Veronica

There’s a particular kind of busy that feels productive but isn’t. You probably know it. Calendar full, dogs being helped, payments coming in. On paper, everything looks healthy. But somewhere in the back of your mind is a growing list of things you’ve been meaning to do, quietly accumulating under the mental label of “when things calm down a bit.”

Spoiler: things don’t calm down. Busy periods end and are replaced by different busy periods. The list just sits there, getting longer and more guilt-inducing, while you continue patching your systems together with the business equivalent of duct tape.

The frustrating thing is that the projects on that list are usually the ones most likely to actually make your business better and easier. They just have the misfortune of never feeling urgent.

Here are five of the most common ones we see, and simple actions you can take on each..

1. Strengthening your referral network

Referral relationships have a habit of fading into the background when business is busy. If inquiries are arriving steadily, it’s easy to assume they’ll continue arriving steadily. After a while, referrals can start to feel almost automatic.

And they often look stable right up until they aren’t. The vet nurse who quietly referred you half a dozen clients a year moves on to another practice. A new trainer starts dropping off cookies at every groomer in your area. A rescue organization updates their preferred contact list and your name isn’t on the new version because the person who knew you left six months ago. Nobody tells you any of this. Inquiries just slowly, quietly thin out.

The problem with referral maintenance is that it never feels like today’s job. There’s no notification or deadline. Nobody follows up to ask whether you’ve checked in with that pet store lately.

The good news is that maintaining referral relationships doesn’t need to be elaborate. It just needs some intentional planning. A genuine check-in email. A useful resource sent to a vet clinic. An offer to do a short presentation for rescue staff about supporting dogs in the first few weeks after adoption. Small, consistent contact does most of the work.

The catch is that it needs to happen before you need the referrals, which is a surprisingly difficult thing for us to motivate ourselves to do.

2. Fixing the parts of your website you’ve learned to ignore

Most trainers have a sense of what they want changed on their website. There’s a service page that no longer reflects what you actually offer. An FAQ section that got abandoned halfway through. A booking process that requires three more steps than it should. A hero image from a photoshoot you did in 2018 with those bangs you really regret.

The reason website projects get postponed is that they rarely feel urgent. The website is still functioning. People are still booking. There isn’t a flashing warning light telling you that your inquiry form is confusing or that your service descriptions stopped reflecting reality some time ago.

If the idea of “updating your website” feels overwhelming, make the project smaller. Pick one page. Better yet, pick one question clients regularly ask and answer it clearly on your site. Or ask a friend to spend five minutes trying to book a session and tell you where they get stuck. You don’t need a complete redesign to improve the client experience.

Small website improvements have a habit of paying for themselves. A clearer service page answers questions before clients ask them. A better booking process reduces drop-offs. An updated FAQ saves you explaining the same thing for the hundredth time.

The work itself is usually not the problem. It’s finding an afternoon where updating a webpage feels more important than everything else competing for your attention. That’s exactly why it keeps getting postponed. And exactly why it’s worth doing.

3. Creating systems for repetitive tasks

You can usually identify a systems problem by listening for a specific phrase: “There must be an easier way to do this.”

Most trainers say some version of this regularly. The follow-up email after an initial assessment. The explanation of management strategies that you type from scratch every single time. The pre-session information email about what to bring and what to expect. The cancellation policy you re-explain in slightly different words to every new client because you never quite wrote it down properly.

None of these tasks are hard. That’s part of why they don’t get addressed. Each one only takes a few minutes, which makes them feel unworthy of the effort of systematizing. But they don’t happen once. They happen over and over, quietly consuming your time and energy.

If you’re not sure where to start, pay attention to what you’re repeating. Which email have you written three times this week? Which question do clients ask in almost every consultation? Which explanation do you find yourself typing out over and over again? Those are often your best opportunities for creating a system.

The solution doesn’t need to be sophisticated. It might be a template, a handout, a canned email response, a welcome guide, or a short video you can send to clients. 

Busy periods can be exhausting in a way that’s hard to account for. The client work itself is demanding, sure. But a significant chunk of the exhaustion often comes from the surrounding friction: the small repetitive decisions, the tasks you’re reinventing instead of repeating, the things you’re tracking in your head.

