Key Takeaways
- Why Kathy walked away from a long career to start offering dog training services — and how the existing model of teaching her courses in-person almost derailed her business.
- How Kathy got over the initial hurdle that she thought would make doing her work online impossible — and why the membership model turned out to be perfect for what she does.
- How Kathy’s initial disappointment with her launch opened a new door for her.
- How to overcome self-doubt and the voice in your head telling you not to launch.
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“It’s sad to even think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t pushed through the discomfort and the worry and the concern, like, ‘What if no one likes me? What if no one thinks I’m good enough? What if no one signs up?’ All that. None of them were true.” – Kathy KalawecEpisode Resources
Enlightened By Dogs Podcast Enlightened By Dogs Dancing Hearts Facebook page Brilliant Partners ClubTranscript
Read The Transcript
Shelli: Kathy Kawalec, one of my favorite humans, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. How are you, my dear friend?
Kathy: I’m awesome and thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited to talk to you today.
Shelli: Oh my gosh, I saw you on the list and I’m like, “Yes, I get to talk to Kathy.” It’s been a while since we chatted, and so much has happened so I’m excited to catch up and also share your story with our amazing community. So, with that said, I would love it if you could tell us your story of who you are now and the amazing business that you run the people you serve and how you serve them, but most importantly, where you were before you started this business.
Kathy: All right. Well, I’m in love with life, but I love animals, have always been an animal lover and my pre-business life involved like 35 years of working with horses and dogs and I was likely big into showing and training and really enjoying partnering with my animals. And so, I was on a path. I’ve been on this path for a really long time, but I wanted to get it right in my mind as far as allowing my animals, my partners, my dogs, and my horses, to have a real voice in our process of becoming partners and working together. I didn’t want just to be their boss. I wanted to be real collaborative partners so no one was teaching that. I sort of figured that out on my own and my animal partners helped me with that. So, I was having a great time, a great life, really learning a lot and I am passionate about, of all things, sheep herding with my Border Collies. And so, what happened was I was having a lot of success in the sheep herding world in competitions and like top-level sheep herding competitions which probably I’m imagining most people don’t even know exists, but we were having great success.
And so, my friends, my peers, my fellow, and herding dog enthusiasts started asking me to help them, “Can you help me here? I love the way you are with your dogs. You’re so amazing and you’re having this great success.” So, I started doing lessons here on my little farm and I just did it like on the weekends and the evenings after work and so that’s how that was my humble beginning and ultimately, it led to me leaving corporate America and working full time in my little business here on my farm. And so, I was doing lessons and workshops then I started traveling around first, the Midwest region and then a little further out across the country doing clinics and seminars and workshops. I certainly enjoyed it. I loved it, but it was hard on me, the traveling, being away from home. It was weather dependent because I’m working outside and so I have these great months where I was like, “Oh, wow, this is great. I can pay my bills. This is alright,” and then it was like, “Oh my God,” I had to cancel everything because we had bad storms or we’ve had ice and snow for months.
And so, that roller coaster of not having consistent income was so hard on me and really, I was ready to, I don’t know, go get a job because I thought I really can’t continue to operate like this with that up and down roller coaster, not having a steady consistent income. And so, what I decided to so what I was doing at the time was I was adding on more stuff so different kinds of workshops, different kinds of classes, different kinds of lessons and so I was working a lot to try to pull enough programs and enough content together to make a living and then one of my friends said, “Hey, you know, how they’re starting to do like online training now?” and I was like, “Uh, no.”
Shelli: No one else has online training you speak of.
Kathy: Exactly. I’m like, “No, not really.” She says, “Yeah. I’ve got this idea. I want to start an online school. Would you be interested in being one of my teachers?” and I said, “Well, what I teach can’t possibly be converted to an online. You have to be in person. It has to be touchy-feely. It’s not possible.” And she’s like, “Think about it.” So, anyway, I thought about it and I made my first online course for her school and it was a blast. It was fun. And so, I thought, “I can do this,” so I started getting really excited about online training and online courses and then that I got on the launch roller coaster. Oh my gosh, it was like feast or famine like, “Oh my God, I did so great. I launched my course and I’ve got these amazing people and they’re awesome and we’re getting great results,” and then no income for the next two months and then launch again. And so, that’s where I was on this launch roller coaster and I was like, “I can’t do this anymore,” and at one point I said, “Okay. This isn’t any better than what I had before with the weather thing and traveling. I was like, “This is crazy.”
