and he wants to be a business coach. And he said, I wanna know if all the other business coaches are drinking from the same. Well, well, you know what? We dug the well here at Dog school. Yeah. And he listed a whole bunch of names and one of them was my name and Maggie's like, oh, the Mind Your Own Dog Business podcast? He's like, yeah, but that cat Kristen's an arrogant, braggy bitch. I'm like, boss, sir, I'll see your new, I'll see your new business course in about four months from now. Yeah. Yeah. We're listening dude. Thank you for the compliment. I love being an arrogant bitch. I love being a braggy bitch because I've earned that fucking right. Ashley's earned that, right. Our students have earned that, right? And we're the ones that fucking started it all and know what the fuck we're doing in the industry. So go sit and spin. I got a special bicycle for you. You can message me and I'll send the picture of the special bicycle for you. And by the way, thank you for drinking from ar well. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. Anyway, but yeah, for real. Um, if you guys are still here, so 24th or 25th of May, we're gonna be doing a get your shit together, webinar, uh, epi. Oh God, my god, my brain's all over the place. Uh, masterclass, whatever the fuck you wanna call it. But we're gonna get together as a team and sit with all of you. And then any questions you have, you can ask us live and things like that. So I'll drop the link in the episode notes. Um, and follow me on dog, the school, uh, at. Badass dog biz and we, we'll have it in Lincoln Bio and shit like that. Anyway, oh, Ashley, it's been awesome. Thank you. I've been talking your ear off for an hour. You're welcome. I've been talking. You loved it. It was great fun. All right, and yes, and I hope to see all you guys soon. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye bye. Hey there. Thanks for checking out another episode of The Mind Your Own Dog Business podcast. Mind Your Own Dog business is hosted by me, Kristen Lee, and produced by the Unicorns over at the Dog This School team. For more information on how to get in touch with me for more information on Dog This School, or to learn more on how we can help you with your dog business. Feel free to visit our website@dogbizschool.com. Now, if you really enjoy this episode, do me a favor and leave a five star review on Apple. The reason why, because we wanna disrupt more dog training businesses on how people do the business of dogs. Till next time, I Hi.