How a Dog Training Business Gave Kate Olson the Freedom to Care for Her Family

Shelli Varela: Stu says you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to get it going. Today, we’re reminded that sometimes the best strategy is to just keep it simple.

 

Stu McLaren: There is a big trend brewing that’s revolutionizing the way business is being done. Big companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are jumping on this too but so are thousands of others in all kinds of markets like photography and calligraphy, fitness, finance, meal planning, lesson planning, dog training, and so many more, and they’re doing it by shifting to a recurring revenue model. Hi. My name is Stu McLaren and for more than a decade I’ve been helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs generate recurring revenue through membership sites. Join our host, Shelli Varela, as she takes you behind-the-scenes to see how these companies are building a thriving tribe that spends with them every single month. Now, let’s get to today’s episode. 

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Shelli Varela: Kate Olsen, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. How are you? 

 

Kate Olsen: Good. Thanks. 

 

Shelli Varela: I’m excited to chat with you, as I’m excited to chat with all of our people. But your topic is as an animal lover near and dear to my heart, both personally and professionally. So, I’m wondering if you can start by telling us who you are, who you serve, and then the story of how you got to be the person you are today with your membership site. 

 

Kate Olsen: Sure. So, my name’s Kate Olsen, just like you said so I’m a service dog trainer and I work with people both in person, but primarily online now. So, I actually teach owner trainers, which is the term in the industry for people who are trying to train their own service dogs. I mean, I teach them how to do that. So, while I do also train service dogs and place them with disabled handlers, primarily what I’m doing is teaching owner trainers how to train their own dogs. And so, these people come from a wide range of backgrounds either with dogs and some of them have never even owned a dog before, and now they want to train a service dog. So, our membership site is really designed to teach them not only how to the kind of step by step do this and then this and then this, but also the theory and the science behind how dog training works, because there’s actually a science there. So, we started My Service Dog And Me’s online program with the intention of teaching owner trainers the power behind science-based and positive reinforcement training, so that they can actually effectively and efficiently train their own service dogs. So, that’s kind of what we do at the moment. 

 

Shelli Varela: That’s incredible. And I want to get into asking you some questions about that, specifically, what you do and how you do it, and how that works in your membership site. But how did you end up being the person who now has this online platform like who were you before that? Where did the dog training start and what led you not only to pursue this as your career but now to say, “Okay. I’m going to pursue it as my career in an online way so I can create recurring revenue with my membership site?” 

 

Kate Olsen: So, it’s a long story. It’s all I’ve ever done. So, I started training dogs in eighth grade and competing in competition agility. And so that’s where I kind of got my start and by the time I was like a freshman in high school so a year later, I was actually teaching classes and teaching people how to train agility dogs and go compete. And so, I did that all the way through high school. 

 

Shelli Varela: That’s a long study.

 

Kate Olsen: You know, when I started, my mom still had to drive me to the facility where I was hired to teach at. So, my students, they’re like, “You don’t even have your driver’s license yet?” So, that was fun. And really, I still love competition agility. I don’t do a whole lot of it anymore, but that’s where my start was. And I taught through high school, competed through college. I actually became a certified dog trainer my senior year of college so that was a very busy year.  I married my husband, finished college, and became a certified dog trainer all in that last year of college there and immediately opened my own dog training business after that. So, I did primarily pet training in the beginning so any dog displaying aggression issues or obedience issues or anything like that, and I was independently as an independent contractor for a service dog organization at first and that’s where I kind of got my start in training service dogs. And training service dogs it was instantly what I wanted to do because it’s so rewarding and I have lots of colleagues who trained pet dogs and they love it. I don’t want to downplay that and make it sound like it’s not exciting or important. But the service dogs is really just where my heart is. 

 

And so, I started training service dogs and placing them with disabled handlers as any organization does at first and then I started actually teaching owner trainers how to train their own service dogs. So, these are people who have a disability and are hoping to train their own service dog to help mitigate that. So, then we did that for a while and the service dog industry is actually riddled with ethical issues and challenges of all kinds. So, I wanted to train and place more fully-trained service dogs because there is an issue with finding well-trained service dogs in the industry. So, we have lots of dogs who are being professionally and I say that in quotes, “placed and trained” who are not suitable for the job. And so, there are companies that are actually scamming people and then there are companies who I believe are believed they’re doing the best job that they can, but they’re not. So, there’s this issue in finding a quality dog. So, it leads to a lot of people to owner-train. And I remember very clearly the moment that I decided to move into the online space. It was something I’d always wanted to do but always felt like I’m not really qualified. 

