Bob

4 Tips for Business Success

Bob · Aug 2, 2010 ·

We’re asked often by clients and workshop attendees as we lecture across the country for the secrets to success in this industry. Here’s what we tell them.

1. Get and keep yourself educated
Whether you are already or wish to become a dog trainer, walker, sitter, or daycare or boarding facility owner, you owe it to yourself, your clients, and the dogs in your care to know everything you can about dog behavior. We have an unfortunate habit of assuming we understand dogs because we’ve lived with them all our lives. The truth is we suffer from a host of often damaging misconceptions and pieces of conventional wisdom about why dogs do what they do. Ridding yourself of these myths will make you a more effective dog pro.

Start by attending a scientifically-sound program based on positive reinforcement, then keep up your education through seminars, reading, DVDs, and professional conferences.

2. Learn how to market yourself
A lack of or poor marketing is the number one reason for failure in our industry. Too many dog pros rely on a “build it and they will come” approach, or a few brochures or fliers spread around town. This rarely gets the job done, especially in a busy market like the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, or any area that offers dog lovers lots of dog pro choices. We also see dog pros waste precious money on passive advertising that rarely works—Google ads, direct mailers, etc. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or stressful, but it needs to be done and done smart.

Our focus when working with clients is to develop inexpensive community-based marketing plans that play to personal strengths—good writers can write an ongoing column or newsletter, for example. We also recommend finding a way to stand out. Look around at other service providers in your area. What can you do differently, better? There are lots of pet sitters– is anyone focusing on animals with special health or behavioral needs? Anyone sending video report cards to clients on vacation? There are lots of dog walkers—is anyone focusing on small dogs? There are lots of daycares—what will make yours special? Small playgroups and a well-crafted daily itinerary? Special monthly event days?

3. Work ON the business, not just in it
We can’t stress this enough. To be a successful dog pro, you have to do more than see clients and care for dogs. You have to be your own secretary promptly returning phone calls and emails, your own admin assistant handling paperwork, your own accountant managing your books, your own marketing manager executing your marketing plan, and so on. Though you can (and should) get help with many of these tasks, the reality remains: You have to actually run the business. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of client needs, but if you don’t work on the business itself it won’t grow.

4. Keep to a master schedule
Working on and in the business demands efficient use of time. We teach my clients how to create a smart work schedule that allows them to effectively run their businesses while also enjoying plenty of down time and flexibility. After all, there are supposed to be perks to working for yourself. Whether you’re the type to flounder under a lack of structure, getting little done without the external pressures of a job and boss, or the type to work yourself to the bone when there’s no one to tell you to knock off for the day, a master schedule creates a sustainable balance.

This approach to scheduling involves setting aside specific days and times for each business activity, as well as protected personal downtime. When there’s a specific task to be done, it’s assigned to its logical spot in the weekly schedule, rather than relegated to a post-it note, intimidating to-do list, or a hopeful “I’d like to get to this someday when I have time.” A master schedule operates on the concept of “do dates,” listing when something will actually be accomplished, instead of “due dates” that simply cause stress. When everything has its place things get done—and that means success and peace of mind, too.

Though running your own dog business can be challenging, few who do it will tell you they’d rather do something else. Working with dogs and dog lovers is a great way to make a living, especially when combined with the freedom that comes with owning a well run business. So be bold. If you already own a dog business, take it to a new level. If it’s been a long-standing dream, give yourself permission to pursue it.

If you’d like some help applying these tips to your business, consider Personalized Business Consulting.

Training the Clients

Bob · Aug 2, 2010 ·

Most trainers agree that working with clients is the most important—and most challenging—part of the job. Even when the trainer does the training in board and train or day training situations, the work with the client remains the central ingredient to success. Transferring complex skills and understanding to a human is tremendously more involved than employing the laws of operant and classical conditioning to train a dog. It’s no wonder, then, that it is this part of our work that trainers most often struggle with.

What do they really need to know?
There is a temptation to share everything we know. To take clients on a tour through the learning theory quadrants, explain the process of D/CC in detail, or give them the ins and outs of CERs and DRIs. In short, too often we look to transform our clients from dog owners to junior trainers.

