Veronica

Dreaming about working full-time in your own dog training or dog walking business, but can’t imagine how to make the leap? You need a transition plan. Whether you’re working full-time in another career, or spinning the hamster wheel balancing a part-time hobby business alongside your “real” job, a well-designed transition plan lays out a clear, step-by-step path to running your dog business full-time.

And in case you’re wondering whether it’s really possible to go full time, the answer is yes. It really is possible. We know, because we’ve been helping dog professionals do just that since 2003. So if you’re serious about working with dogs for a living, read on!

Creating a Transition Plan to Full Time Dog Pro
Your transition plan needs four steps:

1. Determine feasibility. Can you make ends meet with the services you’re looking to provide? And what does it mean to meet ends? We focus on this step here in Part.

2. Assess, prioritize, adjust. Before you enter a transition, you have to know where you stand. (It’s hard to make a plan to get somewhere without knowing where the starting line is!) So in Part 2 of this series, we outline how to assess your starting point, and then look at ways to set yourself up for success by prioritizing all the things you juggle and making sure your business is optimized to serve you and your clients.
3. Line up support. You’re much more likely to get to the other side of your transition plan if you don’t head in alone. In Part 3 we look at some simple and creative ways to line up the support you need.
4. Set milestones and marketing plans. How do you know you’ve arrived? How do you decide when to quit your job or scale back? Your milestones, set ahead of time for personal comfort and financial safety, will tell you. And marketing will help you reach those milestones as fast as possible. So in Part 4 we look at how to set milestones and choose creative marketing approaches to hit them.

Let’s start with Step 1:

What Is Feasibility?
Technically put, feasibility is a comparison of revenue to expenses. Simply put, is your business set up to make what you need?

To answer that question, you have to know what you need. If you’re not sure, it’s time for some personal budgeting. Ick, we know, but it’s not as awful as it sounds. Make a list of your household expenses. These would include rent or mortgage payment (include property taxes if you own your home), utilities, insurance (including medical), transportation, food, pets, children, and personal expenses (entertainment, grooming, clothing, and the like). Don’t forget big picture items like taxes and savings.

Estimating Revenue
When we create transition plans for dogbiz business consulting clients, we’re always careful to estimate revenue conservatively. We want any miscalculations to come out in your favor, so rather than basing your numbers on a full calendar year, assume 10 months of active work time. This will help accommodate holidays, your own vacation time (yes, dog pros can—and should—take vacations), and the unexpected.

To calculate your revenue, first decide on your capacity. When your business is running on all cylinders, how many clients can you handle sustainably? How many private training clients per week? How many classes can you teach, and with how many students max per class? What number of dogs can comfortably and safely play on your daycare floor or vacation with you in your boarding facility? How many dog walks can you take, or pet sits can you make?

Next, multiply that number by your rates to give you a weekly revenue. Multiply this number by 4 for the month and your resulting monthly number by 10 for the year. The number you get will be a simple estimate of your maximum gross revenue, or what you’ll make if your dance card is full. Divide this by 12 for your average monthly gross intake.

Because we want to be conservative about revenue, you’ve got a few more calculations to make: Multiply your gross monthly number by 75% and 50% to give you safer numbers to work with. These numbers will help show you what level of capacity you need to reach to cover your needs.

Estimating Expenses
To help protect against unwelcome surprises we estimate expenses liberally. To get a sense of your expenses, determine costs in three categories:

General expenses. Include any vehicle costs, communication fees (phone, internet, etc.), office supplies, training or care supplies, staffing costs if you have them, and marketing.

Professional expenses. Your professional membership and certification fees go here, as does your budget for ongoing professional development like courses, conferences, seminars, web seminars, books, and DVDs. Also include liability insurance and professional support such as accounting and business consulting.

Facility expenses. If you’re bricks-and-mortar based, you’ll have rent or mortgage to contend with, as well as utilities and repairs.

If you’re just getting started, don’t forget start-up costs. Though these won’t factor into your monthly feasibility figures, you need to consider initial education costs, marketing (logo and website), and if applicable, facility setup and build-out or improvements.

What The Numbers Say
Just a little more math and we can see where you sit. Simply subtract your monthly expenses number from your monthly gross revenue number to get your net monthly revenue, or what’s left for you. How does that number look? Is it enough to cover your personal needs?