 

Shelli Varela: You hear that one a lot, right? 

 

Kate Olsen: Yes, yes, that imposter syndrome. I still struggle with it. So, am I really qualified? And they’re all these other great dog trainers teaching online so what do I possibly have to offer and stuff like that? And I remember so clearly, I was in a Facebook group for owner trainers learning to train their own psychiatric service dog so PTSD, panic disorders, generalized anxiety, things like this. And somebody would ask a question, super simple. How do I get my dog to stop jumping on the counter? Super simple question, right? And it deserves a simple answer. What you got was 20 different answers. Some of them were horrible pieces of dog training advice. Some of them were really good. And all of them were contradictory. And that’s just how the dog training world is, is we kind of joke about this. The only thing that two dog trainers can agree on is that the third dog trainer is doing it wrong. 

 

But I remember thinking, how is somebody who has no professional experience in this supposed to weed through all of this advice and pick out the good advice and use it? From all of this stuff that some of it’s bad and some of it is good, but it all contradicts the comment above it. All of it is contradictory. And I thought somebody has to start talking about this as it relates specifically to people training their own service dogs. And then as I was kind of researching your how do we do this, how do I move into the online space? I was listening to a dog training podcast and a trainer in Scotland. His name is John McGuigan. I always mess up his last name because he’s Scottish. But he was talking to two other professional trainers who are thinking about putting content on the internet, whether that just be YouTube videos or whatever. And he said, I remember this, “There are so many other good trainers. What do I have to offer?” And he said, “We need as many voices as we can get.” And I thought, “You know what, he’s right. In order to really reach everybody who needs help, we need as many people talking about this as we can get.” 

 

And then as I continue to research and start following businesspeople, they always tell you too, you know, nobody’s going to say things exactly like you say things. People want to work with you because they want to work with you. And so, even if you don’t necessarily feel super qualified or don’t feel like you have anything unique to teach. You know, my husband’s also an entrepreneur and neither of us listens to the same podcasts or follow the same people or sign up for the same programs, because he doesn’t, and I quote, he doesn’t like the people I’ve listened to. It has nothing to do with the quality of what they’re saying or their advice. It’s just their personalities. But the same thing kind of, you know, and all of these were lightbulb moments for me going, yes, some people are just going to want to listen to me and some people won’t and that’s okay. And that’s okay, too. And so, it was just kind of this journey and we started with online courses and then we ended up doing a membership site. We can probably talk about that in a minute. But really, it was kind of a very long journey for me, but it feels like it’s where I was supposed to be like this is where I was supposed to end up and I loved every second of what I do now.

 

Shelli Varela: You were telling me pre-interview about how advantageous it was because you had some personal challenges going on. 

 

Kate Olsen: Yes. 

 

Shelli Varela: And how you were able to utilize your time in a way that benefited your life and your health.

 

Kate Olsen: Yes. This is going to be the first time I’ve talked about it publicly. Friends and family even clients I work with in-person and that’s why I forgot to say this in the field, I give my story all the time, but not this piece of it. So, I have struggled with chronic health issues myself since I was in high school actually and I was diagnosed in college with a misdiagnosis. It was only about three years ago that I got a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease. And so, anybody who knows anything about chronic Lyme is the fatigue can be overwhelming and the physical pain can be unbearable. And so, what I was doing before I started my membership site I was working with people in person and that means that in order to make money, I have to spend physical time and energy seeing clients one-on-one, and it’s great. And I still do some of that because it makes me a better membership site owner to work with these people in person. 

 

But it was exhausting and at one point about three years ago, right before we started the membership, the online business, I was so sick that I was seeing clients in person, and that was it. That was all I had the energy to do in the day was to see my clients and then I would sit on the couch and my husband was happy to – it’s just simple things. He had to cook dinner and do the dishes but he also works full time. We don’t have kids at this point but I’m really just laying on the couch that was so tired and in so much pain from seeing clients all day long. And so, my story has the two pieces is the part is where I’m extremely passionate about helping the people that I help. And on a personal note, to be able to do that without running myself into the ground has been an unbelievable gift for me. And it allowed me to heal because once I have that time and that energy to put into myself, my health has completely changed. 

