Gretta Ford: Building a sustainable behaviour/training business

[Music] Hey, nice to see you. Nice to see you. I'm really excited that we're having you on today. Unfortunately, without Matthias, he couldn't make it, but we're going to go ahead and have a great chat sadly without him today. It's a shame he can't be here, but I'm very, very happy to be here with you. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'll quickly read your bio and then maybe just talk briefly about how we know one another and then we'll get into our conversation. Sounds good. Okay, I'm here today with the lovely Greta Ford and here is Greta's bio. She says, as a business strategist for self-employed dog trainers and animal behaviorists, as well as being a clinical animal behaviorist and trainer herself, Greta combines industry-specific business expertise with real-world experience. For ever a teacher at heart, she has shared her expertise with some of the most respected professional membership bodies and educational establishments in the world. And that's such a, I think for me personally, like a description that doesn't really sum up how great you are having recently worked with you for six months. In relation to my own business. So yeah, I think, you know, maybe we'll start with that. That's how we met. I reached out to you last fall and wanted to make some changes in my business and I've got to admit I was, I think I probably said this in my intake forms like super skeptical of working with a business strategist because I think of, when I think of them, I often think of people who are like promoting themselves on social media and, you know, they're just like, I can make you, you know, seven cave figures in your first week and this and that and just it's really like sales pushy. And so we had an initial chat and then when we started working together and I just felt this like, okay, it's not going to be like that. It's not going to be someone just pushing me to to sell, but realistically looking at my business and kind of having discussions with me about it. You know, particularly like as it pertains, I think to the world in which we're living and how we market ourselves and get our name out there to people and how much it's changed, especially in the last two decades that I've been doing this work, you know, I started off literally advertising and magazines. You know, because I was working in person, it was more, you know, traveling to places and meeting new people and and word of mouth, but things have really changed since then. And in speaking to colleagues, I get the sense like that I'm not the only person who sometimes feels like we're working really hard and we're hustling and we're kind of feeling tired by it. And I think, especially in the last five years, I think social media just seems to have made that worse. Do you do you think that's an accurate statement? Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you very kind with your introduction. It's funny when you were reading it out, I was thinking gosh, that sounds very grand and you said it didn't do me justice, so I'm very flattered. And yeah, I think there's, there has been a massive shift obviously over time. And I think the people who were maybe established, you know, 10, 15 years ago, some of them have benefited from the fact that they were already established in a very specific place and have a really strong referral network and that kind of thing in a certain area. So if people have moved, if people have shifted their business model, if people are newer to the industry, then I think it can be really hard now is to kind of get established in a certain area if you work in a local area or even just get your name out there if you work more broadly. And I think the whole marketing, I mean, I could talk about marketing for days, but the big push with marketing is so much focus on social media, which is really unsustainable for a lot of people, and it's enough content, that's getting enough views, and then it's, you know, it's gone within a day or whatever. And so I think there's a huge issue in the industry where people are, people have spent a lot of time and money, years and years, many thousands of pounds at lots of cases, learning how to do a really good job for clients. So important, but then the business side of things, like the best trainer, the best behaviorist, if such thing exists, but like you could, you could be excellent at what you do and still have a tricky business because the kind of demands on terms of marketing and getting yourself out there, the amount of competition that now is, I think it's really challenging for people. And I think a lot of it, you know, when we're talking about like the social media sphere, it feels like to me there's also a difference between influencer trainers and like real trainers and behavior professionals. But you know, some of those people have risen in popularity, not because they're good at their job necessarily, but they're good at creating content that the algorithm responds to. And it's really unfortunate for other professionals who, you know, perhaps are doing a better service for animals and their people. I think that it's also a disservice to the animal owning public, you know, when they look at someone who has 100,000 plus followers and they equate that with skill at their job. And it can be really tough and I totally agree that, you know, so many of us have spent countless hours and money trying to, you know, better ourselves and our knowledge and things like that and put all that emphasis into becoming really good on that side of things, but the business side of things is something totally different. And it's a lot more complicated, I think in today's world than it was a decade or two ago. I totally agree. I think your point about the kind of content created is rather than people that are, you know, the kind of influence types rather than people that are just trying to get their business out there. It's a really good one and it's interesting, isn't it, the kind of perceived credibility of somebody with a lot of followers and it's a bit like when someone's on TV, they've got a TV, sorry, Pedro's just being Pedro. And someone's got a TV gig and other people then think, oh, they must really know what they're doing because they're on TV and you're looking at them thinking they are not, they are not up to date, they are not doing things the way that is ethical or welfare focused. And the things are doing are really worrying, but they've got TV gig and so there's always been this kind of battle where, you know, you're