Good systems don’t make your business feel less personal. They free up enough mental space that you can actually be present for the parts that require you specifically, rather than depleted by the parts that don’t.

4. Building your email list

Not every trainer needs a newsletter. Not every trainer wants one. But every trainer benefits from having a way to stay connected to people who have already expressed an interest in what they do.

One of the most expensive mistakes in marketing is assuming that someone who isn’t ready to book today is gone forever. In reality, many people sit in the “maybe later” category for months. Their puppy is still too young for your agility classes. Their dog’s behavior isn’t quite bad enough yet. Life is busy. Money is tight. They’re gathering information and weighing up options.

An email list gives you a way to remain visible during that period. Instead of hoping they happen to see one of your social media posts six months from now, you have a direct line of communication with people who have already raised their hand and said, “I’m interested in this.”

For some trainers, that might be a simple monthly newsletter. For others, it might be a more sophisticated nurture sequence, regular educational content, or a lead magnet connected to a specific service. The format matters less than the underlying principle: building a way to stay in touch with people who aren’t ready to buy yet.

If this is a project you’ve been postponing, start by thinking about what would actually be useful for your audience. What questions do clients ask before they book? What information would help them take the next step? What resources do you find yourself sharing repeatedly?

The trainers who do this well aren’t necessarily sending more emails. They’re creating more opportunities for relationships to continue beyond a single website visit or social media interaction.

5. Reviewing your services and pricing

Busy periods contain a lot of information about your business. The problem is that most of it arrives while you’re too busy to notice it.

When you’re fully booked, you’re gathering data every single day. Which services energize you and which leave you feeling depleted. Which offerings generate the best results. Which services seem straightforward on paper but create endless admin, rescheduling, or follow-up work behind the scenes.

The challenge is that these observations tend to stay in your head. You notice them in the moment, then move on to the next session.

One of the most useful habits you can build is some form of regular business review. Block out an hour every quarter and ask yourself a few simple questions:

• What have I enjoyed delivering most?

• What has felt hard?

• Which services are most profitable?

• Which clients have been my best fit?

• What have I found myself complaining about repeatedly?

Maybe your puppy classes consistently fill while your one-off consults don’t. Maybe a particular service generates far more admin than revenue. Maybe you keep saying yes to work that no longer aligns with the direction you want your business to take.

None of these insights are particularly useful if they remain observations. The value comes from occasionally stepping back and asking whether your business still reflects what you’ve learned.

Sometimes the result is a price increase. Sometimes it’s retiring a service. Sometimes it’s doubling down on something that’s working exceptionally well. Those adjustments are difficult to make when you’re moving from one client to the next without ever creating space to think.

The future-you problem

What all five of these projects have in common is that they make life easier later, not today. That’s partly why they keep getting postponed. The benefits are distant and hypothetical. The client waiting for a reply, the report that needs writing, and the puppy class starting tonight all feel much more real.

But businesses are often shaped less by the urgent work in front of us and more by the important work we keep putting off. The referral relationship maintained. The website page finally updated. The template that took an afternoon to create and now saves time every week.

If you’ve been waiting for things to settle down before tackling any of these projects, you may be waiting a long time. A better question is: which one would make your working life noticeably easier six months from now?

Then make it smaller. Not “update the website”. Update one page. Not “build an email strategy”. Create a sign-up form. Not “fix all your systems”. Save one email template.

Small isn’t a consolation prize. It’s often the difference between something happening or remaining on your to-do list until you’re planning your retirement party.

And if your to-do list feels longer than your working week, our free Business Success Snapshot helps you identify what deserves your attention first, so you can stop guessing and start making real progress.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and you’re battling a mild panic about your puppy classes. They’re happening in two weeks. They’re only half full, and you need at least another booking to make them viable. You quickly start rustling up some discount codes in your booking system.

This is a very natural response to uncertainty. But before you start drafting a “limited time offer” email, it’s worth asking a question: what problem are you actually trying to solve?

Discounts can feel like a solution to almost anything. Enquiries slow? Discount. Packages not selling? Discount. Imposter syndrome flaring up at 2am? Discount, maybe with a side of rebranding your entire website.