 

So, I have the energy to do the things that I want to do now and your chronic Lyme is like its own hours and hours of podcasts all on its own about how you get healthy, but it requires time and energy to do it. And so, I was able to do that. And this spring I was really healthy. I was finally getting very healthy and we had a huge family emergency. So, an immediate family member passed away unexpectedly this summer. And if that had happened three years ago, when I was extremely ill and having to see clients in order to make a living, I would not have been able to show up for my family the way I was this summer. So, this summer I spent over half of my time in the Chicago area with family taking care of my mother who has chronic health issues and grieving and helping with all the things that come with this type of loss. And so, what my membership site has allowed me to do is not just for me and my health, but then to be able to show up for my family this way, because I didn’t have to see clients over the summer in order to make money. 

 

We all have to make money so one of the things that we see with dog trainers a lot is we love what we do so much and feel like it’s okay if we don’t make a ton of money or something like that. But at the end of the day, I do have to make money in order to be able to live and drive to see my mom and things. And so, this summer, the membership site just gave me so much freedom to be able to do that and still take care of myself and stay healthy and to make a salary and also to be able to show up for my family in a way that I never would have been able to do without working online.

 

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

 

Stu McLaren: So many people in all kinds of niche markets are leveraging their existing knowledge and influence and they’re transforming it into passive monthly income. This isn’t luck. This is a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and if thousands of others can do it, you can too. To find out what type of membership site would be right for your business, visit GetTRIBEGuide.com. Go to GetTRIBEGuide.com and download it today. You’re awesome! 

 

[INTERVIEW] 

 

Shelli Varela: That’s so, I don’t even know where to start.

 

Kate Olsen: That’s kind of a lot. My story has got a lot of pieces and it’s very long. 

 

Shelli Varela: No. Being into and what I want people to hear is because you are doing business in the way you are, it’s sustainable. 

 

Kate Olsen: Yes. 

 

Shelli Varela: You know, I’m always fascinated with feature versus benefit. And everybody was so quick to talk about the feature, which is the obvious thing, which is I have a membership site, I teach XYZ and I create an income doing it. But the benefit or the ripple effect of that is vast beyond immediate recognition. And I love that you shared, you know, it’s not only including through improving your business in terms of the way you’re able to deliver and the way you’re able to sustain but also your personal health, emotional health and the mental health of your entire family. 

 

Kate Olsen: It has been a true game-changer to be able to help more people make more money and to have enough flexibility and time to take care of myself, my family. I mean, it’s been a game-changer for me.

 

Shelli Varela: What would you tell somebody that thinks it has to be hard or it is harder, it’s going to be hard? Because what I’m hearing you say is you’re helping more people, you’re making more money, you’re having better health. It’s costing you less time and your quality of life is unrecognizable from what it was before. What would you tell the people right now that are listening that are like, “Ah, I can’t do it, man. It’s so hard?” What would be for them? 

 

Kate Olsen: So, I mean, part of it is hard. So, there are challenges to overcome. I mean, you’ve got to learn the things you need to know and you have to do the work. It’s like anything in life that you want, you got to work for it but it’s worth it. And the thing about it is that, you know, I have people that tell me even other entrepreneurs in my area or my family, I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I’m the first one doing online business but I’ve come from a very long line of people opening and running their own businesses. And it doesn’t have to be this idea that in order to run your own business, you have to work 60 hours a week and you can’t have any hobbies. It has to be all you do. 

 

It’s not true. It’s just not true. And so, when people say that, it makes me very sad because for somebody like me, it doesn’t have to take 60 hours a week, but it can’t. I don’t have 60 hours a week in me. I have 25. I have 25 hours of work in me. And in the beginning, my membership site wasn’t even getting that because I didn’t have the energy for it. And I didn’t have time for it when I was seeing clients in person. And so, I think that the beauty about running an online business is the flexibility and the fact that it doesn’t take all that like physical hard work and energy and time. It’s flexible. And I think that it can be done. I think that’s what I love about it so much that there aren’t these limits. Everybody thinks that there’s this limit and that there are these rules. But no, I don’t even know if I answered your question.