going to see a client and they'll say, oh, I've been watching whoever and I've been following their things trying to do their stuff. And that used to be the people that are on TV. Now, well, I mean, there's only, there's only a handful of those on that, but now on social media, there's this 10s, hundreds probably of very popular content creators that are putting stuff out there. So used to be have these like one, two, three, four people on TV that were like, maybe not to be great advice and now, but being listened to because of that perceived credibility and now you've got a whole swath of people out there doing this. And I do think it's very difficult because they often have either big marketing teams or they focus a lot of their time on creating this content. And that's kind of their job, like they're not trying to do that necessarily as well as all of the other stuff, whereas I think for a lot of us in this industry, we're actually trying to do our job. And then we're trying to do this stuff to spread some useful information to support people who maybe can't afford or aren't ready for one to one support or whatever or that we're trying to get our stuff out there in front of the right people so that they can work with us. So we're trying to do that often alongside actually spending our days supporting animals and their people and that is it necessarily the case form of these content creators sometimes that's their job and sometimes they've got teams that do this stuff for them so they can be very. They can generate an awful lot of stuff and get used the kind of tactics to kind of get things to go viral and to spread and to look impressive and to kind of create a lot of talk around what they're saying. Yeah, yeah, when we started working together, I think I called it the hamster wheel, the social media hamster wheel where you know as a professional, I just felt like, especially in the last couple of years, I was really having to ramp up like I just. felt this pressure to put out more and more content and a lot of free information for very little return and trying to compete in bunny rabbit ears with this. Thankfully, you kind of showed me the issues associated with that and how it might not serve us. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. Sure, yeah. I mean, I'm not anti-social media. I do think that it can be really useful for people to get information out there, to the wider public, and to potentially get in front of an audience. But why think does this a real disservice is the way that it sold this is the answer to marketing? It's almost like marketing equals social media or visibility equals social media. Well, marketing is more than just ability. Marketing is like the whole thing from getting in front of people right the way through to nurturing people that you've already worked with. So, marketing is not just ability anyway, but then visibility is not just social media. It's like this kind of weird kind of, I don't know, it's almost like misinformation. I was going to say misunderstanding. Do you think it's kind of misinformation that's being kind of accepted? This is just what I need to do. And the problem with it is like you say, it becomes like a constantly generating stuff, constantly pleasing the algorithm, trying to learn what works, what's the viral hook this time, what's the trending audio? It's like goodness, with such a lot of effort being put into this. And I think if you love it and it works for you, and that's something which a lot of people aren't even checking, then you go for it. That's absolutely fine. And there are some people who it does work really well for and probably quite enjoy creating content. I'm super happy for them. For the people who either don't enjoy it or they're doing it, but it's really falling flat, it's not really getting them the results that they want in terms of actually people seeing it, people responding to it, people hopefully coming into work with them. Then you've got to wonder, is there not another way? And I think we need to then look at more sustainable marketing strategies, things that have more evergreen kind of quality to them, things that have a longer term reach. And also really think about what suits us as individuals, because the people who tend to do really well with social media marketing tend to be people who are genuinely enjoying it. And that doesn't apply to everyone. There are certain personality types and certain kind of people that will be able to create content that does do really well. And I love watching those people. There are some people in our industry that are brilliant at that. And it seems natural for them. But if I were to do that, it just would fall flat. It's just not me, it would be me performing. And that's an exhausting thing to have to do all the time. So it's not that it can never work, it's that it's not this magic bullet that it's presented as. And I think to do it really, to do it really well is actually incredibly hard. And there are so much easier ways to get in front of clients that it's like, why are you making life so hard for yourself by constantly creating more and more content to fill this, to kind of get this engine going, which isn't really going anywhere? Yeah, yeah, agreed. It was really nice to be able to step off that hamster wheel. Thanks in great part to you for sure. I think something also that, you know, getting on that hamster wheel, I mean, you know, this might not be a deep dive appropriate for this conversation. But we all know that social media is profoundly impacting people's ability to focus and impacting how they take in information. And I don't know why I'm always astounded, but I am slightly astounded. Like I just put a post up about I'd written a new article on food aggression and horses and I shared it and I listed, you know, common reasons why it happens and what's recommended to start addressing the issue. And in our field, you know that there's reasons why I can't tell people in the article how to solve it, you know, it would be highly unethical of me to do that, but also I can't give simple advice to people to solve what can be a complex problem. And I had someone chime in on the comments, basically, like you didn't tell us why and you didn't tell us what to do. And I'm thinking, okay, here's a free educational article that I put out there for people trying to get better information out there as well. But also I feel like like with my previous efforts with social media, a lot of the times what I was doing was appealing to people who weren't necessarily my ideal clients. Anyways, they were