Then I heard about this new thing, membership sites. I thought, “I wonder if I can do that.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could do it. I didn’t think that was going to work for me because I envisioned having to be like a content generating robot like, “Oh my God, I’m going to be stuck creating all this content every month,” and all that serious commitment and then people are going to be leaving and I’m going to have to, you know, I couldn’t work that out. And so, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go that route, but I did a beta launch from people that had been in my courses, that had my signature program, and so I offered them this opportunity to join me in the membership and nothing was in it yet. It was just pretty casual and so I think I got about maybe 40 or so.
Shelli: That’s incredible.
Kathy: Totally, right? It was and so I’m like, “Okay. This is great. I’ve got 40 women that are willing to come and pay me every month,” and I don’t really remember. I think my very first it was low. I think it was like, I don’t know, $200 a year if they did annual and 19 a month. It was something, whatever. It was really low but it was good. I loved it and it’s like, “I can do this,” and we had a great time, but I didn’t know how to promote it. I didn’t know how to get more members. I would sort of put out some promotions or whatever and I found that it wasn’t all that easy to get people to enroll in a membership. And so, in the meantime I was still doing my course launches and then finally, gosh, this was back in 2017 so I don’t know like maybe June-ish of 2017 I found out about TRIBE and about, you know, Stu’s program. And okay here’s the thing that appealed to me. There were two things that one of my friends that were in a program with Ryan Levesque had mentioned that he heard Ryan talking about this TRIBE program, this guy named Stu McLaren and it’s like, “What is this?”
Because I was like recurring revenue is my thing. I want to do this right now. I was determined to figure out how to do it. So, the things that appealed to me were batching content. That’s even a possibility? I don’t know. So, batching content and having a success path. So, I thought, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” And so, people have a beginning and a process and so I worked it out so I joined TRIBE and I started to work this out and I got pretty excited about it. And I did a launch in like the fall, like late fall of 2017 and to be honest, I had visions that I was going to, you know, have like a thousand members because like I’m successful, I’m pretty well known in my industry, people love my work. I get great results. Now, I got this crazy success path and so I launched and I got like almost of I think was like 89 new members. So, looking back, I’m thinking, “Wow. That was fantastic,” but at the time I was really disappointed because I could see people having so many members like so and so got 500 members, you know, so-and-so got 1,000 members.
So, I was a little disappointed but then I like sort of, I don’t know, a new layer peeled open for me like a new door. When I sort of sat myself down, and I really got in touch with how amazing it was that I now had like 130 members that loved me and trusted me to lead them on this journey and how amazing that was and then from a business standpoint, I realized, “I have to grow my audience. I have to have a longer runway. I’ve got to do those other things that Stu teaches.” I’ve got to do that. And so, then I started down that path and I started putting out more connection videos and doing a lot of case study stuff and then now it’s just snowballing. So, now I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so glad that I started this membership site.” I love it and I love being able to get so connected with. It’s mostly women. It mostly served women that are dog enthusiasts and want to partner with their dogs. And so, I love serving them and I love them having that success and I know that they can get the success because they stay with me long enough to have breakthroughs. A course doesn’t do that for you. You can’t get that in a course.
Shelli: Okay. I want to drive in and ask you some questions because this is some juicy meaty stuff here. I have had the opportunity to speak with you personally and I happen to know that you are one of the best in the world at what you do and I also appreciate the way that you have this innate ability to both hone in on the communication that the dog needs, the language they speak, and you’re almost like a translation guide between what the human thinks the dog wants and with the best of intentions and what the dog is actually trying to say. I love that you’re kind of like instead of like an English to Spanish dictionary, you’re kind of like a human to dog translator.
Kathy: I love it. That’s a great way to look at it. Yes, indeed.
Shelli: And I’m wondering how as you started your membership site with that in mind, how this gift of communication and translation has worked for the people that you serve in terms of those breakthroughs.