 

Shelli Varela: One too many, write your own ticket, and it looks like whatever you want your business and your life to look like. I’m curious, though. You were talking about you’ve been training dogs your entire life and you talked about college. Do you mind me asking what you were taking in college?

 

Kate Olsen: I did a psychology major. So, it actually applies very directly to what I do as a dog trainer because we all learn the same way. So, whether you’re a dog or a cat or an elephant or a human, the rules and the laws behind learning are all the same. 

 

Shelli Varela: Yeah. I know in your profile you call yourself a behavior geek, which I love. I really wanted to honor and acknowledge the work you do. I mean, I work for the fire department and our department actually has a PTSD dog so I just wanted to acknowledge the importance from our end of the work you do and so we talked about feature and benefit, but getting more people out there and enabling them to create the reprieve and the healing for all the people. So, thank you so much for doing that. And it’s interesting you were saying about your psychology degree because when it comes to service animals specifically, it’s not just about the training of the animal but it’s the human-animal connection. So, quite literally, you were made to do this job. 

 

Kate Olsen: Yeah. And then when you add in on the marketing so marketing is all psychology too. It’s all how do we get people to do what we want but in an ethical way. So, I know a lot of people will say, “Oh, I hate selling and I hate marketing. And I understand that they used to say that also.” But if you want to help people, they have to buy your product, right? And so, in order to get them to buy your product, you have to understand marketing, but really all marketing is a psychology. And so, I love every piece of what I do and I see the similarities all the way around. So, one of the books that I really love is Atomic Habits and I can’t remember the name of the author off the top of my head but everybody should read it if you’re an entrepreneur because having your own good habits are very important in long-term success. And I’m reading this book and I’m thinking, yeah, but this is just dog training. It’s all dog training. It’s all the same. And it talks about how to set yourself up to create the habits that will be successful and change your own behavior but it’s exactly what I do with dogs as well and so I love all the parallels I see everywhere. 

 

Shelli Varela: Can you tell us what your very first launch was like? What did that feel like going from I am a one-to-one coach trainer to, “Okay, I’m going to step across the precipice and I’m going to do this launch.” What did that feel like the first time you went through it and how did you manage all of the moving pieces given that it was your first time? 

 

Kate Olsen: So, it was terrifying. So, I won’t lie to people. There’s no fear behind running an online business. It’s just it’s worth it in the end. So, we actually started with courses. So, we did two standalone online courses before we did a membership and I launched both of those. I don’t remember a ton about it. I know I use your Product Launch Formula with Jeff Walker and I did pre-recorded videos and they weren’t me is what I’m going to say. And one of the things that I love about running an online business is that you got to do what works for you. So, what I learned from my very first launch is not only is this possible, because we sold 30 courses, and those students had success and it was great and I loved it. And I’ve listened to what my students wanted and what they wanted with membership site. They wanted to pay monthly, because I’m working with an audience that tends to be lower-income, so they wanted to be able to pay monthly, and they also needed to be able to work with me for a longer period of time than just six weeks. This is something that takes 18 to 24 months to do to train your own service dog. 

 

And so, that first launch it was terrifying. And I learned a lot so what we started with these pre-recorded videos you see like Stu does, these really great pre-recorded videos and I end up doing what I do now are live launches, so I do all of my launches. I do everything live. And it works much better for me to be live with my audience. And one of the things too, about my launches is I’d love to be able to sit here and say, “Oh, yeah, I followed Jeff’s program perfectly and I had it all planned, and we had everything written ahead of time,” and I didn’t. My formal piece of advice is you should definitely plan ahead and you should definitely do as much of the planning and the strategy as you can. But it’s not me. What I do is it’s not how I tend to do things. So, you have to be you. So, for me, live launches work better. We do a lot of live launches. I don’t tend to be as organized or as planned out ahead of time as I should be but it has worked out really well for our audience. What was your original question? Because I kind of got excited about that.

 

Shelli Varela: What I wanted to just while we’re talking about this is it’s so key because you said something you have to be who you are and more than just you know you were talking earlier about how some people resonate with this person and some people resonate with that person. The truth is like if you show up as who you actually are and for you if that’s live launches because, for me, it’s live launches as well. I’m going to do the Susan Garrett grip it and rip it. 

