Adapt or die – a terrifying lesson from January 2019! (Love Your Business)

Without wishing to traumatise any of you lovely folks reading this missive, I am going to have to mention the B***** word…

Because this January has been more challenging than normal for my business.

And when I started writing these emails and blogs, I promised to be honest about the ups as well as the downs.

The beginning of the year is definitely a weird one for trainers and behaviourists.

There’s often an influx of new puppies for classes, or struggling puppies for 121 sessions.

And we tend to get a lot more enquiries about behaviour help for the dogs who bit relatives over the festive period.

What’s less reliable is the uptake in weekly classes - sports, activities and other progression stuff.

It can be a tough time of year financially, but this year feels even harder.

And I really do think we’re finally feeling the Brexit effect. Uncertainty is at an all time high, and that means people are less likely to spend money especially if that’s on a perceived luxury.

The good news is that we could see this coming because

• We monitor enrolments and enquiries weekly - which gives us scope to make last minute changes where they are needed rather than panicking at the end of the quarter 
• If people don’t sign up for classes they’d expressed an interest in earlier, we gently but persistently ask why – we need this information to be able to adapt 

What are we doing as a result?

• Making changes to our class schedule so courses are a bit shorter (and therefore cheaper without cutting the price) 
• Offering more half day themed workshops (require less commitment from owners) 
• Concentrating on promoting our core earners (puppy classes and behavioural work) 
• Making sure we monitor enquiries, follow-up and conversion rates for puppy and behaviour categories 

Have you noticed the Brexit Bite hitting your business yet?

What steps are you taking now? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Morag 

UltraCaniCrosser, Firewalker, Clinical Animal Behaviourist

PS Thanks for the feedback on the webinars, I’m so glad you enjoyed them but I know not everyone managed to book on for the whole set.

If you want to catch up on any of the webinars that you missed from last year, or go back through them and start taking action, they are all finally uploaded and available!

Choose a single webinar + resource pack (£15+vat each), or grab the whole set of 6 for just £80+vat

You have access to these for as long as Teachable exists, and I’ll add extra resources to each pack as and when I think of them.

https://wellconnectedcanine.teachable.com/p/the-business-of-behaviour-training 

But I have soooo much to do, I can’t possibly stop and plan… (Love Your Business)

Yeah, we’ve all been there.

Sometimes I’m still there too.

But we also know that

Which is all very well, but it’s still hard to take time out from your busy day.

This month I’m mostly concentrating on planning ahead for 2019 with my awesome wee team. It might seem a long way off, but it will be January before we know it.

Last night we sat down together, drank tea and talked about our top four for next year:

1. What do I want to do more of? 
2. What do I want to do less of? 
3. What do I want to learn or do that’s new? 
4. What am I doing now that I feel fairly indifferent about? 

And that threw up some really interesting answers, even for myself.

I can already see how there are possible collaborations (like between me and one of my puppy trainers who is also an amazing RVN for fear free handling clinics).

It’s easier to see who might need to be rotated off teaching the puppy programmes before they burn out too. No one really wants to do the same thing every day or week for eight years!

Even if you don’t have a team, I’d strongly recommend that you try out these questions for yourself.

It could be about the type of 121 clients you see, behaviour cases you take on, or classes that you teach….

And if you’re a little bit curious about what it’s like working in a team versus flying solo why not join me for the next Love Your Business: Webinar. 

We'll look at the practical challenges of bringing other people into your business, the legal implications (self employed, zero hours contract, or ???) and how to negotiate working relationships.

Thursday 1st November at 7pm: Team versus Solo working Book the last Webinar!

It’s the last one in the current series!!

I’m taking a wee break from the webinars to put all the recordings together as one resource, plus it looks like I have a couple of books to crack on with writing.

There WILL be more webinars because I love running them, and I want to hear what you want from me!

Suggestions so far have included

• Communicating with vets and insurance companies 
• Creating “compliance” with clients 
• Writing clear, effective coaching emails for clients 
• Developing a behavioural or training speciality – finding your niche 

Tell me what you want help with and I will do my best.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to sign up to the last webinar in the current series….

Book the last Webinar!

Morag 
UltraCaniCrosser, Firewalker, Clinical Animal Behaviourist

Technology - friend or foe?

I came back from holiday to find my diary looking a bit different

Some appointments had been rescheduled and a couple more had been popped in.

None of it was done by my lovely office manager, nor had I snuck on during my holiday to make the changes.

Instead it was all down to technology!

We’ve been trialling an online booking system for initial phone consults, follow-up calls and some of our other sessions.

It lets clients see our availability, book their session, and MOST importantly sends a confirmation email to the client that includes a reschedule link.

So rather than having to contact me to change a booking, the client can do it themselves.

Bliss!

Now technology isn’t always our friend, and today there have been at least two small snafus in our systems (I promised to be honest with you right at the start of these blogs, emails and webinars!). 

But overall, adopting some key techy solutions has made my working life much easier to organise, and it’s cut down on mind numbing admin too.

What could you trial in your business to claim back valuable time and brain space?

Next webinar

Thursday 11^th October – Gotta Love the Tech

We’ll be exploring how you can use technology to streamline your business processes, follow-up more regularly with your clients and work remotely to save on travel time among other ideas.

No tech experience is needed to attend!

https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=13187434&appointmentType=category:The+Business+of+Behaviour

Accessing the recordings for longer

I’ve had several requests from people who haven’t been able to finish listening to the recordings within the 30-day limit. And I appreciate that you are working hard to manage your own work/life balance!

So, I’m going to compile the recordings and extra resources for all of the webinars into one online space. I just need to work out the details, and it means if you missed signing up for any webinars then you can add them on too.