Don’t panic or become discouraged if the answer is no. Very often an adjustment or two can work wonders. Are there additional services you might add? Or changes you can make to the service you’re planning or already offer that would increase revenue? Most dog pros set their rates too low—do you have room to raise revenue through a rate increase? We look in at these sorts of adjustments in Part 2 of this series.

Are You Ready To Go Full Time?
If you’re ready to put your career where your heart is, it’s time to build your transition plan. Start by setting aside some time to run your numbers, and then read Part 2 of this series. The dogs are waiting for you!

Find out more about Starting Your R+ Dog Training Business with our services and toolkits.

If you missed part 1 in this series on creating a transition plan to full-time dog pro, which summarized the four steps of a transition plan and covered how to assess the financial feasibility of your dream business, you can read Part 1 here. In this article we turn to step 2 of your plan, which involves getting yourself and your business ready for the transition.

The transition period to full-time dog pro can be both exciting and trying. It’s a great feeling to be underway in pursuit of your dog career goals, but juggling your “regular” job and life responsibilities with starting or growing your dog business can get exhausting pretty fast. The personal, work, and business assessments, adjustments, and priority-setting you’ll do here in step 2 are designed to get you through your transition as quickly as possible. We don’t want you getting stuck mid-stream!

Assess Your Job Situation
If you’re working a regular job, part of your transition to full-time dog pro will be a transition out of your current work. In some situations this will be a smooth, gradual process. For others, the change will be a bit more challenging. Here are some questions you’ll need to answer:

Can your hours be flexible? Do you have the luxury of heading into the office late or taking a long lunch to fit in a day training client, dog walk, or pet sit visit? Can you work from home all or part time to help accommodate a boarder or board & train guest? Or are you expected in the office 8-5, relegating your dog service hours to nights and weekends?

Can you exit gradually? Will you be able to reduce your work hours over time (say, reducing from 40 hours to 32, then 32 to 20, and so on), or will you have to quit your job all at once?

Obviously a job with flexible hours that allows a gradual exit will make for the easiest transition—you’ll be able to ramp down at your job as your clients and revenue ramp up. But don’t despair if your situation doesn’t allow for this kind of flexibility. Though your transition may take a bit longer and require a larger amount of juggling to build to a safe quitting point, even a despotic boss and set-in-stone hours can’t keep a dedicated dog pro from full-time dog work.

Assess Your Finances
Take a look at your financial assets: Do you have a safety net? This might come in the form of other household income that can help you transition more quickly, or savings that allow you quit that job a bit earlier.

Backup income or savings of some kind will be of particular help to anyone stuck in a full-time-or-nothing job with inflexible hours, but if that’s you and you don’t have a safety net, continue to resist despair. Double down on the rest of the steps in this article to help compensate, and have heart. Though your plan may take longer to implement, it’ll be all the sweeter when you reach the end.

Prioritize Your Activities
We find that most of our clients have a lot going on: Work, starting or running the business, family, hobbies, volunteer work, household responsibilities. Oh! And the dog! All too often the juggling act begins to break down during transition, and sadly it seems the things that matter most get caught in the tumble.

Realistically you won’t be able to handle everything once you’re in transition mode. The trick to keep this reality from becoming disastrous or guilt-ridden is to decide now, up front, what you’re going to temporarily set down in order to pursue your goals. Because if you don’t make the hard decision to let go of your volunteer work at the shelter or your crafting classes at the community center, it’ll likely be your own dog not getting walked or your personal health not being tended to. And remember: You can pick everything back up once you’re your own boss.

Prioritize Your Spending
What can you let go of in order to get what you want? Are there large or small sacrifices worth making to get out of that cubicle or away from that boss so you can spend your days with dogs? Take a hard look at your personal budget. Is there room for tightening?

Assess & Adjust Your Business
One trick to getting through your transition plan as quickly as possible is making sure your business—whether old news or brand new—is running as efficiently as possible.

Adjust your services. You’ll be able to quit your job a lot earlier if your services are maximized for your clients’ success and your revenue.

Trainers, look at shortening initial consults if you’re running over 90 minutes, and shorten those write-ups, too. Be sure you’re selling packages in order to increase revenue and better help clients meet training goals. If your work schedule allows, consider offering day training or board & train to maximize revenue and training results. Teaching classes? Switch to open enrollment, particularly for your entry level puppy and basic manners classes, to avoid losing money to cancelled or under-enrolled courses. Then offer short-run topics-based classes like 3 or 4-week courses on loose-leash walking or recall. These fill more quickly than longer intermediate or advanced classes. If you can provide specialty or niche courses, like agility or nosework or growly dog classes, that will help, too.