 

Kate Olsen: Exactly. 

 

Shelli Varela: And just like get it done. But for me, yeah, I’m not the most organized person either but I feel like my authenticity and my energy and my vibe translates better when I’m talking to the humans. That’s what works for me. So, it really wouldn’t like you said to design your membership site and the launch of your membership site and whatever it is you’re creating in the way that is authentic, easy, and natural for you. Because the truth is there isn’t just one flavor. 

 

Kate Olsen: Right. Well, that’s what I love about so much as so I’ve had my own challenges running this business but to me, nothing, I have never seen any of these challenges as a failure because I always learn from them. Learn from them. So, what I learned from that first launch was this just isn’t – I don’t connect with my audience very well on a pre-recorded video. And so, I do things live and I catch with my audience better that way. And so, you have to connect with your audience in the way that works for you. So, there are a lot of these, you know, some people will say, “Oh, it’s all about the blogging,” or, “Oh, it’s all about the podcast,” or, “You’ve got to do live video in order to be successful.” And there’s a little bit of truth behind some of that. You need to know where your audience lives and what platform are they using. Are they on Facebook? Are they on YouTube? And you need to know how they’re using these platforms. But you have to create content in a way that works for you where you can be authentic and you can be yourself but your audience is going to see that over anything else. And so, for me, it’s almost always been live video. 

 

Shelli Varela: Love it. If you were to give the audience who’s listening right now one piece of advice for somebody who’s considering starting a membership site, what would you tell them?

 

Kate Olsen: For somebody who’s considering it, I mean, first I’m going to say do it because I think that it’s life-changing and you can help an unbelievable amount of people but my primary piece of advice is going to be to keep it simple. You know, everything from your business model to your content to your strategy, I mean, everything this more simple that you can keep it the better. So, one of the mistakes, you know, challenges I had to overcome with my membership is we overwhelm people in the beginning. We had too much content, we had a lot of information, and it was very overwhelming for our students. And so, the moment that I reigned it in and I kept everything super simple for them, they started having better success. Our retention rate went up. All of my videos online, all of my free content that does the best is the stuff that’s the simplest and the stuff that talks about the most basic concepts. And I’m thinking nobody’s going to want to watch this video because it’s too basic. It’s too easy. 

 

And then that’s the video that everybody goes, “Oh, it changed everything. This is a game-changer for me and my dog.” You know, it’s really just to get started but to keep it simple, and then just get started because what I love about a membership site over when I was running just the online courses is that it’s flexible and what my membership looks like now is nothing compared to what it looked like in the beginning. They’re hardly the same site at all. So, you don’t have to have it perfect. You don’t have to know exactly what it is and what it looks like. And your members will help you create your site if you let them and if you listen to them. So, what we have now is nothing like what we started with.

 

Shelli Varela: I know a guy who says you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to get going.

 

Kate Olsen: Yes, exactly. So, TRIBE was an unbelievably helpful resource for us. A second piece of advice it would be to when you’re ready, join TRIBE because absolutely that was extremely helpful for me.

 

Shelli Varela: Wholeheartedly agree not just for you but also for the community. I wanted to thank you so much for taking the time with us. And if people are looking for you online, where’s the best place they can find you?

 

Kate Olsen: The best place is probably just going to be our website so MyServiceDogAndMe.com. That’ll lead you to the Facebook page and the YouTube Channel and all that stuff. 

 

Shelli Varela: Amazing. You’re awesome, and I appreciate you and the work you’re doing in the world. Thank you so, so much. 

 

Kate Olsen: Thanks. 

 

[CLOSING]

 

Stu McLaren: I hope you love that story. It’s amazing, right? That’s what It’s a TRIBE Thing is all about. So many people in all kinds of niche markets are leveraging their existing knowledge and influence and they’re transforming it into passive monthly income. Listen, this isn’t luck. There’s a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and each week we’re going behind the scenes to show you exactly how they did it. Get the latest stories and actionable ideas from each episode at www.ItsaTRIBEThing.com and if you know one other person who could benefit from this, tell them to subscribe. Tell them to go to ItsaTRIBEThing.com.

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