Instead, ask yourself two questions. In order to reach their specific training goals:
• What does this client need to understand?
• What does this client need to be able to do?

Your answers will be tempered by the training structure you’re using. Trainers employing the coaching model will necessarily answer somewhat differently than those training for the client through day training or board and train. Regardless, all dog pros should translate their answers to lay language and think beyond behaviors. Does the client need to understand that how often she treats her dog effects his focus on her, or that rewarded behaviors will happen more? Does she need to learn how to handle the distractions that occur all around us? Less really is more here—the more you try to fit in, the less well the client learns each thing.

How will you teach them?
This isn’t a question of how you will explain things. Telling is not teaching. Hearing is not learning. For a client to truly own a new concept or develop a skill means the ability to apply it to new situations without instruction. This requires guided experiential opportunities to use and “discover” the new concepts and skills you wish clients to have.

In our Master the Growlies seminars we walk trainers through a number of ways to create these situations with private clients. The following example could be used in any format (coaching, day training, board and train) to teach clients to work in the face of environmental distraction. In this case we’ll use Watch, but it could be any cued behavior.

The behavior is not the central priority here; handling distraction is the real goal. The behavior is the vehicle to teach this larger concept and skill. But if the larger goal is reached—that the client understands the role of distraction in her dog’s behavior and be able to recognize and respond to it effectively—the behavior is much more likely to be successfully proofed.

Teach the Watch (There are many ways to initially teach or transfer an already installed behavior, but that that is a large topic in and of itself.)
Have the client practice working with the dog in a low-distraction area inside the house. Guide and give feedback until the human-dog team is working smoothly together and reliably getting the behavior.
Move the duo to a somewhat more challenging location, such as a backyard. Don’t talk about distractions or anything along those lines. Just cheerfully suggest moving into the yard to continue practicing.
Chances are the client will find the exercise more challenging in the backyard than in the kitchen. At that point, a conversation about what has made it harder for Spot to respond and why is likely to have much richer meaning than a warning ahead of time. The context of immediate experience creates the basis for understanding, and you can then show the client how to work around distraction.
Once she has her dog’s focus back and is again successful with the Watch, suggest that you now move to the front yard. But this time, before you go, ask your client to name the distractions she’s likely to encounter in the front yard and ask her how, based on the experience in the backyard, she plans to handle the situation.

In moving to the backyard and refraining from initially giving instruction, you create a teachable moment to introduce a concept and set of skills when they are most likely to take hold— in the context of real experience. And in this last step, you begin to hand over the reins. Notice how quickly we’re asking the client to begin making decisions and applying what they’ve learned. It’s critical to begin fading the prompting early on so that clients learn to act for themselves. Without fading the prompt (called “removing the scaffold” in educational terminology) clients are less likely to learn the skills and concepts we wish them to, to be able to apply them when we are not there to whisper instructions at their elbow.

Train for the real world.
We talk a lot in our profession about working at the client’s level and splitting complex mechanical skills down into smaller pieces. We also look to break behaviors down into more manageable pieces for people to work with. These are very important concepts, but we can’t forget in the process of using them that clients live in the real world.

For example, we love the idea of breaking down the Three D’s—distance, duration, and distraction. And we particularly like the notion of training first without distraction, then with a little of it, then a little more, etc. And that is certainly ideal. But dog guardians don’t live in a vacuum. We can’t wait to introduce distraction as the last D, and we can’t afford to assume that clients will always be able to avoid certain levels of distraction until their dog is ready for them. Life’s just too messy.

This is another reason to begin handing those decision making and application reins over early. Think about your sessions with clients as opportunities for discovery and application. Add as many experiential learning moments as you can so that clients are practicing encountering the kinds of challenges that will face them every day when you’re not there to give instruction. Working on Stay? Introduce distraction in the very first session. Show them how to respond. Then toss distractions in when they aren’t expecting it. Prompt as needed in the beginning, but look to fade those prompts quickly. If they don’t respond, waiting for you to tell them what to do, counter with a question: “What could you do next time I drop the tennis ball to help Fido be successful?”