people who were expecting quick fixes and expecting simple solutions because that is what social media has in part created this belief that that's what you do to solve animal behavior problems. You know, you watch this TikTok expert, who's expertise has come from their own one dog or horse or whatever. And they, you know, 15 second video apparently show you how to solve this issue. And you know, those aren't the people that are going to be best suited for me and I'm not going to be best suited for them as well. So, you know, I found it kind of freeing to realize that that, hey, like being on this hamster whale, maybe I'm not the way I was doing it, maybe I'm not attracting the person who is going to be the best fit for me and I'm going to be the best fit for them because it's going to be mutual. Yeah, totally. And I think you're right about the, it's like we flattened the new ones of everything. It's like everyone expects everything to be simple, black and white, quick fix. You know, if you can't do it in 30 seconds, I'm not interested. And I feel like that's, it does us such a disservice to our expertise and also to the animals that I'm working with. It's like they are complex, emotional beings and we're, I think there's this, I can see why as humans, it's appealing. I can totally if someone can just say, oh, you just need to do this and that'll sort it. That feels really appealing. But, you know, people, people you would hope would be able to see that life actually isn't quite so simple. Things are more important than that and behaviour and emotions are absolutely more nuanced than that. And yes, there are certain things that you can give as generic advice, like, you know, if the, if the horse goes, well, it's say if the dog goes to bite you when you take it's food off, it stopped taking it's food off. I mean, don't take it's food off in the first place. But, you know, there are certain simple, simple easy things that you could say as like basic, like this is one thing you can do right away. But the actual nuance of the situation and the individual personalisations to what is going on for that individual animal and what is going on in that relationship with that human that is always going to be so much more nuanced than any kind of social media post or even a blog post or something where you go into a little bit more detail could possibly provide. And also, you're right, like the ethical issue of we need to be really careful about giving people advice when we don't actually know the situation for them, you know, our professional bodies have codes of conduct. We need to be really mindful of our, like, our role in this. And then I also think that sometimes in our attempts to be helpful, we can give people enough advice that they think they've got the answer when they happen at all. And that can lead to bigger problems. So, are you often see this when people have like discovery calls, or like, clarity calls or whatever people call them? Like a free call with a client. And often people will end up through, through like noot intentions. They will end up giving that client enough information sometimes that the client thinks, well, we're not even a client at this point, they haven't paid anything, that the prospective client thinks they have enough to now work with it. And the problem here is that obviously, at this point, you haven't actually assessed the animal. So, that's a problem in itself. Secondly, we've got the fact that this person now has gone away with a very basic level of understanding, which they may have completely misunderstood in any way. And then they're going to go and try to apply it. Now, the chance of them having understood it correctly, the chance of you being able to have got it right without any other information, for them to actually sorry, Pedro Canuchius, but them to actually apply that information accurately and appropriately to the situation and to have success with it is, it's just not going to happen. And if we give people enough information that they think they've got the answer, but they haven't really, then we actually potentially get in the way of them really seeking. proper genuine support and even worse can sometimes maybe put them off from working with someone who is going to take their animals well being into account and instead they go well that didn't work because I spoke to that person and she was talking about how my horse or my dog whatever feels she gave me some advice on the call even though it wasn't intended as advice I tried it it didn't work because I don't know they just threw treats at the dog or whatever you know they've lost any sense of what's really going on that the actual behaviour modification strategies that you were maybe discussing and then they go and say so I need somebody with a different approach and then they potentially go work with someone who's going to use some quite unpleasant methods potentially with their dog or their horse or their cat and I think that in our attempts to be helpful we can sometimes cause problems not just for ourselves like oh we've missed out on working with that client with a no-one but actually for the client for the animal and for the wider profession absolutely absolutely and I don't know other professions that do that you know my husband's a veterinary and he doesn't do free discovery calls to talk to people about their cruise ship and they give me disease in their dog and try to fix it in a 15-minute phone call you know giving them advice that they're not going to be able to implement anyways you know without surgery and then follow-up support and guidance and stuff like that and so it's interesting that we a feel the need that we need to do that and I think it comes from a good place you know as you pointed out it comes from wanting to be helpful I know I've been guilty of that in the past wanting to give people too much information you know especially at the first consult like I used to just overload people with information because I wanted them to feel they were getting good value but also it wasn't really taking into account how how densal that information was and how with that overwhelm would come things like maybe trying one of the things I recommended and then saying oh this doesn't work and then going on and seeking help from someone else and also then potentially trash talking my profession as well saying oh yeah I tried I tried that and that didn't work so in our efforts to be kind and helpful to people we can also you know shoot ourselves in the foot by by doing that definitely and I think there's a there's a bit of a