Building a Successful Digital Dog Business (Twice!) with Natalie Dobkins
Mar 14, 2022
You’ve probably seen my dogs Mystic and Max on social, and if you have, this special guest was the one who trained them! Natalie Dobkins joined me for the latest episode of the podcast, and I’m so excited to recap that conversation here!
But before we dive right in, welcome! You’ve now entered into The Dreamer’s Lounge! I’m Ariel Schiffer, and I have made it my mission to take out the digital trash one bad course at a time. I am the creator of The Course Alchemist, Industrial Organizational Psychologist, and Curriculum and course design expert.
This podcast is for entrepreneurs who are looking to elevate their digital product suite so their offers speak for themselves. Nothing is worse than being oversold into something that under-delivers just like an overpriced bottle of wine. So, if you’re ready to develop high-quality offers, bring in consistent revenue, and have a business with long-term results for you AND your clients, grab your drink and join us inside…
Now, let’s get into my convo with Natalie so you can learn more about her journey and her business.
All About Natalie & Her Business Journey
Natalie Dobkins is a professional dog trainer located in the Raleigh area of North Carolina. Natalie’s passion is training dogs through her board and train program and through her various online courses. When Natalie is not training dogs, she's teaching other aspiring dog trainers how to launch their own businesses. Outside of dogs, you can find Natalie baking, in the gym lifting, or outside exploring
Natalie had a huge platform and lots of content as a dog trainer. She had TONS of followers and was super engaging on social. When I decided to get my dogs trained, I knew that I wanted to work with Natalie and her company Canine Performance.
When she started the company, it was a strange time in her life when she was looking to get out of the corporate world. She fell in love with dog training through her own pets. She began mentoring underneath more experienced trainers and her significant other at the time wanted to start a YouTube channel, so they decided to create one about how to train a dog in one day.
She has a great business background, so it seemed like a great way to marry her background with this new passion. The video went absolutely viral and then she got a client because of it.
She kept posting on Instagram and people were sharing it and loving the content! This went on for about a year and a half where she shared something every single day. She gained an amazing following and built an awesome community, but it was challenging because this takes a lot of time.
She was wearing a lot of different hats for her business, and that taught her a lot! Content was a huge part of her job and she was also training dogs alongside that. She grew her online training platform to an astounding 8,000 students. It took about three and a half years for her to build her company and watch it flourish, and it was cool to do so over that time.
Natalie on Facing a Challenge in Her Business
Natalie was in a relationship for about five years and was unfortunately a victim of domestic violence. She was in business with this person who was controlling and manipulative. And looking back, she feels like she wouldn’t have built her business to what it was without that person forcing her to do so.
As she gained more traction in the industry and grew the business, she had thousands of people from around the world for her program “The Five Day Dog Reset.” In two months, this program brought in almost a half-million dollars.
Unfortunately, Natalie didn’t see any of that income. She had to make a choice to walk away from the business to get away from that toxic environment. She has since opened a lawsuit against her own company in pursuit of getting it back. For that reason, she is a huge proponent of having contracts in place for your business.
Now, she’s relaunching and starting from scratch in her business. On the plus side, she’s much happier, though. It hasn’t been easy, as she lost something that she really loved in her business.
On the other side of that, though, she’s on a mission to restart. She feels pulled to keep going. Her ex is posing as something he’s not, and it’s dangerous since he’s actually not a dog trainer. She is looking to help the people that supported her business in a good way because she really cares about what she does.
Training People & Dogs: Her Approach
Natalie trains people to train dogs, which is really interesting. She explained that you need to treat dogs like they know nothing and you kind of need to do the same with people too in her case.
She really breaks down the different aspects of dog training for their owners, operating with the assumption that they have no expertise on training a dog. She also likes to bring a visual aspect to her training - like graphics to help with learning.
She’s also trying to add gamification into her training practices to make it fun and a wonderful learning experience. She tries to make things simplified so that they can immediately implement them with their dogs. It’s all about immediately helping the situation and making it something feasible.
To build good courses, Natalie learned a lot from other good courses. These aren’t necessarily in the dog training space, but she takes other courses that she goes to and picks apart the good and bad of them to apply to her own methods of teaching.
She also breaks things down for the right people to take advantage of, making it specific so that individuals can choose the training path that is right for them. She’s truly an expert in her space that knows the nuances of things, which makes it easier for her to be specific and keep people’s attention.
Helping People Build Their Dog Training Businesses
Natalie is now also helping other dog trainers build their own businesses, which is very exciting! She was constantly being asked by trainers for tips on building a business, so she saw the perfect opportunity to assist.
She has spent the past eight to nine months working on training material for a seven-week program - The Dog Trainer Business Accelerator. This will guide them through starting their business and will put them on a road to success.
Dog trainers are SUPER passionate about what they do, and sometimes they jump into things without setting up their business the right way. This could put them at risk and leave them liable where they don’t need to be. Natalie offers a lot of value in helping with this.
She also wants to help the industry have more integrity and values. Being able to coach people on how to do things for their dog training business is something she is passionate about and excited about. The more help these trainers get with their systems and processes, the more they can focus on what they want to do: helping dogs!
She’s really putting into place the things she wished she had helped with when she had originally started her business and using that as her guiding light on this journey.
Natalie’s Advice to Business Owners: The Bottom Line
For business owners, Natalie would like to remind them to have contracts in place as they start out. This goes from business to business, with your business partners, or with clients. It’s super important.
She also encourages people to keep on learning - things are always changing! Continue your education no matter what.
Finally, know who to trust. Vet who you work with. You never think things will happen, but you want to protect yourself on the off chance that things go south. Be cautious as to who you let into your circle!
Natalie is a passionate businesswoman and knowledgeable dog trainer that I’ve used with my own pups and I wholeheartedly recommend her. It was so great sitting down and hearing her story and insights into what she does as a dog trainer and business coach!
If you’d like to connect with other Dreamers in our community, join The Dreamer’s Society. And if you’re interested in learning more about working with the Dreampro team, check out our website!
And if you’d like to connect with Natalie, you can find her on Instagram. She also has pages for her own dog training business, as well as her dog training business school.
If you enjoyed the episode please take a second to rate & review. Each review helps me fulfill my mission of improving the quality of learning in the online business industry. Don’t forget to take a screenshot, share it in your Instagram stories and tag me @dreamprocourses.
See you next week!
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