Heavily reinforce all unprompted action. And think about taking your client sessions on the road when appropriate to work in the environments clients will find themselves in over the course of their daily lives with their dogs.

Emotions matter.
Factor client emotions into your training plan, particularly in behavior modification cases. As with dogs, strong emotions like fear can impede human learning and a successful plan must address this.

One of the sample cases in the Master the Growlies seminar is a leash reactivity case in which the client has become so sensitized to her dog’s reactions to other dogs that she has stopped walking him altogether. She’s just too scared to take him out. This is a situation in which day training or board and train is a real advantage. The trainer can work on changing the dog’s behavior, the dog gets out for his walks, and the client gets a needed break. (If coaching, I would recommend introducing some alternative exercise outlets until the client’s skills and confidence are built up.)

In the sample case, the trainer installs some basic behaviors (Sit, Watch, Find It) and then the client works on these at home while the trainer takes the dog for walks to proof the behaviors and work on the classical conditioning portion of the plan.

Very important to the plan is the gradual desensitization of the client to walking her own dog. Over many sessions she is led through steps one at a time. Only when she is ready (noted in this case by a relaxed approach to the activity—a positive Conditioned Emotional Response) is she graduated to the next. She practices with her Fido and a stuffed animal. She watches the trainer handle Fido with a therapy dog so she can see how poised her dog is capable of being. She practices with Fido and the therapy dog as the therapy dog handler.

Only when she is very comfortable does she take up her own dog’s leash with the therapy dog present. And the first time she and the trainer take it on the road the trainer handles her dog for her, narrating her decisions, then asking the client to suggest actions. Finally, she takes the leash with the trainer there to prompt as needed. By this time, however, the client is less likely to require that prompting. As with all other teaching, any prompting should be faded as quickly as possible to engender the client’s confidence in her own ability to walk her dog without the trainer present.

This example shows how central the human teaching plan is to the positive outcome of a case. The dog training cannot be overlooked; without a solid training plan, well executed, the client cannot succeed. But the dog training plan is only half of the picture. A thoughtfully designed teaching plan for the client must accompany it. Because whether you offer coaching, day training, or board and train services, careful attention to teaching people is central to dog training success.

Hiring: You Deserve Help

Bob · Aug 2, 2010 ·

Most dog service businesses are one-person affairs. If you run one, you know what it’s like to juggle a multitude of tasks and wear too many hats at once: Trainer/walker/sitter/daycare or boarding operator, administrative assistant, marketing manager, bookkeeper, accountant, customer service rep, even janitor.

We find in our business consulting work and when on the road speaking at conferences and seminars that many dog pros are exhausted by the pressure of keeping up—or the stress of not being able to. When we suggest hiring some help, the reaction is often shock. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I can’t afford it.” The question is, “Can you afford not to?”

You can afford it. Really.
You may not be in a position to bring on a full-time salaried employee, but that’s not your only option. Start small if you must. Even hiring someone for five hours a week can take a good deal of pressure off. It’s not just the five hours of work another person can get done for you—it’s also the peace of mind of having those particular tasks ticked off your list.

And don’t forget the five hours you suddenly have that didn’t exist before. Five hours a week to build your business and make more money. Say you hire an admin assistant to help five or ten hours a week with answering emails and returning phone calls. Right away you’re improving business by increasing your response time to potential clients. Or maybe you’d like assistance with your bookkeeping or other paperwork, perhaps some cleaning around your facility if you have one. Now you have five or ten hours to work on marketing or to add client screening appointment times or an extra dog walk or pet sit. Already the money you pay your assistant is paying dividends. And if you’re really over-taxed, you might grab some of that extra time for yourself, too.

What would you like help with?
Before you hire, decide what kind of assistance would be most helpful. Does the admin side of your business bog you down? Then the above example of hiring admin help would allow you more time to market or add sitting appointments. But sometimes it’s the direct service duties, like running the daycare floor or walking the boarding dogs, that keep you from other pressing tasks. If you feel you don’t have time to run the business side of your operation it might be more helpful to hire someone to care for the dogs. Hiring a daycare floor attendant, for example, allows you to spend some time in the office returning phone calls, handling paperwork, and taking care of marketing—which helps your business to grow.