I don't know it's not very often talked about but I think a lot of people who go into this industry are exactly the sort of people that want to try and help and therefore give an awful lot for free because they want to be helpful and they want to support that person and their and their animal and so we've got this kind of perfect storm of a lot of a lot of people who are perhaps overgiving because they are really keen to kind of do the right thing and to help and then a lot of potential clients who are really happy to take that information not pay you any money give it a go and then look at what comes up on TikTok go actually now that wasn't right I'm going to try this and so we've got this like really tricky situation I think where yeah the kind of people that tend to enter these professions will often give an awful lot of themselves away from free and I think for me if you're going to have a discovery call then that's about making sure the service is the right fit for that person making sure that you with that person can work together because if you so you know the behavior case for example you might work with them for a period of months potentially in some cases and also they need to feel comfortable enough with you to be able to be vulnerable and share honestly about what they've been trying or how they feel about the situation and that kind of thing so in terms of checking it's a good fit for the for the people great if the behaviorist or trainer needs to check that they're comfortable with the case presentation or there'll be the training issue that's coming up and that they feel confident they can take that on great if it's about clarifying something to do with the service great if it's can we now go into what you're what would you actually do so what would you actually do if you came to work with us then it's like oh no hang on a minute this is going into basically can you give me the free advice and that's that's not what we're here for so yeah I think it's just about structuring those those if you're going to have them structuring those calls in a way that supports actually both people in the long term even if you're tempted to over give the short term because it doesn't actually do what you need it to do for them or for you hmm in addition to that issue are there other like do you think that's one of the biggest mistakes that we make as professionals or are there ones that we make in relate that relate to our business that you're just like slamming your head on the desk like why why why colleagues why are you doing this or yeah I mean I think there are a lot but I think I think some of it does come back to the type of people and I put myself in this practice I'm not speaking like you people out there are doing this oh I know you're not I know yeah yeah so I think a real a really big issue is pricing huge industry and I think again think about the sort of people that tend to join our industry most of us did not come into this so that we could be business so we didn't come into it to be entrepreneur we didn't come into it to be content creators or influencers or anything else came into it because for most of us we had a real kind of pulling or a desire or whatever to to actually support animals and they're people together and a lot of us I think because of that we come into it sometimes with our kind of health that had on and we can be almost seeing it like a bit of a hobby to start off with I think that quite often happens people will do it alongside another job or why don't really need to earn anything at the moment so I'll just do a bit of this and oh but I'm really interested in it so it doesn't really feel like work so I don't mind doing that for free or so I don't really need to have sensible pricing and so we can often kind of like softly enter the profession in a way which doesn't always do us service in the long run because once we start like that it becomes very difficult to then have a step back of like oh actually no hang on a minute if this is going to work I'm going to need to do things very differently this is something that I see a lot and I also think that what we're thinking about like pricing and putting ourselves out there all of those things I don't think it's a coincidence that a significant proportion of people in this industry are women we know that there are trends in terms of women and pricing and you know pricing themselves too low not maybe valuing their expertise in the same way and so I think there's a kind of a bit of a picture that needs unpicking there at some point in the industry as well I think there's a whole load of stuff but I do think pricing is a big barrier because everybody wants to be accessible and everyone wants to do the right thing but we end up hugely undervaluing I think the expertise that we have and then it becomes this is the norm this is the pricing norm and so everyone else is pitching themselves around it so just it just perpetuates either time and anyone who steps outside that is sometimes sadly kind of you know looked upon us like how does she or who does he think he is but there's a lot of internal policing goes on in the industry as well and so there's all of these different facts I think that kind of keep us keep us squash down and quite small yeah definitely so much psychology wrapped up in pricing and self worth and you know I don't want to go on a rant here but also thinking of the millennia that women have done unpaid labor often related to caregivering and nurturing and things like that and how internalized all of that can be as well yeah and I really like how you phrase it you know I remember we talked about this like thinking about your business do you want it to be a hobby or do you want it to be a business and you know again just to reiterate so many of us come into this work with the best intentions and that skill set of actually running a functional efficient sustainable business isn't something that vast majority of us are taught or intuitively know how to do well you know we might intuitively be fantastic you know animal trainers and behavior consultants along with all the knowledge and everything we have the business side of things is something totally different and I know you know being married to a veterinarian and working in the veterinary field for many years as well I mean that's a common issue with them as well you know they get called to that work not because they're just envisioning these giant paychecks you know it's because they are called to the work because they want to help animals and so many of them end up owning businesses