The problem is that discounts often get used as a solution before we’ve properly identified the problem. Sometimes they help, and sometimes they’re simply a way to feel like we’re doing something.

Not every business problem is a pricing problem

Let’s say enquiries have genuinely dropped off over the past few weeks. Your instinct is that your prices are the barrier. But let’s think about what else might be going on.

Has your referral network gone quiet? A lot of dog training businesses rely heavily on word of mouth from vets, groomers, and rescue organizations. If one of those relationships has gone cold, or if the vet who used to send you everyone has hired their own trainer, that’s a pipeline problem, not a pricing problem.

Have you been slammed delivering services and basically stopped all marketing? This is almost universal in small service businesses. You get busy, you focus on your clients, and then one day you look up and realize you haven’t posted anything useful in six weeks and your last newsletter was sent by a version of you with fewer grey hairs.

Or is it just… January? Or August? Seasonality is real. People are distracted, travelling, or haven’t yet hit the “the dog is destroying everything” level of desperation that drives inquiries. Before you reach for a pricing lever, it’s worth asking these questions:

• Have inquiries dropped compared to the same period last year? 
• Have they dropped for more than a couple of weeks? 
• Do you have actual data, or could you be pattern-matching from anxiety?

None of these problems are solved by making your six-session behaviour package $50 cheaper.

What are you asking the discount to do?

This is the most useful question before doing anything.

• Are you trying to generate more inquiries from new clients? Before reaching for a discount, ask yourself whether enough of the right people even know your business exists. Frequent discounts can sometimes undermine the perceived value of your services without solving the real problem. If visibility is the issue, getting your business in front of more of the right people is likely to have a much bigger impact than lowering your prices.
• Are you trying to convert inquiries that are already coming in but not booking? Before assuming your prices are the problem, consider whether your marketing is attracting the right clients, your booking process has too many steps, your response time is slow, or your messaging isn’t clearly communicating the value of what you offer.
• Are you trying to fill a sudden gap in your calendar? Then a short-term promotion to your existing audience (people who already know and trust you) might actually move the needle.
• Are you trying to make training more accessible to people who genuinely can’t afford full rates? That’s a values conversation, and it deserves more than a blanket discount applied to everyone.
• Or, honestly, are you trying to feel better about charging what you charge? Because if that’s the underlying issue, a discount is not going to fix it. It’s just going to cost you money while the discomfort relocates.

The expertise problem

Dog trainers routinely underestimate the depth of what they know. You have studied learning theory, behavior science, handling and coaching skills. You have learned to read a dog’s body language while simultaneously managing a stressed human who is convinced their dog “just does this to spite them.” You have sat with genuinely difficult cases and have kept up with research. Many of you hold certifications that require years of documented case work and professional mentorship to earn.

A significant portion of that expertise is invisible to clients. They see someone good with dogs. They don’t see all the effort underneath it.

When you discount every time things feel uncertain, you can quietly reinforce the belief that your value is tied to being affordable rather than being skilled. That’s a hard belief to untangle once it takes hold. It also tends to attract clients who are primarily price-motivated, who are the most likely to push back on your methods, skip homework, and leave a lukewarm review because they expected more for what they paid.

Discounts aren’t the only way to make training accessible

A lot of R+ trainers genuinely care about accessibility. That’s not a soft business aim to dismiss. If your values include making good, science-based training available to people who can’t afford premium rates, that’s worth building into your business model thoughtfully.

But a blanket discount is actually one of the less effective ways to do it.

Payment plans let people access the full value of what you offer while spreading the cost. Group classes dramatically reduce your per-client cost without touching your hourly rate. A well-designed online course or resource library can reach people you’d never see in person. A discounted slot reserved specifically for low-income households is targeted and intentional rather than quietly bleeding revenue from every booking.

The trainers doing this well tend to decide in advance which populations they want to serve at reduced rates and why, rather than discounting because someone in a consultation mentioned they were “on a budget” and it felt rude not to respond.