Kathy: Well in some cases, it’s a struggle for some of the women because this is what I teach is is counterintuitive and not considered called the cultural norm like the normal thing is your dog needs to be trained and told what to do because they’re not capable of embodying any type of agency and there’s no reason to give them a real voice. And so, for some women even though on one part of them, they resonate with that that’s why they join but they’re not really ready, and so in some cases, I see that they’re struggling with the concepts because they’re having difficulty like matching up what they want to do and what they think they’re supposed to do by what the world says. But the bulk of my members even though it might take them some time and some momentum there’s passion so they stick with it and they open up their mind, they open up their heart, and oh my gosh, the results and the life-changing experiences that they’re now having with their dogs is just incredible and, I mean, you know I get teary-eyed and choked up and seeing the transformations and it did not only affect their relationship with the dogs but it affects their entire life in all the relationships and so it’s pretty cool.
Shelli: Well, it’s kind of like the magic of being heard both for them as well as for the dogs.
Kathy: Totally. Totally, yes. And so, we just saw in the class today and that’s exactly what we’re talking about. And so, one of the things that no one teaches in the dog training world is that, one, the dogs actually do have a voice and they need to be heard but the other side no one teaches is that you get to be heard too, right? As a human being, you have needs that need to be met as well as your dog and so some – and women especially, we get really caught up in like the caregiving, nurturing role, and we put everyone else in front of us but there’s this like magical place that we can come together and meet our dogs’ needs and meet our own needs and we come together and that is where the magic happens. It’s so cool.
Shelli: Well, it must be really transformative too to get a TRIBE of people who are training under you, who are now all aligning with these new concepts, and to your point, you said that the way you teach is counterintuitive, but when you have a group of people that are all kind of leaning into each other going, “Now, this is how we do. It’s got to be pretty powerful in terms of community, but I also wanted to ask you too one of the things you said was when you first started, you’d like to be hands-on and very touchy-feely. What was the misconception you had about how things would be online as opposed to hands-on and how was it different than you originally thought?
Kathy: I was stuck in tradition. I was stuck in tradition and that is that people are looking for dog training. So, if you do your market research, if you do your homework, people are looking for dog training. Well, those are air quotes, and dog training means that it’s very physical. You’re demonstrating do this with your leash, do this with your hand, do this to your dog. You know what I mean? And so, I was having difficulty wrapping my head around this idea of how to reach people and get past their cultural conditioning mentally like you don’t actually need to do most of that stuff, but also how can I communicate that without like in other words like if you’re correcting someone’s elbow like all your elbows and you’re pushing your elbow out, stand up taller like the things that the physical moves that people make when they’re interacting with their dogs is what is traditional. So, what I did was I slowly converted and meet people where they are and it’s like, “Yes, I’m teaching the dog training,” but I’m quickly switching it over to this is the kind of dog training that I do. So, I started that like years ago but what I’ve done in with the membership is and starting with my online courses but now deeply in the membership is I can demonstrate with video and I can get to the heart of what we’re really trying to teach our dogs and I can tell you, Shelli, it has nothing to do with the physicality piece.
It has everything to do with the heart connection and an open mind and we just like any relationship. If you have an open heart and an open mind and you’re passionate about understanding and communicating and making a connection with that other person, you don’t need to learn, no one needs to teach you how to have a hug and how to hold hands or how to kiss. You just do it. You figure it out. And so, same thing with our dogs.
Shelli: That’s brilliant.
Kathy: Yeah. And the community is amazing. I mean, some women have been with me since my very first online course so several years now, and through the membership and beyond and with the community themselves, they are we call it the program, the membership is called Brilliant Partners Academy so I’m teaching passionate dog enthusiasts which are women how to be brilliant partners for and with their dogs. And so, we call ourselves the BPs so that’s our nickname, the BPs. So, we have T-shirts that say BP stuff and we have these little sayings and it’s a community. It’s a place where people feel like home and they come and they share and they support and they love on one another like I’ve never seen before. I absolutely love it.
Shelli: Well, I’m familiar with your community as well and the thing that I believe some people might not see from the outset, who are getting into membership in community is that it starts with the topic that you bring them in for but then life seeps in and it ends up because I remember you telling me a few stories of life transformations that were created through the topic of dog partnership but actually had a bigger impact on the person’s life and that’s all as a result of being part of your membership in your community and being entrenched in your world with other people that are like-minded.
