From Broke Student to £2m Dog Training Business: 3 Lessons

Once upon a time there was a broke Welsh kid at university without a penny to his name. His parents had to pawn their jewellery to get enough fuel money to drop him at his student accommodation. That kid was me.

This is the short version of how I went from that to becoming a dog trainer and then the owner of a multi-seven-figure dog training business, and the three lessons that got me there. I am sharing it because I think it will help you write your own story.

Where I started

My background is not business. I studied law and criminology for six or seven years and played semi-professional sport on a scholarship that paid for university. We were, to put it mildly, impoverished. You can imagine how my parents felt when I told them I was not going to use my education and was going to become a dog trainer instead. They were not best pleased, but to their credit they supported me anyway, and I am eternally grateful for that.

My dog training career did not start with me being my own boss. I worked for someone else at another company here in Yorkshire, and I have nothing bad to say about it. There just came a point where I wanted to train dogs my own way and, honestly, make more money for myself. So I left. I walked away from a salary of around 60,000 pounds a year, which felt like a lot at the time, because I knew I had to.

I sat down with my best friend Ian Kirk, a former Leeds Rhinos player, and we set up Yorkshire Canine Academy from absolute zero. We spent our last bit of money paying a friend 500 pounds to build a website, got another friend to make a short video advert, and that was it. No reviews, no followers, no clients. A website, a video and a belief that we could make it work.

Five years on, we have toured the world delivering sold-out seminars, we mentor other dog trainers, and we have moved into our dream facility. Last year we did just shy of two million pounds in revenue, and this January we turned over just under 250,000 pounds in a single month. I am not telling you that to show off. I am telling you so you can see the scale of what is possible, because there was nothing special about the starting point.

Lesson one: money is oxygen

Early on I had a business mentor called Will. He was actually one of our first clients; I was helping him with his dog Walter. After a session one day he asked how business was going and I gave him the answer most dog trainers give: “I am not really bothered about money, Will. I just want to help more dogs.”

He tilted his head and said, “What do you mean you do not care about money?” Then he took my beliefs about money apart. Money is oxygen for your business, and in turn for your life. Whatever your mission is, being more profitable gets you there faster, and in a lot of cases it is the only reason you get there at all.

Then he asked me what my favourite thing in the world was. My dog, Ranger, obviously. And he looked me in the eye and said: “If Ranger needed a 10,000 pound operation tomorrow to save his life, does he live or does he die?”

I knew the answer, and it changed the trajectory of my life. From that day I understood that making money is not a selfish act. It is the direct enabler of the mission.

The more profitable we are, the more dogs we help. We donate all of our YouTube revenue to charity. We take on rescue dogs for free. Our boot camp helps over 500 dogs a year, before you count online clients. And on a personal level, when I first got Ranger his garden was tiny. Now it is not. That is the direct result of prioritising revenue.

Lesson two: the opinion of strangers is irrelevant

That same conversation with Will dismantled another belief that was holding me back: the fear of being judged. I was terrified of putting myself out there and looking like a sleazy salesman. I was prioritising the opinion of strangers on the internet over the quality of life of my own family and my own dogs.

Will asked, “Why do you care? Why are you prioritising people you will never meet over doing the right thing by your loved ones?”

From that day I stopped caring what other people thought, with one caveat. If someone I respect, someone who has achieved what I want to achieve, gives me criticism, I take it as feedback. If someone has a life I do not want to live, I disregard what they have to say completely.

When you grow online you will get criticism, and you have to be able to deal with it. I will never let a stranger on the internet dictate the size of house my partner lives in or the size of garden my dog runs around in. Neither should you.

Lesson three: the perfect moment never exists

This is probably the most important one. Waiting for the right time will destroy you. Comfort is a killer. I stayed in my last job at least a year longer than I needed to out of pure hesitation. I have stayed in relationships longer than I should have for the same reason.

If you are thinking about taking the leap to work for yourself, launching a new service or building a new programme, you are probably waiting for all your ducks to be in a row. There will never be a perfect moment, and while you wait for perfection, you procrastinate. Then when you fall short of perfect it fills you with doubt, and doubt is more fuel for procrastination.

I learned to take aggressive action in everything I do, and I live by the mantra from the book Ready, Fire, Aim. Get an idea to 70 per cent good enough and fire. Launch it. Then aim based on feedback from the real world. If you take one thing from this, do not wait for anything to be perfect before you hit execute. You will never get there.

If you are sat on a decision right now, whether that is going full time as a dog trainer or finally raising your prices, that is exactly the kind of thing we help people push through on a call.

Nothing special about me, or you

There is nothing special about me. There is nothing special about any of the mentees I work with, and there is nothing special about you. I was not born an entrepreneur and I knew nothing about business. I just had the right information from the right people at the right time, and for that I am very lucky.

The journey from broke student to where I am today was built on those three lessons: money is a tool for your mission, the opinion of strangers is irrelevant, and imperfect action always beats inaction.

Key takeaways

• Money is oxygen. Profit is what lets you help more dogs, not a distraction from it.
• Take criticism only from people who have what you want. Ignore the rest.
• The perfect moment does not exist. Get to 70 per cent and launch, then adjust with real feedback.
• We started with a 500 pound website and no clients. The starting point is not the problem.

If you want me to be that right person at the right time for your dog training business, apply for a call and we will tell you honestly whether Vantage Pro Mentorship is the right move for you.