Who Should You Ask Before Growing Your Dog Training Business?

At some point you are going to reach a crossroads. You will want to go up a level. Maybe that means starting a new business, offering a new product, buying a van, getting premises, or investing in a dog training mentorship. Whatever it is, there will be a difficult decision to make.

And the natural thing to do is ask the people around you whether they think it is a good idea. I am going to say something controversial: I do not think that is a good move. Before I explain why, let me define a concept.

High agency

A term I use a lot is high agency, or being agentic. To be high agency means to act without permission. Not consent, obviously. I mean taking action before you have the level of reassurance from the people around you that you think you need.

Business loves high agency people. I love high agency employees, the ones who show real initiative. They do not wait to be told, they just move. But most of us have been conditioned to do the opposite: check in, get approval, wait for the green light from someone else before committing.

Whose opinion actually counts?

Unless your spouse or your parents are exceptionally successful business owners who have built the thing you are trying to build, I will be straight with you: their opinion is not as important as you are allowing it to be.

I know that sounds mad. “I should ask my wife. I should ask my parents.” But if they have not done the thing you are trying to do, what does their opinion count for? They have no experience of it. Would you ask someone who has never fixed a car how to fix a car? Would you take golf advice from someone who has never picked up a club? So why ask your spouse whether to make a decision about your business if they have never built one?

The trap: two things happen when you ask

One of two things will happen.

The first: they love you and they are scared to see you fail, so they tell you not to do it. Fair enough on some level. But if they are showing a lack of faith in you, it is worth asking whether that reflects your past behaviour. Maybe you have started things before and not followed through. Sit with that.

The second is harder to hear and much more toxic. Humans do not like to feel inferior. In some close relationships, people will subconsciously hold you back from the right decision because if it paid off for you, it would make them look bad.

I am sorry for going this deep on a dog training business channel, but you will notice there are people around you who question your decisions. A colleague, a spouse, a parent. Parents are genuinely bad for this (not mine, to be fair, they have been great). I see it constantly: parents holding their kids back for one of those two reasons. I hope it is the first. It might be the second.

We have been taught to aim for mediocre

Your business teacher at school did not have their own business. They were a teacher. Sit on that for a second. The people who taught your parents about life, business and making money were also teachers. Generation after generation, we have been taught that aiming for mediocre is a good thing. Finish school, go to college, go to uni, get a job paying £30k, £40k, £50k. And that is fine. But that is the ceiling.

Without putting my tin foil hat on, I think the system is designed to keep you somewhat subdued, and everyone around you came through that same system. So when you make choices that involve a leap of faith, they will naturally be averse to it, because that is how they were conditioned too.

Once I adopted this mindset it completely changed the trajectory of my life: how I operate, how I learn, how I work, what information I consume, how much time I spend on social media, how I manage my closest relationships, how I deal with clients and staff. You have a moment where it clicks and you realise you have been looking at everything from the wrong angle, through the perspective of people who never did the thing you want to do.

I am not saying you need this to become the next Elon Musk. But if you want to get out of the hole you might be in right now, working a lot and not seeing much back, you need to shift how you think before anything else changes. This is a hill I will die on.

Be careful who you take advice from

People will take digs at you. People will try to hold you back. It is important that you are conscious of it, that you identify it, and that you see through it. It could be a colleague mocking you for posting on TikTok. It could be a spouse.

One of my mentees recently launched a new service, and someone they knew professionally went out of their way to take a dig at them about it, by voice note. I will not share details out of respect for their privacy, but I had to explain to them that there is no other reason for that behaviour than someone trying to hold you back because your choices made them feel inferior. That is all it is.

So be very careful whose opinions you take on board. If you want to talk your next move through with someone who has actually built a dog training business, apply for a call and we will give you an honest view.

Key takeaways

• High agency means acting before you have everyone else’s reassurance.
• Only take advice on building a business from people who have built one.
• When loved ones say no, it is either fear for you or discomfort at being left behind. Neither is about the decision.
• Most of us were taught by people who never ran a business. Notice that conditioning and look through it.

Inside Vantage Pro Mentorship you get one-to-one time with people who have done the thing you are trying to do, and are still doing it every day. If you are at a crossroads with your dog training business, apply for a call.