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What It's About
A dog training side hustle to go mutts over.
Business Model
Service
Skills Required
Dog Training & Communication
Complexity
Low
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
It can take time to gain confidence when you’re going out on your own. The important thing is to not let it get the better of you.
In Patrice’s case, humility can be a healthy response if it leads you toward self-improvement. In fact, she cites overcoming those fears as one of the most rewarding aspects of growing her business. She says, “Prior to this experience, I didn't know I had as much gumption as I do.”
Fun Fact
For years, getting researchers to pinpoint the origin of man’s best friend was like walking into a room full of dog owners and asking, “Who’s a good boy?” Everyone would promote, with utmost confidence, their own pet theory.
But a new dual-origin theory found that an ancient European population was replaced by an eastern Asian population as the latter expanded across the continent. Every dog alive today is descended from ancient Asian roots!
Notes from Chris
Episode 856
Patrice Kuiken knew she wanted to run her own business. She even knew exactly what that business would be. But like all of our stories—and because she had to pay the bills—it needed to start as a side hustle. You see, Patrice had been passionate about animals from a young age. Ever since volunteering at the Humane Society, helping train dogs at the shelter to become more adoptable, she was hooked on dog training. Patrice devoured every book, video, and resource she could find to learn more about dog behavior and how best to humanely train them. Interestingly, dog training ended up being much more about training the humans than the dogs! She gained experience working at a doggy daycare through college and then as a dog trainer at a local pet store after graduation. Patrice’s specialty became young, out of control dogs, and highly reactive dogs whose owners were at their wits’ end. She made herself "top dog" at training, but she knew very little about business. So she started out simply. While working full-time at a customer service job she wasn’t mutts about, she began offering private training sessions. This required no overhead since she would go to the dog owner’s house and do the training there. After a year or so, Patrice realized that her full-time job was standing in the way of building her dog training hustle. Work was draining, leaving her little energy for after-hours work. Though it was keeping her afloat financially, something needed to change. After a brief search, she found more flexible work as a personal assistant and gardener for a psychologist who ran her practice out of her home. This allowed Patrice to create her own schedule and focus more on the business, which she named “In Good Paws” Dog Training. She’d get her work done for the psychologist in the morning. Evenings and weekends were dedicated to In Good Paws, helping people train their dogs to be the well-behaved family member they always wanted. After taking into account her business license, liability insurance, a website, and some business cards, her annual profit from 2018 was $23,000, which was up 40% from 2017! Patrice recently brought on another dog trainer to do private training sessions as an independent contractor. This allows her to further increase the number of training sessions the business provides, without adding any risk to her. Eventually, she would also love to hire someone to do more of the administrative work so that the business could move forward when Patrice takes a vacation. What’s so fetching about Patrice’s story is that she knew her end game and kept that ball in sight. She took purposeful steps as she could, including switching her full-time gig to be more accommodating to growing her side hustle. All the while, she gained more experience and confidence until she was ready to roll over into a full-time business. Now she’s barking to the bank!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- In Good Paws: Sit, stay, roll over, and learn more about the dog training work that Patrice is doing over on her website!
- WordPress: Patrice used WordPress to set up her website for In Good Paws, and here you can learn how to install your own WordPress site in 5 minutes
- NYC Student Starts Barking Business Walking Dogs: A busy college student discovers a way to create his own schedule and make $2,000 a month by walking dogs
- Medical Examiner Fetches New Paws-ibilities With Pet Sitting Hustle: No permanent home, no problem! This Seattle medical examiner pet sits her way to New York City and an early retirement
- "Airbnb for Dogs": Woman Hosts Pets at Her Home for $200/Day: After moving to the states to be with her new husband, a nutritionist from Spain decides to host other people's pets in her home
Quote of the Day
"Most of dog training is about the humans, so you really do have to enjoy working with people and know how to teach them. Finally, network, network, network! Having good relationships with people in the dog industry is invaluable for getting your name out there—this business is a word of mouth business."
—Patrice Kuiken #SideHustleSchool