Which kind of position to hire for is a personal decision, and I advise making it that way—what do you personally want to do less of? What would you like more time for? One of the reasons you went into business for yourself was to enjoy life more, to be your own boss, to be in charge of your day and how you spend your time. So hire accordingly to release yourself from tasks that make you dread your day, weigh you down, or cause you stress.

What to look for.
Once you’ve decided what you want help with, make a list of the specific tasks you want that person to accomplish for you. Then write down the skills and qualities they need to tackle these successfully. This second list is what you’re looking for in your new hire. Keep in mind when considering candidates that some skills are easier to acquire than others. For example, if the person you bring on will be interacting with existing and potential clients, prioritize customer service and language skills over dog knowledge. It’s much easier to train someone to interact with dogs than retrain how they behave with humans.

Don’t underestimate the importance of a strong personality match. You’ll have to be around this person on a regular basis. And if you have employees, they will, too. In addition to whatever skills and qualities you seek, look for a team player. Nothing sours a workplace faster than someone who is negative or unable to get along with others.

Who to hire, and where to find them.
Start by looking around you. Is there someone you know who might fit the bill? Consider acquaintances, including your clients. I’ve often seen particularly strong training class students become excellent training assistants, for example. Or maybe there’s a client you find intelligent and articulate who’s looking for some extra work. And if not, maybe they know someone who is. You won’t know if you don’t ask.

If putting the word out informally within your personal network fails, broaden your search. Put together a job announcement and post it to the places that make the most sense in your area. Online avenues like craigslist.org can be a good bet. If you live in a college town, post to the job boards there to find a responsible upper graduate or grad student. This is also a good time to use government unemployment listing resources, as so many qualified and talented people are looking for work.

Writing an effective job description.
The type of candidates you see will depend in part on your job posting. If you want serious, qualified, committed folks to apply but are only hearing from sixteen-year-olds who mumble and avoid eye contact, it’s time to rework your post. Look at job postings for serious positions and model yours on them.

Your description should include a bulleted list of the responsibilities involved, and another of the skills and qualities you are looking for in a candidate. Make some reference to higher education as well. Depending on your area you may either require a college degree or mention a preference for one. By so doing you signal that you are looking for a mature, accomplished adult. Finally, require that all interested parties apply with a cover letter and resume. Requiring a formal application helps to weed out less serious and skilled applicants, and saves you time lost to drop-ins and phone calls.

Separating the wheat from the chaff.
Interviewing potential hires is a much more complicated process than it seems. It’s all too easy to get through a lengthy interview process and learn nothing of real value to help with our decision making. For one thing, we’re very good at telegraphing to others what we want to hear. And for another, we rarely ask the kinds of questions or put people in the kinds of situations that would give us any insight into how they might be on the job.

Here are some tips for effective interviewing:

Refer back to the lists you made. You decided what you want your new employee to be able to do, and what skills they need. The interview process should be built around these lists or it won’t serve you as it should.

Don’t tell candidates what you’re looking for. If you tell me you’re looking for a team player who takes initiative, I’m going to tell you (if I’ve any smarts at all) that I’m that person. Instead, ask questions and listen to my answers, and to the questions I ask in return.

Ask application-based questions. Want to know if I’m a team player? Asking me outright will telegraph to me what you’re hoping to hear. Instead, present me with a scenario and ask me what I’d do. For example, “Let’s say you notice something that isn’t being done as well as you think it could be. What would you do?” Or if you want to know if my default response to dogs is positive or negative you might ask me, “How would you handle a dog who is barking excessively?”

Put candidates in real-life situations. If you want to see how I’d handle a difficult client and/or test my writing skills, give me a sample client email and ask me to write a response. If you want to gauge my comfort around dogs, put me on the daycare floor. Can I read body language? Ask me to watch two rambunctious players and tell you when I’d step in to ask them to take a short break. And getting back to my cooperation skills, you might also ask me to engage in a task with you or another employee to see how I handle a group project.