When discounts make sense

Here are situations where a discount is a reasonable, intentional business decision rather than a response to anxiety:

• A new service launch where you want genuine case experience and testimonials before setting a full price. 
• A values-based discount for specific cases that align with your mission.
• A package structure where the discount for buying a block of sessions incentivizes commitment rather than the one-and-done approach that produces worse outcomes for dogs and worse reviews for you. 
• A loyalty offer to existing clients that deepens a relationship, promotes retention into additional services, and generates referrals.

The common thread is that you know what you’re trying to achieve, you have a way to measure whether it worked, and you have a plan for what happens when the promotion ends. That’s completely different from dropping your prices because three inquiries in a row said they needed to “think about it.”

So, should you offer a discount?

Maybe. But instead of starting there, try starting here: What outcome am I trying to create, and is a discount genuinely the most effective way to create it?

Sometimes the answer is yes. More often the answer is that you need better visibility, a cleaner booking process, a re-engaged referral network, or simply to wait out what is probably just a slow month.

And often the answer is that you need to charge what your expertise is worth and stop apologizing for it.

THRIVE! helps you build the kind of business where decisions are driven by strategy rather than panic. If you’d like support with pricing, marketing, referrals, systems, and all the other moving parts of your biz, we’d love to help.

This article is inspired by Nicole Dyson’s Life Pizza exercise. What follows is a dog-trainer-specific version, shaped by the realities of building and running a training business.

By mid-year, many dog trainers find themselves right in the thick of things. The first half of the year has flown by. You’ve been delivering training sessions, answering emails, juggling dogs and humans and logistics, and keeping your business moving. It can feel like the second half of the year will go by just as fast, if not faster.

This is often a good moment to pause, and try to end the year strong rather than just pushing through it. A brief check-in now can help you decide what actually deserves your energy for the months ahead.

The Business Pizza is one way to do that.

It works well as a mid-year reset, but it’s just as useful as an end-of-year review or a starting point for setting intentions in January. It’s a useful exercise any time you want a clearer picture of how your business is functioning as a whole.

Introducing the Business Pizza

The Business Pizza is a reflection exercise designed to help dog trainers step back and look at their business as a system. Think of it as a way to take the business out of your head and put it on the table, so you can see what’s working, what needs work, and what’s draining you.

You can do this solo, with a notebook and a cup of coffee. You can also do it with a trusted friend or colleague. It can be surprisingly reassuring to realise that someone else’s pizza is just as uneven as yours. Ready to start cooking?

Set the tone first

If you’re doing this with someone else, agree on a few simple ground rules before you start:

• This is not a comparison exercise.
• Scores are information, not judgement.
• No coaching or advice unless it’s invited.
• You can skip any question that doesn’t feel helpful.

Then do a short arrival check-in and reflect on:

• One thing that’s been going well in your business recently
• One thing that consistently feels difficult
• One word for how you’d like work to feel over the next stretch.

Step one: Score the slices

Draw a circle and divide it into eight slices. These are your Business Pizza categories, and some questions to guide your scoring:

Income

• Does my income feel reliable and predictable enough?
• Am I earning in a way that feels fair for my time, skill, and responsibility?
• Do I feel calm about money most of the time, or am I worried financially?

Workload

• Do my working hours feel manageable week to week?
• Is there a rhythm to my work, or does it feel scattered and reactive?
• Do I have enough time for things I enjoy outside of my work?

Offerings

• Do the services I offer still make sense for me and my business?
• Which parts of my work do I enjoy and feel good delivering?
• Are there offerings I keep out of habit rather than intention?

Clients

• Do I generally enjoy working with my clients?
• Are expectations clear on both sides?
• Are clients getting the results they want? Are their dogs’ lives improving?

Systems

• Do bookings, payments, and follow-ups run smoothly most of the time?
• How much of my business relies on memory rather than automation?
• Are there recurring admin tasks that feel harder than they should?

Visibility

• Am I attracting the clients I want to work with?
• Do I know what’s actually bringing clients through the door right now?
• Does the way I market my business feel doable and sustainable for me?

Learning

• Do I trust my skills and judgement as a trainer?
• Is the learning I’m doing actually useful for my work right now?
• Do I have space for CPD and reflection, or am I mostly firefighting?