and they're terrible business people and they know it but that's simply because they haven't gone to school and learned the skills you know that that unfortunately isn't something that's really emphasized in veterinary school about like this is how you run your business and you know this is why looking at your pricing matters and stuff like that but that same thing applies to our business as well. Yeah absolutely and I think there's a real missing, there's a kind of a real gap I think that with when people, I mean I understand that when people go to university or do whatever training forces or whatever however it is they're learning about training and behaviour then some of those people are going to be in rescue you know some of those people are they're not necessarily going to have their own business so there's loads of things to do it but I do think that having some business skills even if just as an optional module or something would be really helpful for people because I think it's much easier if you kind of start off with the basic principles at least in place and then you kind of make a mental note to yourself that you're going to review each year you're going to review your pricing you're going to review what you're you know all of you all I know you love a bit of business data don't you Lauren you're going to review your business data and see where you are and see if you're hitting your targets or whatever else and without it being you know you don't need to be kind of doing MBA you don't need to like get completely nerdy about business but you know like this morning even I had a call with someone who is a one-time client of mine she's lovely and we looked at her pricing capacity so we looked at what what she actually if we think about a behaviour consult for example and what she does within that package there's an awful lot that's practiced the actual session there's the right report there's communication with the client in between sessions there's the follow-up session blah blah blah all of this stuff and we looked at how long that actually took for her to deliver and it was it was like 10 hours basically this entire package there was travel and stuff as well and then we looked at what she actually charges for that and it's it's a shocking it's a shocking kind of like stark oh that that doesn't sound great but then then you go okay so that's what you're charging basically for each hour of your time which is sometimes barely even like a minimum wage then what does that look like when we take off your business expenses what does that look like when we take off tax nationally insurance or whatever you have in your country like what does that look like when we actually then put it into your capacity in your week so in your week what time did Ashley got available to see people well you need to block out some time for emails responding to inquiries what if you're kind of business admin you need to block out some time for your cpd because we all have a cpd amount that we need to do each year and then we obviously want to keep learning and keep up to date you need to block out some time for your marketing otherwise no one's going to know that you exist so we block out all of this stuff and then we're left with this number of hours and we put that hourly rate in there you know there's no way you know what you've taken off the expenses now things well that they're going to be anywhere near what they say they want to hit at the end of the month every month so but it's funny people will kind of say well I want to uh X every month that's what I need that's my minimum and then they'll come up with a number that they're going to charge for a package but it's like these two things are totally disconnected it's like I don't know it's like a and it's not that these people are as stupid then they're bright and lovely lovely people but it's almost like they're totally disconnected because this is the number that I think I could put on a website or say to a client that being sick and so that's the number I'm going to go with and then the number that I actually want to earn that's just going to have to happen somehow but then they have the matching they're just not going to so yeah I think there's a there's a missing bit there yeah I can really I'm laughing because I remember as I work with you getting to like the pricing section and like my armpits are actually feeling a little bit sweaty even just thinking about it now because like I've got a) I've got a math learning disability and b) like anything numbers related with my business just makes my eye I I've all twitch um but yeah like when we did the exercise where I like looked at the expenses of running my business the hourly work I put into each consult and everything like that and then calculating like what that worked out to my hourly rate to be you know it's a huge and necessary eye opener uh for many of us I think to go through that experiment if we are self-employed and we're trying to do all this stuff by ourselves uh and then thinking back to things like the social media hamster wheel if you're doing all of that and you you calculate it out and you're like wow I'm making well below minimum wage and then I add in how many hours a week am I trying to you know create content that's going to compete with these influencer people you know that you're not billing for like no one's paying you for that um and it's living rent free in your head when you're not even doing it like it's consuming you like okay like what kind of real am I gonna make tomorrow and things like that and it's really just it's kind of ludicrous when we when we break it down like that but also very necessary because if we want this to be sustainable and we want to do this long term you know it is something that we absolutely do need to take a hard look at and and be realistic about you know and going back to the client's expectations and the client's perception of what we're offering and what we're giving them if we're so greatly undervaluing ourselves or if we're just looking at that number like this is the number I'm comfortable telling the client that my pricing is this package is x amount of dollars you know we're also sending this message to them of you know wow that's really cheap like that doesn't seem like it's going to be worth anything to me and not going to help my animal at all you know it is sending that message of it's too cheap it must be garbage advice you know even if you have a 10 degrees and you've been doing this work for 10 years you know you are sending that message to the client that you're