Keeping the good ones.
Once you have a hire you’re happy with, do everything you can to keep them happy, too. It’s worth the effort not to have to repeat the hiring process again. Engage in effective staff training and a productive evaluation process (See Staff Training That Works and Staff Reviews That Work). Take the time, regularly, to let your hire know what you appreciate about her and her work. A little praise goes a long way and, just like we do with dogs, we humans sometimes forget to let each other know when we’ve done a good job.

Be flexible where you can be about schedules, particularly if you’re unable to offer a full-time position just yet. Keep the job interesting by adding new responsibilities or projects, particularly for employees who enjoy being creative, learning new things, or being relied on. And openly welcoming suggestions and ideas from your staff keeps everyone feeling engaged and a valued part of a team.

Give yourself a break—and watch your business grow.
If you find your time so tightly squeezed that you have no way to increase your revenue and/or your downtime, it really is time to get help. You can’t market your business to make it grow if you don’t have time to put into it. You can’t serve more clients if there’s no room in your schedule or not enough people to care for the dogs. You can’t step back from the brink of burnout if you don’t get your schedule under control.

Hiring someone to take some tasks off your plate can make the difference between stagnation and growth, between a frantic existence and a balanced one. Start slow if you’re worried or short on funds. But do start. You’ll be amazed at how quick and strong an impact even a little help can have.

Got Website Links?

Bob · Aug 2, 2010 ·

Having a website doesn’t do you much good if no one sees it. Collecting links—having other sites add links to yours—is one sure-fire way to increase traffic to your site.

Why links?
Search engine optimization* expert Judy Taylor says website links are “the single most important thing you can do to raise your site ranking.” When delivering search results to a user Google decides where to place your site by looking at how many other site owners feel it’s important enough to link to. In fact, she says, “Links are, next to key wording,** the most important consideration in increasing your site’s ranking.” So if you want to come up at the top of the first page instead of the bottom of the fifth, links matter.

And the more links you have, the more likely someone is going to find you while looking at another site, too.

Linking don’ts.
Not all links are created equal. It used to be that reciprocal links were the way to go: I’ll link to your site if you link to mine. But that doesn’t work anymore. Reciprocity cancels out the power of a link. So go after one-way links wherever possible, and keep the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” links to about 10% of your total.

Resist the temptation to take shortcuts. Stay away from linking schemes and networks, referred to in the industry as “bad neighborhoods.” Joining these may help in the short run, but Google and the other search engines will penalize your site once they catch on.

Linking do’s.
Google likes to see a natural linking pattern—a site that has a few reciprocal links, and lots of one-way or “straight” links that come from as different types of sources as possible. Here are some of the best ways to pursue these links:

Simply ask for them. Find sites that are dog-related in some way and just ask. If you feel it would be helpful to have something to offer in return, be creative. For example, offer to give all your clients coupons to the local boutique pet supply shop in return for a link.

Join referral networks. For example, join local trainer, sitter, or dog walker association sites and add your listing to their website.

Blog. Guest blogging on others’ sites is a great way to create links and make yourself more visible. Some guest spots will give you link juice, some won’t. But even in the latter case you are still raising the chances that people find you and then choose to go to your site.

Participate in forums. Join and comment regularly on online forums related to your business. This can include Yahoo Groups, Facebook and LinkedIn forums, and forums on association sites such as apdt.com. Same as with blogging, some of these efforts will create actual links and some won’t. But same as with blogging, you stand to increase the visits to your site either way.

Write articles. Submit articles to sites like E-Zine.com that welcome knowledgeable material from experts in their field. Or create a lense on a dog-related topic on squidoo.com.

Market your own content. Have strong content on your own site—blog entries and articles, for example—and market it using social media like Twitter and Facebook and community marketing like an email newsletter.

Extra credit assignments from Judy Taylor, our SEO expert.
Get links from a .edu or .gov site. These sites are particularly difficult to get links from. So if you see an opportunity, take it. Perhaps you have a friend who works for a school or school district that could help you get a link to an article on your site about humane education or child and dog safety. Search engines will give these links more weight, so give some thought to how you might get one or more.