Community

• Do I have people I can think out loud with about my work?
• Do I feel supported, or mostly on my own with decisions?
• Are there relationships that help me feel steadier in this business?

Now score each slice from 1 to 10 based on how it feels right now. Not how it looks from the outside. Not how it “should” feel if you were doing things properly. Just your honest sense of it.

Circle any score that stands out to you, then note:

• Your highest score
• Your lowest score
• One score that surprised you

If you’re doing this with someone else, share those three.

Step two: Get everything out of your head

Next, grab sticky notes or a blank page and start writing ideas down. One idea per note.

These can be things you want to:

• start
• stop
• reduce
• simplify
• change
• get support with

Some examples may look like:

• stop offering services that drain you so your energy goes toward work you enjoy and do well
• tighten your intake process so clients arrive prepared and you’re not repeating yourself
• adjust pricing or session structure so your income reflects your time and expertise, not just volume
• reduce your availability between sessions so you’re not carrying a constant load of client messages
• introduce or strengthen your policies so expectations are clear from the start

If you catch yourself thinking “I’ve been meaning to deal with that”, it probably belongs here.

Keep them concrete. “Tighten up my intake process” is more useful than “be more organised”. “Stop offering that one service I secretly dread” is very useful information.

At this stage, quantity matters more than quality. Don’t filter yet.

Step three: Sift before you plan

Now look at what you’ve written and ask two questions of each idea:

• Does this actually matter to me this year?
• Does it feel genuinely important?

If the answer is no, discard it without guilt.

Then sort what’s left into the eight pizza categories. If something fits more than one, put it where it would make the biggest difference. This is often where things get interesting. People are frequently surprised by which slices end up crowded and which ones are nearly empty.

Step four: Build the pizza

Now place your notes onto the pizza.

Notes closer to the centre represent things that feel core or urgent right now. Notes closer to the edge are secondary or longer-term. If you’re with someone else, resist the urge to explain or justify your choices straight away.

When you step back and look at the whole thing, ask yourself:

• Which slices feel overloaded?
• Which ones are almost bare?
• Where do you feel a sense of tension?
• Where do you feel relief?

Step five: Name support (and limits)

If you’re doing this with a colleague, finish by naming:

• one way you’d genuinely like support this year
• one way to create accountability connected to that support
• one realistic check-in point (if you want one)

This might be as simple as “I want someone I can sanity-check decisions with” or “I don’t want advice unless I ask for it”.

Support works much better when it’s explicit.

Step six: Close without pressure

End by naming:

• one area you are consciously not prioritising right now
• one small change that would make the biggest difference

Take a photo of your pizza or keep it somewhere visible. Many people find that it quietly influences decisions later, without needing to be revisited constantly.

Why this works for dog trainers

Dog training businesses are complex. You’re balancing dogs, humans, safety, ethics, emotions, admin, income, and your own nervous system, often all in the same hour.

The Business Pizza gives you a way to see where the strain is actually coming from, instead of assuming the answer is “work harder” or “be better at business”.

Uneven pizzas are normal and low scores aren’t failures. Often the most useful outcome of this exercise isn’t a shiny new goal, but permission to stop propping up parts of the business that clearly aren’t working for you anymore.

If you try this, we’d love to hear about it! What was your biggest takeaway when creating your Business Pizza?

And if you’d like some help making sense of what your pizza is telling you, this is exactly the kind of work private dogbiz coaching supports. A good coach can help you spot patterns you’re too close to see, sense-check decisions, and turn insight into practical next steps. You’re welcome to bring your Business Pizza into a coaching session and use it as the starting point for the conversation.

Choose your welcome gift:

  THRIVE! Essentials Monthly Subscription at $35/monthly with the Start-up Blueprint

  THRIVE! Essentials Monthly Subscription at $35/monthly with the Hiring Series

  THRIVE! Essentials Monthly Subscription at $35/monthly with the Mastering Day Training Course

  THRIVE! Essentials Yearly Subscription at $385 (saves $35) with all the goodies listed above

 

Choose your option:

  THRIVE! Essentials Monthly Subscription at $35/monthly

  THRIVE! Essentials Yearly Subscription at $385 (saves $35)