Dog walkers and pet sitters, remove offerings that aren’t in your or the animals’ best interests, such as shorter walks or visits that come with a small payout and leave more of your time spent in the car than with the four-leggeds.

Adjust your rates. You’ll also get to the other side of your transition more quickly if you’re making more for the services you provide. This is the best, most risk-free time to raise your rates, now while you’ve still got an outside income. And once you do, you’ll be able to save faster while you’re still working, in order to expand or build your safety net.

Adjust your policies. Good policies save money. Sometimes a lot of money. If you don’t have strong scheduling and cancellation policies that you consistently enforce, it’s time to tighten up. How to know if yours need tightening? If you find yourself asking the question, “What time is good for you?” your scheduling policy most certainly needs attention. And if your cancellation policy is some form of “XX hours notice,” it’s time to take a good look there, too.

Automate. Get as many of your systems streamlined as possible to help save precious time during your transition. Choose from the myriad software options available to dog professionals, including Dog Biz Pro for trainers, Scout and Better Walker for dog walkers, PetSitClick and Petcheck for sitters, and PocketSuite for just about any small business—just to name a few. Where applicable, automate payment for your services online as well. For example, it’s easy these days to set up payment for dog training classes on your website with programs like Dog Biz Pro.

Adjust Your Schedule
Once you enter your transition period, you’re going to be busy. It’s no easy task juggling the job, the business, and life outside of work, too. Set yourself up with a master schedule to make the juggling a bit easier and much less stressful. A master schedule helps you get through your transition plan faster, too, by ensuring a more efficient use of your time for things like marketing, which will be key to reaching your goal of being a full-time dog pro.

Are You Ready To Go Full Time?
If you’re ready to put your career where your heart is, spend some time making your assessments and adjustments and prioritizing what’s most important to you during your transition period. Then read Part 3 of this series to learn how to set up the support systems you’ll need to make it through your transition to full-time dog trainer or dog walker as fast and as easily as possible.

Find out more about Starting Your R+ Dog Training Business with our services and toolkits.

In part 2 of this 4-part series on creating a transition plan to full-time dog trainer, dog walker, or other dog pro, we looked at assessments, adjustments, and priority-setting at home, at work, and in your business to help get you through your transition as quickly as possible. This month we turn to lining up the support you’ll need once you enter your transition period.

The message here: Don’t try to go it alone. You’re probably already pretty busy as it is, right? Your current job, the business if you’ve already started one, the dogs. All the responsibilities of running a household—groceries, bills, cleaning, cooking. The endless errands we all face. Add to this the marketing work necessary to ramp up your current business or grow a new one, and taking on new clients as a result, and you can see how a little help could, well, help.

Getting Past the “Yeah, but…”
You may not feel you’re ready to hire help. Maybe your business isn’t making much yet (or you haven’t even started it). Maybe you prefer to do things your own way, to your own standards. But to get through your transition successfully—that means as quickly as possible and still in one piece, too—will be a tall order if you insist on doing everything yourself.

Hiring someone to do your bookkeeping or clean your facility or take over basic administrative duties for your business frees up hours you can spend marketing and working with clients or their dogs. Spending between $10-$20 for an hour of help so you can make $100 training a dog or guiding a group dog walk? That’s good math. And spending that hour on marketing in order to fill more hours with revenue-generating activity is a good trade, too—and a good investment in your goal to go full time.

And remember—you don’t have to hire full-time. Even bringing someone on for five hours a week buys you 20 hours a month you didn’t have before to push your business forward.

Help Outside the Box
If you’re not comfortable bringing someone in to help with your business, there are plenty of other ways to line up support. Here are a few examples to inspire your creativity:

Help with caregiving. Most of us have others to care for. Our dogs, for starters, and many a dog pro has lamented a lack of time for her own pooches during a transition to full time. Consider hiring a dog walker or sending your super social best friend to a daycare.

Have human kids, too? A few hours of extra babysitting so you can get your marketing done might be an option, or make school pick-up/ drop-off arrangements with a fellow parent to buy a bit of extra time.

Help with the daily grind. It may sound like a luxury, but just as hiring someone to help in your business is good math, so is hiring a housekeeper. What you pay to buy yourself those hours, you’ll make back in spades by spending that time marketing or being paid for your dog training or dog walking services.