you're a like a budget priced option and people do vote with their wallets and they are going to take that pricing into consideration and it's going to have an emotional impact on them am I correct in that yeah absolutely I think there's a there's a whole thing about like being reassuring and expensive and I think I think it's true to certain extent like yeah of course this pricing sensitivity price does matter to people it is a factor in what they like what they can practically do so whether they can genuinely afford to find that money and also how they weigh up their options but I think we tend to in this industry massively overestimate the importance of pricing in that we think that they're going to think quite too expensive and I think actually exactly what you're saying is that sometimes we go so far in the way that what they're more likely to be thinking is why is this so cheap that's the wrong or can't kind of that to a sense and also I think that the this idea that pricing is a barrier I'm not going to be you know naive and say oh everybody can just pay for anything of course that isn't true but I think we get in our heads about it so much that you know well you know my my mum looked at it and said oh you can't charge that or my friend thought it was really expensive or whatever I I don't see I don't see plumbers worrying about this I don't see electricians worrying about this I don't see I mean I do see interestingly um like therapists and counselors having these similar conversations which I find interesting interesting interesting I didn't think that that would be the case yeah and I don't know if it's I don't know if it's everywhere because I know like the with your health insurance and that kind of thing in the states for example they have they have like certain cover that might cover things like that so it might be different but certainly in the UK where you'd be you'd be hard pushed to get like a lot of therapy or counseling on the NHS you would have to be you know you'd have to wait for a while and you you don't need kind of meet certain criteria and that sort of thing um and so most of that is done privately and and yeah you see an awful lot of very well-qualified brilliant skilled experienced counselors and therapists certainly K um struggling with pricing and exactly the same way as people do in our industry and I find it fascinating that if there are so many parallels um between the way that we work the sort of people that I may drawn to it and the kind of lack of business sense almost that lack of focus on business that I see in both industries and obviously there are people in both industries that are much more um business savvy and much happier to consider their pricing in it from a very functional point of view. It's just like this is what I need to earn since it's gotten better charged. And there's not so much emotion attached to it, but I think for an awful lot of us in both industries, actually, there's a lot of emotion on our own money stories that we tell ourselves that's attached to the prices that we actually willing to put out there. And to be fair, and I sure audience appreciates this, you and I are both not saying that therapy should be expensive for everybody. You and I both live in countries where we have a socialized healthcare system. And I'm sure you agree that we should, our healthcare system should have more mental health support for people like you. That should absolutely be a number that's bumped up so that those your benefits or your coverage from your government should allow you to have more visits. I mean, it's such an important and necessary service. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, well, certainly in the UK, I don't know about that, but it's a problem. It's a problem that we have a society that we haven't invested in. We don't continue to invest enough money. The NHS is on its knees. Everyone talks by it all the time. It's like, you know, everything. So I think there's a real issue there. And there are. It isn't just the NHS that are other charities and other various bits of ways. You can get a support and things. But what I also think is that that is a problem that in society and with government and to do with funding, that doesn't mean that you, as an individual, need to shoulder that and then provide, you know, cost support for everybody. And I think it's the same with dogs, horses, whatever else. So I think we can put out free stuff. We can, we can write books. We can have blog posts. We can put some stuff on social media. We could do it or at school or whatever about dog safety around children. We can do all of these community things. We can do free stuff that's on our website. All of that is great. When it comes to us actually using our time to work with a client onto one to support them with their animal that they've chosen to have, we are absolutely entitled to charge appropriately for that work so that our business can still be there in five years time or ten years time without us dropping to our knees and saying, I can't keep doing this because it's just not sustainable. Yeah, absolutely. The bolder the burden shouldn't be on the individual if we're thinking about like human therapy. The individual therapist, that burden shouldn't be on them to burn themselves out and profoundly negatively impact their mental and physical health in order to provide a needed service and things like that. Yeah. Okay, so we've talked a fair bit about like the things that we shouldn't do in our profession. If you could get people to make small changes or do things differently in their business, are there are there any kind of top things that you would recommend people do do in this industry and in today's world? Yeah, so I think, I mean there's so many, but I think a few that kind of really are always top of mind for me. So the first one I would say make sure that your website is working hard for you. Use it as the hub of your kind of marketing disability. So if you're on social media, great. The idea is to get people to your website. If you're, you know, if you've got, I don't know, an article in a local paper or you're just speaking on the radio or whatever, get people to your website. So the reason why is because we really, our website can, we have total control in like social media. We have total control over what a website looks like, how it feels, everything we have on there. And so we can do a really good job of steering clients in the right direction supporting their journey from like just finding out about you to starting to kind of know a bit more about