"Wahoo I'm so pleased I smashed Mission Accomplished! ""Wahoo I'm so pleased I smashed Mission Accomplished!
I have always loved animals and have had dogs all my life. I had decided to escape full time school teaching due to ill health, having Hypothyroidism and problems with trying to start a family. Luckily after a few years of part-time supply teaching I was able to have my wonderful daughter and my husband even finally succumbed a few years later and we got puppies!
I decided to start a new business and was a few years into my new dog training business and had transformed lots of people's lives solving their dog's struggles... However, I was stuck trying to find my niche...
I realized one of the biggest pain points for me in my home life was that my daughter had been struggling with our new puppies and every time she was excited, squealing and running around, the puppies were giddy and biting her or hanging off her clothes. I knew something had to be done... I put my 20+ years of skills as a school teacher into action and devised a really positive and fun, games-based way of training our puppies to be calm and relaxed around her giddiness. She also learnt some brilliant easy ways to train the puppies so she learnt about their body language and their needs too.
Well, horrendously, Lockdown happened in the UK and suddenly I was learning about the joys of the online world trying to keep my new business afloat with online training! I found that when I spoke to people about puppy training there was very little out there devoted to kids and puppies except for books and occasional YouTube videos! I decided to devise my own online course, I found EPM and was hugely drawn to the experiential nature of the course creation! I teach in a fun and games-based way and so this aligned so well with how I help people to train their dogs!
I joined EPM and did the pre-course to find my niche and product... well it had been calling me all this time! Why not help families and kids train their dogs in a lovely, positive, kind, and experiential way using my unique skills, empathy, and understanding of child development to create a brilliant course for kids and families?
I am naturally very creative and love the design process, however, I was lacking the ability to really plan in detail how a course would look for kids and families.
So EPM was exactly what I needed, with its carefully designed, Birds Eye View, with each part of the course coming in manageable chunks and weekly coaching, I was able to cling to a system and trust in the process.
It was so hard though fitting in the time with managing my new business, looking after my daughter most of the time as the schools in the UK were in and out of Lockdown and trusting in myself to get the job done!
I decided to do the 'Give them what they want' and 'Chatterbox' campaigns early on. I knew I had to pluck up the courage to talk to people about my aims for a new course and to my surprise, a few families jumped at the chance for their kids to be Stars of the new course! I set about getting all the equipment needed and over a few short months I'd video'd and edited the kids training their very cheeky puppies and everyone has been thrilled with their learning...the puppies were real Stars too! I also asked the kids what they would like for a course...wow what an eye-opener! We discussed online gaming and I've been pivoting throughout to make the online product even more fun and experiential than I originally intended, even asking Murray about the possibility of having an Avatar on one of the Tech Friday calls!
So I hit on the idea of puppy training for kids and families knowing that since Lockdown the number of bites to children had increased 3x. There were more and more stories all over social media of bitten kids, including a baby mauled from it's pram...and frighteningly more and more YouTube videos with kids misunderstanding their dog's signals and scarily some of the ways they were treating their dogs was a problem waiting to happen...
I set up my survey to find the challenges faced by parents with dogs and kids and the main concerns were kids not understanding their dogs, children not listening and fear of their kids being bitten.
I started creating my Birds Eye View and 'Brilliant Barkers' Blueprint for Calm and Focus' and it was sprawling out of control! There was so much I now wanted to add to make it the most Pawsome course ever!
I was getting more and more overwhelmed and feeling quite down in January as my dreams for the course were gigantic and I really wanted them to align with the kids' ideas. I was rushing about doing Dog Training Zooms or 1:1's out and about flexibly too! I had a huge mindset problem, I was drained, I was exhausted staying up until at least midnight trying to catch every minute of Marisa's wise words in her Coachathons and keeping on top of all the trainings, including choosing Overachiever track too - I must be mad! I got on the leaderboard and got a great T-shirt too! Yet the late nights after doing a full day's work and looking after my daughter or homeschooling were getting to me! Whew! I broke down in front of my coaching class and felt awful... They were sending virtual hugs over the call and lifting my spirits...
Coach Uwe reached out to me afterwards and we had a great discussion... I realised I actually needed to produce a Minimum Viable Product! I had to stay on Earth and not reach for the Stars too early!
I had been finding appearing on video really difficult too as from a very early age I had felt very uncomfortable on camera and had opted to be the photographer or videographer. I looked back on all the coaching calls and noticed how far I had come, daring to ask questions and appear on video! I knew I needed to force myself out of my comfort zone again, so I worked out a way of recording my Zoom videos with my brand new laptop my family had banded together to get me at Christmas as they were so proud of me! I recorded a few sessions with clients and messages and even did a few Facebook Lives! I advertised and found people through Facebook Groups, actually, Word of Mouth and recommendations have been my main leads recently.
Then it suddenly dawned on me that throughout this whole EPM programme I had already been designing, marketing and making an experiential product and delivering it to my clients really successfully! I had been helping lots of families over Zoom or 1:1 and their dogs were loving the games and becoming so much happier and calmer as a result. In fact I have 40+ 5* reviews from happy clients! One stands out to me as they no longer have a 'land shark' thanks to me! I had been recording mini-wins after each session with fun emoji messages on Whatsapp and sending them videos or photos after each session! So my course success rate is huge! Since EPM, I have a 100% record for delivering my Positive Puppy Training Package with all my clients getting to the end either on Zoom or 1:1 - its had to be hugely flexible with mask wearing and meeting outside or virtually and they've all been loving the training!
So once I realised I had been test driving my Beta product all the time here on Earth, I checked my bank account and added up how many families I had been helping since I started EPM and phew I had completely smashed Mission Accomplished and had got to my 3K target!
"