Meal planning and cooking take up a lot of time, too, especially if you’re feeding a family. Think about hiring a personal chef (sounds crazy, we know, but it may be less expensive than you’d think to have someone fill your fridge with healthy, tasty meals for the week), or use one of the many meal prep services that deliver pre-planned meals that cook up quick. Or team up with some friends to share the load through a dinner club. Have each member pick a night to cook and deliver dinner to everyone else in the group.

Look for ways to reduce errand time, too. Most of us spend huge amounts of time in our cars running from spot to spot. Plan ahead for one grocery run per week, for example. Better yet, pay a helper to run errands for you or reach out to a friend for assistance.

Don’t Go It Alone
Do your best to turn off internal voices attempting to convince you to suck it up and do it all on your own. No doubt you can, but you don’t have to and the goal is going full time, not a merit badge for self-sacrifice. A good support plan will get you to full time faster and help protect you from burnout along the way. That means you’ll be in better shape to enjoy your success and give your best to your business and your clients.

Are You Ready To Go Full Time?
If you’re ready to put your career where your heart is, spend some time this month lining up support for your transition plan. Then read Part 4 of this series, on setting the actual steps of your transition plan, and how to know when to take each one–including when to quit your job and officially go full-time dog pro!

Find out more about Starting Your R+ Dog Training Business with our services and toolkits.

In the first three parts of this series about transitioning from a current job or career to full-time dog trainer, dog walker, or other dog pro we’ve looked at:

1. How to determine what you need to earn and whether the business you envision has the potential to get you there.  Read Part 1
2. Making necessary adjustments to your personal finances and your current part-time or hobby business (if you have one) to set yourself up for success.  Read Part 2
3. Lining up support for the easiest possible transition.  Read Part 3

Now it’s time to build the road map part of your transition plan by answering two important questions: How will you know when you’ve arrived at your goal? And how will you get there?

Setting Milestones
One of the hardest things about making a transition to full-time dog business owner is knowing when to quit your current job. How do you know when it’s safe? How can you be sure you’ve reached the end point of all this planning and preparation?

Fear of giving up a dependable paycheck makes it easy to stay in transition longer than necessary, running the risk of burning out before you arrive. But jumping too early is financially risky. It’s a Goldilocks conundrum—when is just right?

Your milestones tell you when. A sample milestone might look something like this:

When: You’re maintaining X clients per week, making Y dollars, for Z months

Then: Time to quit!

If you were lucky enough back in step 2 to find you have the luxury of scaling back your work hours over time at your current job, your plan will have more than one milestone, possibly several. For example, say you’re a dog trainer wanting to specialize in day training and needing to make $45K per year minimum but hoping to replace a $50K salary. Your milestones might look like this:

Milestone #1:

When: You’re maintaining 1 client per week, making $1,200 dollars/month, for 3 months

Then: Reduce job to 32 hours

Milestone #2:

When: You’re maintaining 2 clients per week, making $2,400 dollars/month, for 3 months

Then: Reduce job to 20 hours

Milestone #3:

When: You’re maintaining 4 clients per week, making $4,400 dollars/months, for 3-6 months

Then: Quit job

This example assumes the ability to phase out of your full-time job gradually. If that’s not the case, you’ll have just the one milestone. A single milestone is a bigger challenge, with a higher risk of burnout, as it requires juggling both your job and your growing business for longer.

On the upside, as your business grows and you continue to draw a steady paycheck at work, you’ll see a period of time when your income rises well above your current needs. Socking away your business income as savings can allow you to jump the workaday ship sooner. You’ll rely on this financial cushion to make up your monthly difference while you use your new 40 hours of free time to make the final marketing push to get your business to the point where it covers your full needs.

Benefits note: When setting your milestones, don’t forget to factor in health benefits. If you currently enjoy benefits through your job, you’ll need to know the cut-off point: How many hours do you have to work to keep them? And then be sure to add to your milestone figures the cost of covering yourself. (Note that the previous example sets the quitting point above the $45K mark to provide some wriggle room, including budgeting for benefits.)

Marketing
Your marketing plan answers the “How will you get there?” question and is key to reaching your milestones as quickly as possible. It’ll be key to your sustained business success afterward, too, so laying good foundations is worthwhile.

Choose content-rich community marketing projects that expose people to your expertise, personality, and professionalism, rather than expensive passive marketing like brochures and advertisements. Not only is content marketing more effective for dog pros, it’s generally less expensive and has the added benefit of providing community service via education about dogs and dog behavior. You’ll be doing good by dogs and dog lovers while promoting your business and working toward your goals.