you. Trust you through to hopefully engaging with you or working with you or learning from your blog or whatever it is. So I think websites can be such a powerful tool and one of the things I see often in this industry is they're not working as well for people as they could do. Surprisingly easy to create a bad website. Like it, because when websites were only done like by professionals and people that did website design, that kind of thing, it was all outsourced. And then it's all being made accessible for everybody, which is super. And I love it. And I absolutely think everyone should have a website that they can, edit themselves that they can have control over and that they feel confident using. I think that's really important. The downside is anyone can just kind of cobble together a website. And I don't know if normal together is a word that you're saying Canada. But yeah, definitely. Anyone can kind of create a website which is not very effective. And it could look nice or it could not. But is it strategic? Is it actually working really hard for you? Is it coming up in search results? Is it optimized for search engines? Is it optimized for AI? I think we really have to think about nowadays. And is it bringing clients in? And then when clients come in, are we actually helping them to find what they need? Really easy. Are we making it? You know, we talked earlier on about people's attention spans. Are we actually adapting our website design for the fact that people generally have pretty short attention spans? People are going to need a word that we're free. We spend hours pouring over the copyrighting and what word shall I have here? And oh, I might be phrased that. And yeah, that's all important because which bits people are going to read. But people generally scan pages. They will skim for information. We need to make every little bit really easily digestible. We need to make the whole experience of being on their field quite positive and not overwhelming or kind of crowded or confusing. And then I think it's then like how we actually set out our services and how we'll talk about what we've got to offer. And then the next bit is always there what happens next. And you would not believe how hard some people make it for people to pay them money, like to work with them and to pay them money. I like, don't think it's so hard for people. So I think yeah, yeah, start with the kind of marketing and website stuff. And then it's actually, isn't when we've got them very ends, it's then what, and then what, and then what, right the way through. So I think just looking at if everyone can just even just look at what does it look like? Imagine I am in client, what does it look like if I find your social media, if your website comes up with the search results, if someone recommends you and they go to them, what, so what does that actually, how does it work and then what does that booking process look like? If you're making it too hard for people, they will give up, they will go somewhere else. Yeah, whenever I'm looking for something online and I'm going to have to purchase the thing, as soon as someone doesn't have their prices on their website, like that's an immediate leave for me. So like I see people within our industry, you know, laying out their services and what they offer and I'm like, oh, okay, this all sounds great. You know, you're just cruising someone's website and you're like, how much is it? And they're like, contact me for the prices. And it's like, you're putting that step in there, like how many people, if you walked into a store and there was no price tags on anything in the store, like how uncomfortable would it be to have to take each item up to the desk and be like, how much is this thing and then put it back? How much is this thing? You know, like people want to know what the prices are and maybe I'm wrong here, but that just feels to me like something that should be there up front. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, there are different strategies and you can do it different ways, but you just need to know, like with everything, there's always different routes you can take and there's pros and cons to all of them. For me, the pros method be out way they come when it comes to the website. So you avoid the potential embarrassment for people of having to ask and then say, oh, actually that's too expensive and that awkwardness, you're not putting the barrier in the way in the first place where they actually have to take action and put effort into even find out the price a lot of people just won't even bother. And then there's the kind of awkwardness, I think, of having to tell someone the price like on a call or something like that, which is obviously a strategy that that can work and that some people absolutely say, I'll never put your pricing on your website and get them on a call and then you can kind of sell to them on the call. I mean, that for me, just film with absolute dread. There's just a good, that's why we're a snake. No way, and I think that. And also no way would I get full with someone. It was going to do that. And so I think you just have to accept that different things will work for different people, but also will really put off certain buyers or will potentially work with certain buyers. And if you know the kind of people you work with and you know what kind of person you're in, you know what kind of person you're in, you know what kind of person you're in. person you are, then you can make a fairly simple decision about that. I personally would say in 99% of cases just put the prices on the website and it saves all of that awkwardness but it also saves a lot of potentially wasted time. The last thing I want to do is to get someone on the call to then do some big sales pitch to then reveal some price at them for them to then say, "Oh, I think about it, I didn't know it was going to be that much or whatever." What a waste of everyone's time. Who's called that? It's a strategy that some people use and I think it's probably becoming less common now, I would guess but maybe not. But yeah, I would say for most people, make it easy, set it out, make it clear, make it simple and make it safe that next step. Going back to what you said about having a good website that's working for you, not against you, when I started in this industry back then you had to have someone build your website. I had someone build my website and that took months and months and I couldn't do anything to it, I couldn't edit anything. If I added a service or changed my mileage rates back when I was traveling to