Get listed on DMOZ.org. This directory is run by hand, meaning that all applications are reviewed and decided upon by a human, so Google gives the links that come from DMOZ a lot of credit. It’s not easy to get listed, but it’s worth the effort. If you haven’t been accepted after a month or two, Judy recommends trying again. Choose a different content area and reapply—it may be a matter of finding the right spot for yourself, or getting in front of the right editor.

Getting started.
Search engines like to see what they call “natural growth” in a site’s links. So don’t feel pressure to gather all your links this moment. Instead, make a plan to pursue links over time. Set aside regular time to work on your site, adding one website project (getting on DMOZ, for example, or starting a blog or joining some forums) per month or quarter.

*Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a collection of practices designed to increase the ranking of your site. Your site’s ranking is what determines whether you come up at the top of the first page when someone does a search for dog pros in your area, or the bottom of the fifth.

** Key wording is an SEO strategy in which the text of a website is written to match the words internet users are most likely to type in to find a particular service.

Social Media for Dog Pros

Bob · May 17, 2010 ·

We get a lot of questions about social media marketing. The most common two questions are some form of “Should I?” or “Do I have to?” and “Does it work?”

Should I?
It depends. The two most important factors are time and interest. Social media marketing requires a consistent time investment. Some choices are more intensive (Twitter, blogging) than others (Facebook, LinkedIn). But all demand regular attention if they are to have any impact.

So if you aren’t interested—if you aren’t likely to actively engage in the process, if you don’t like to work on the computer, if you’re not “into” it, you would be better served pursuing non-social media forms of marketing.

But if you enjoy social media and can commit the time, there are some potential rewards to be had.

Does it work?
That depends, too. Social media marketing can do a lot for your business. Perhaps most importantly, it improves your website’s ranking so more people find you when they search online for a local dog pro. It also generates brand loyalty among those who follow your efforts. And the thought processes involved can produce lucrative by-products for your business, such as ideas about new services, customer care approaches, or marketing projects.

But recognize that social media marketing may or may not generate much actual business. In our industry, don’t expect your efforts to lead to a line of potential clients knocking down your door. Think about your typical clients—are they the type to go looking for a dog blog? Or to follow a dog pro on Twitter? If they’re like most clients they’ve probably hired you because they’re too busy to take care of their dog themselves, which means the answer is probably no.

On the other hand, now that they know and have come to trust and admire you, they may well enjoy reading your blog or friending you, and that reinforces brand loyalty. Social media may not get you business in the first place, but it’ll help you to keep it.

But no matter how effective your efforts or how much you enjoy them, social media is not a substitute, ever, for on-the-ground community marketing. You still have to get out there to create and nurture referral relationships, use your expertise to create brand awareness and connection, make yourself seen and known.

If you use social media.
Use a set schedule. Carve out specific blocks of time each week to maintain a consistent presence in whichever outlets you choose to participate. And do not allow yourself to go over time—you need that time for other areas of marketing.

Combine with non-media marketing. Set aside at least as much time per week, if not more, for your on-the-ground marketing. Choose, plan, and complete one project per quarter—launch a newsletter or give a small number of free class passes to local veterinary clinics or invite a local reporter to join you on a dog walk.

Have a plan. Don’t launch into a social media marketing project without a plan. What is your purpose? How will you approach it? For example, if you’re starting a blog spend some time brainstorming the kinds of topics you’ll blog about. Don’t launch until you’ve got a good 50 topic ideas to make sure you can sustain the project. Joining the Twitter movement? Do the same—generate a long list of tweets as well as a set of guidelines for what you will and will not tweet about.

You’re promoting your business, so keep all your material on topic. Avoid the temptation to mix in the personal, such as old high school buddies posting to your Facebook page, or tweets about how you spent your day. And think twice before touching anything controversial.

The bottom line.
Social media can be a useful addition to a well-designed dog pro marketing plan, but in most cases cannot replace other marketing efforts. If social media isn’t your thing, you’ll be glad to know it’s not imperative. On the other hand, if you’ve jumped in with both feet but the phone isn’t ringing, it’s time to add some traditional community marketing back into the mix.

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