Print and email newsletters, writing for local publications, how-to choose your dog walker fliers, and folders full of branded training tip sheets to be handed to new pet parents upon adoption or at their first vet visit are great examples of this kind of marketing. Visit the marketing section of our dogbiz blog for many more marketing ideas and how-to’s.

Are You Ready To Go Full Time?
If you’re ready to put your career where your heart is, it’s time to set your milestones and start marketing. Then take a deep breath and get ready for the ride. Being in transition can be challenging—but the relief, joy, and accomplishment of getting to the other side is worth working for. And the dogs will thank you!

Find out more about Starting Your R+ Dog Training Business with our services and toolkits.

Ready to leave behind your cubicle, demanding boss, 9-to-5 hours, difficult co-workers, exhausting commute, mind-numbing/ stressful/ dissatisfying work? Dreaming instead of happy dogs, grateful clients, fresh air, daily exercise, flexible hours, and looking forward to your workday? Sounds like dog walking might be for you.

If you’re serious about being a professional dog walker, you’ll need to set yourself up to make a living at it. Here are the three steps you need to take to become a dog walker:

Step 1: Go to dog walking school
Dog walking is an unregulated industry; unlike true professional fields like medicine, law, accounting, etc., there is no official body determining whether you can be a dog trainer. But if you’re serious about a career in dog walking, and you care deeply about dogs, you owe it to yourself and them to pursue the best possible education in dog walking and behavior.

You probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t love dogs. A lot. And most likely you’ve had the pleasure of growing up with them. But loving and living with dogs doesn’t make a dog professional, any more than loving and living with people makes us psychologists or teachers.

You’ll get much more enjoyment from your work and have a far greater impact on the lives of dogs when your love of them is backed by a scientific understanding of how dogs learn, and professional walk management skills to keep dogs safe.

When you’re ready to go to dog walking school, choosing the right one is paramount. An unregulated industry also means that professional programs are unregulated. The Dog Walking Academy is the first, most comprehensive, and most widely-respected program for professional dog walkers, covering canine learning theory, body language, aggression, walk management, basic training, canine 1^st aid & CPR, emergency planning, and ethical business practices.

Step 2: Get a Dog Training Business Education
If you wish to move beyond working as a dog walking employee, you’ll also need a business education.

If you’re like most dog walkers, it’s a love of dogs that’s brought you here, rather than a burning entrepreneurial spirit. So if the idea of starting and running a dog walking business has you drawing a blank (or, even worse, breaking out in a cold sweat), business learning is your next step.

You’ll need to know how to design your walking services, what to charge for them, how to set and enforce policies that protect your income and keep dogs safe, how to market your services to get dogs to walk, and so forth. Don’t worry—you don’t have to be a sales, marketing, or business natural to succeed as a dog walker. But you do need to learn the basics.

In addition to the Dog Walking Academy, consider personalized Business Consulting for a more one-on-one handholding approach. Still just exploring? Read our book The Business of Dog Walking: How To Make a Living Doing What You Love.

Step 3: Create a Transition Plan
The idea of starting a dog walking business may be hard to fathom if you’re working full time for a living. It’s one thing to dream about becoming a dog walker. It’s another thing to get from here to there. How do you transition from your current job or career to walking dogs for a living? Is it even possible?

That last question is easy: Yes, it is. We’ve seen dog lovers from every conceivable background make the transition—from restaurant and retail workers, to teachers and tech folks, to medical doctors and marketing execs.

The how question is a bit more complex: You need a transition plan. To be more exact, you need a transition plan personalized to your unique situation. For example, your transition plan will look different depending on how much you need to make, whether you work a job with flexible or strict hours, whether or not you’ll be able to exit your current position gradually, what kinds of additional demands you have on your time, what your support network looks like, and so forth.

The power of a transition plan is that it lays out your exact steps to reaching your goal of becoming a dog walker, and exactly when it’s safe to take each step. Without a transition plan, most would-be dog walkers either never make it to full time, or jump too soon and find themselves in financial hot water.

If you’re serious about making your living as a dog walker, dogbiz University online course Transition Planning for Dog Walkers provides step-by-step instruction to build your personalized transition plan, or take advantage of our career consulting to have your plan created for you.

 

There you have it: The 3 steps to becoming a professional dog walker. Granted, it’s not a small amount of work. But the rewards of walking dogs for a living couldn’t be more worth it. We hope you agree—the dogs in your community are waiting for you!