see clients, I'd have to contact them and the person that I was working with at the time wasn't great at getting back to me and it was just this big nightmare. When things like Wix and Squarespace and stuff came out, it was great and I did take a stab at doing my own website and it's funny how, again, without any guidance, I chose colors for my website that I felt reflected the person that I was hoping to attract. Coming from a horsemanship background, one of my goals was to work with people who were also of that background, who were transitioning to kinder methods or that kind of thing. I chose the look of my website and the colors and everything to kind of reflect that and I remember you telling me that it looked like an architectural firm, like a man's architectural firm website and we both had a good laugh about that because it did. It was black and orange and white and also very masculine, which is funny because 99.9% of my clients are women. I've had in 20 years, I can count the number of men clients I've had on one hand. Here I am, marketing unconsciously to them and when the real ideal client for me and I'm being the right person for them, just changing that, how my website felt, just from what it looked like in the colors and everything like that, just softening it a bit so it wasn't so architectural firm. I still chuckle about that. Yeah, I was pretty brutal, wasn't I sorry? Oh no, Greta, you know I love it. I love honesty and directness and, you know, clearness is kind. Being direct, you can say what you mean without being mean and you always did that with me. You were always very gentle and direct and I appreciate that. Well, that's good, you can take it. But yeah, I think it's interesting, isn't it? It's not a big thing to change colors on the website, but it makes such a difference. I think we can get caught up sometimes and I see there's a lot in copywriting as well, not just design, but trying to talk to, trying to kind of communicate in a way that might sound impressive or that would be, that would show to peers that you know what you were talking about. And actually it's like, no, no, no, no, we are not right there. We are right. This, think of this one person that is struggling and is looking for help and they want to know where to get them. They want to know whether they feel safe with you and they can trust you. And we need to, we really need to be in everything where it's the visuals, like the colors and all of that photos and all of that, or whether it's in the copy that we're writing and even the process that we're kind of steering them through. I think there's so much there about how we actually meet that person where they are and help them feel understood and safe. And if we don't get that right, we can put up massive barriers before we even got, we don't know that we've looked up website. We get these, you know, numbers every month, family viewers or how many visits we've had and whatever, but they've never even made contact. Like we don't know who these people are. They're just going, oh no, there's something about this. And if you ask them, they probably wouldn't even be able to put their finger on it. But it's starting going, what would I say if I was talking to that person here at 10am at night and saying, I need to do something about this. Yeah. I was actually speaking to that real person. Yeah, yeah. That I see that sometimes I'll look at people's social media posts or their websites within our industry. And I'm like, who are you? Are you like an educational page for colleagues? Because you're using all this jargon and these big words and you seem to just be signaling to others who are reading to your other colleagues rather than pitching to your clients. And it does seem to be in some cases like almost like a bit of a contest. Like who can write the most, you know, ethical post to signal to their colleagues that they're the most ethical person. And it's like, what about your clients? Like what about the people who don't have a clue what these big words mean and who just don't understand whether animals behaving this way. And they just want support and help. Like aren't you trying to get them or maybe they're not. Maybe they are just doing it because they are just trying to. Maybe it's just a hobby as we started talking out, talking about. Maybe. And if that's what they enjoy, they know what's getting paid for it. That's fine. But yeah, I think that's the strangest, most stressful hobby ever, but whatever you do, you totally. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it was, I think it's just, I mean, there's so many things that people could do differently, but I think it was just, we just kind of had to pick those two things about like pricing and marketing. Like the marketing, not to say social media in a serenity, but like how are people coming into your world or the different possible ways they can do that? And then how are you supporting them, meeting them when they are on your website and steering them to how you can help them? I think if people just look to those two things as a kind of reality check of might does my pricing actually make sense and does it work? And does my website actually help it make it easy for the right person to find the right thing and to actually follow through it or does it not? Then I think that would really help people to take big steps forward in terms of their business. Mmm. Mmm. That's, I think that's a great place to end Greta. That's really good information for people and I, yeah, and I know our time is, we're getting over time here, so that's a great words to end on. Thank you so much for coming on today. It's lovely to see you again. My pleasure, it's lovely to see you too. Just as we've talked about those two things, if you don't have to make sure of this, by the way, but because we've talked about those two things, if it's helped for people, there's two freebies on my website. One is a pricing calculator, like a base rate calculator, and the other is called Make It Click, and Make It Click Toolkit, which is about some of the mistakes I see that people make, is putting barriers in the way of people actually working with them and there's an AI tool that will help you to work out if that's going on on your website and in your marketing as well. So if either of those free resources are helpful for people, then you're welcome to get to my website and have a look. That's awesome, Greta. I will put links to those in the show notes as well as to your website as well. All right. Lovely to see you. Take care. Nice to see you too. Thank you. Bye. Bye.