Kathy: Totally. Absolutely. Totally. I mean, when we have a safe place like this is how I think about it. When we can create a safe place where people can feel comfortable sharing more deep and more important things like in certain lines of work. I mean, not everyone can have a membership like that but if you’re in the transformation business which is what I am and we can create that safe space and that opportunity for people to feel like they belong, to feel like they’re understood, to feel like they are in the right place with others that are the same as them. It’s so powerful and they don’t want to leave. And so, when you can make that connection, not only are they going to stay and so, from a business perspective that’s really good, but from a transformational perspective, it’s incredible because the longer they stay, the greater the transformation possibility. And so, I get to really have an influence on their entire life, not just the relationship with their dog because when one part of us changes, it affects all the rest of us. We’re not like little-isolated pockets of being. We’re all individuals. We are one tapestry of the light and soul. You know what I mean?
Shelli: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, someone said once it’s great to be loved, but it’s profound to be understood.
Kathy: Yes.
Shelli: I have one final question for you. So, you were circling back to you when you first started and your business was on the road and it was hands-on and it was weather-dependent. You said there was a point when you thought you weren’t going to be able to continue to do this, and you thought about getting a job, or the possibility that you might have to get a job. I’m curious now that you know what you know about creating a membership site and these incredible relationships and transformations that you witnessed as a result of having moved forward with that. What do you think the cost would’ve been to you and to your community if you had not had the opportunity to share your gift?
Kathy: Whoa. Whoa. Well, I don’t even know how to describe that. Let’s just say that the cost would be life affecting. I mean, every day I get an opportunity to connect with the most beautiful people in the world through our common passion and that lights me up like nothing else can. And I’ve got big dreams of having a huge effect on the world and the world, especially the world of people that love dogs and none of this would be possible, none of this. Like, so my life I would probably be very sad and depressed working for someone else because I’m not cut out for that even though I did it for a long time and the lives of people that I have thousands of lives that I have touched and changed over these past few years. I don’t know. I mean, it’s sad to even think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t pushed through that discomfort and that worry and that concern like what if no one likes me? What if no one thinks I’m good enough? What if no one signs up? All that.
Shelli: Yeah. Because what you found on the other side of that is that literally none of those things were true.
Kathy: None of them. None of them were true. That for me, personally, one of my biggest like life lessons is having that insight that I was living in the space at the time. I was living in the space of it’s required of me to prove my worthiness to the world and to my audience so that they are willing to join up with me on my mission. And, oh my God, I was messed up, man. I mean, this is messed up thinking and of course I know that now and we already I think I believe that each of us already have everything we need to step up into that place of owning the fact that we have a beautiful gift to share and we are denying someone else of some wisdom and something that we can share with them that will change their life and if we aren’t brave enough to step up and we can’t get through those difficult feelings, if we’re not brave enough and courageous enough to just step forward then we’re not only are we denying ourselves a life of service that’s beyond measure, but we’re keeping other people, we’re keeping or holding them back because they need us.
Shelli: Finally, what advice would you give to somebody who is thinking about starting a membership perhaps is having some of those feelings that you just described?
Kathy: I think you have to find believing eyes. I think you need to find a community of people that believe in you and that believe that you can do it and that will support you. And so, that’s what I did and like, for example, being in the in the TRIBE Community it’s an amazing community and that helped me to get through that place of I’m not good enough to do this, being surrounded. So, not only do we provide that service for others through our membership but being in a community ourselves as an entrepreneur or businesswoman or world changer, it really helps to have our own community that supports us.
Shelli: Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time. It is always my greatest privilege to spend time with you as you know. If people are looking for you online. Kathy, where’s the best place they can find you?
Kathy: The best place is go to my podcast. Enlightened By Dogs is the name and it’s just EnlightenedByDogs.com. You will find all things Kathy and I hope you listen and enjoy the podcast too. It’s life-changing beyond dogs.
Shelli: Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time and hanging out with us on the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast and I’m hoping to catch up with you again real soon.
Kathy: Thanks, Shelli. It’s great.
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