This won’t be available until the end of December at the earliest so please do try and catch up with the recorded versions in the meantime.

 

Morag

UltraCaniCrosser, Firewalker, Clinical Animal Behaviourist

Confession - conversion rates make me giddy (Love Your Business)

Conversion rates make me giddy

Really they do. And I’m okay if that makes me sound even more weird than normal *grins*

Do you know how many initial contacts from potential clients turn into actual paid work for you? I mean email enquiries, phone calls, FB messages, random texts and the like.

Not just what does it feel like.

But what are the numbers?

How many enquiries did you deal with last month? How many of those paid for one of your services?

“Conversion rates” sound like suspicious marketing language, but they’re the life blood of your business especially in the early days.

Here’s an example of what we track in my behaviour business to calculate our conversions:

• # initial enquiries sent screening info (email, phone, text, FB etc) & followed up
• # enquires that pass screening, sent application form
• # phone consults booked
• # behaviour packages booked

We’ve been transitioning to a new accounting package since April 2018 and back dating a lot of our information too. This has given us a whole year of really detailed accounts – not just totals and figures that mean stuff to my accountant.

Combining the information on our income and expenditure for the “behaviour” workstream with the data we’ve collected on conversion rates means we can accurately predict how many (paid) initial phone consults we need per month to give us the right number of behaviour package clients!

I am unbearably excited about this!

No more guessing and estimating.

No more taking on too much work just in case, or too little work because of a false feeling of security because we were super busy one month.

Cold, hard, reliable data.

Today’s thought for you – do you track any of this data right now? It might be enquiries versus puppy class bookings, it doesn’t have to be about behaviour cases.

And if you don’t track it, could you start today. Just a simple excel spreadsheet would do. We can worry about complicated Customer Relation Management programmes later!

Happy number crunching....

Morag

UltraCaniCrosser, Firewalker, Clinical Animal Behaviourist

Next webinar

There’s a wee break in the schedule partly because I’m going on holiday – yep, taking my own advice and going away for a few days! Conveniently it coincides with our quarterly shutdown week when we stop taking on new clients and just catch up with ourselves, bliss.

Thursday 11^th October – Gotta Love the Tech

We’ll be exploring how you can use technology to streamline your business processes, follow-up more regularly with your clients and work remotely to save on travel time among other ideas.

No tech experience is needed to attend!

https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=13187434&appointmentType=category:The+Business+of+Behaviour

Accessing the recordings for longer

I’ve had several requests from people who haven’t been able to finish listening to the recordings within the 30-day limit. And I appreciate that you are working hard to manage your own work/life balance!

So, I’m going to compile the recordings and extra resources for all of the webinars into one online space. I just need to work out the details, and it means if you missed signing up for any webinars then you can add them on too.

This won’t be available until the end of December at the earliest so please do try and catch up with the recorded versions in the meantime.

 

Do you dream of being a (better) dog trainer?

Have you ever watched a trainer handling your dog for a demonstration, and been amazed at how quickly your genius pup mastered the new skill?

And then felt the crushing disappointment when it doesn’t work like that for you? (I am perhaps exaggerating just a little!)

A really good trainer would come over and talk you through each tiny step, adjusting your hand position, treat delivery, posture – suddenly it’s working just like magic for you too.

Are you that fantastic trainer? Do you have the skills to help a regular dog owner to train just like a professional?

Or do you long to be able to work that magic on both the humans and the dogs?

If you’d like to be better at training dogs AND coaching other humans, then I’d recommend you start doing that most terrifying of things – filming your own training sessions and watching them back.

Every single “behaviour” you train is made up of many tiny steps.

The art is in knowing how to break the big behaviour (e.g. settle) into manageable chunks – for the human as much as for the dog!

Last night we were working on settle in one of our Puppy Foundation classes. The instructions to get the puppy into position might seem simple enough:

• When your puppy is already sitting, take a tasty soft treat between thumb and forefinger
• Pop the treat right under your puppy’s nose, and slowly take it towards the ground
• Watch for puppy’s head bending forward AND bum staying on the ground = give the treat
• Repeat and let puppy nibble the treat on the way down so long as bum on ground
• Bum comes up = treat vanishes and start again

But there’s a million subtleties in where you place your hand, do you draw your treat straight down or slightly back into the puppy’s chest, not to mention do you let them nibble half way or hold out for the full belly on the ground moment…

It’s not actually that easy to do unless you have lots of practice. And it’s even harder to do with a new dog rather than one you’ve lived with or trained for a while.

So – get out and film your own training because it will help you see the details of every exercise and movement.

And if you want to be better at training dogs, and you’re interested in coaching owners more effectively come along to Dog Training Fundamentals in York (29^th & 30^th September).

We have just 4 spaces left on this two day course. We’re going back to the basics of great dog training to make sure your mechanical skills are spot on AND that you can coach complete strangers into being super effective dog trainers. http://www.wellconnectedcanine.co.uk/events/dog-training-fundamentals/
Happy Training!
Morag and the Beasts

What else is going on in WCC Land?

Canine First Aid – An Introduction with Antonia Parkin RVN
Tuesday 25^th September, 7pm, University of York (Heslington East Campus)
Free parking on campus, and there will be plenty of coffee and cake for you.

Weekly classes start in October
If you’re local to York, don’t forget to check out the Winter training schedule. We only have spaces in Helpful Hounds (Mondays), Canicross (Tuesdays) and Canine Sports Conditioning (Wednesdays), all other classes are now full!

Webinars for Canine Professionals
You’ve just got time to sign up for the next in the Love Your Business series of webinars for canine professionals. This Thursday we’ll be talking about setting boundaries, saving your sanity and the all important waiting list…