Tracey McLennan - High Prey Drive Club

This week on The Membership Podcast, Claire chats with Tracey McLennan about building a successful membership in a highly specialised niche.

Tracey runs The High Prey Drive Club, helping dog owners whose dogs chase wildlife, disappear on walks, become fixated on scents, or seem impossible to trust off lead. What started as a personal struggle with her own dogs has grown into a thriving membership supporting dog owners around the world. 

In this episode, we discuss:

•  What "high prey drive" means and why so many dog owners struggle with it 
•  How Tracey's own dogs led her into this specialist area of dog training 
•  Leaving a career in IT and building an online dog training business 
•  The research, qualifications and expertise behind her work 
•  How she launched her membership with a simple free challenge 
•  Why she chose an annual membership model rather than a monthly one 
•  The difference between her standard and VIP membership tiers 
•  Creating a membership community without relying heavily on Facebook groups 
•  Building custom membership technology to better support members 
•  The realities of pricing, discounting and attracting the right members 
•  Why low prices don't always lead to better members or better results 
•  The importance of ongoing support when helping people solve complex problems 
•  How memberships can provide flexibility and freedom during difficult life events 
•  The challenges and opportunities of running an evergreen membership 

Key Takeaways

•  The best memberships often solve a very specific problem. 
•  You don't need a huge audience to build a successful membership. 
•  Free challenges can be an effective way to introduce people to your membership. 
•  Long-term support often delivers better results than short courses. 
•  Pricing matters, not just for revenue but for attracting the right members. 
•  Memberships can create flexibility and stability in both business and life. 
•  Listening to member feedback helps your membership evolve and improve over time. 

About Tracey

Tracey McLennan is a dog trainer and behaviour specialist based in Scotland. She helps owners of high prey drive dogs enjoy more relaxed, successful walks and stronger relationships with their dogs.

Drawing on years of study, practical experience, published research, and work with her own challenging dogs, Tracy has created a unique membership that combines expert guidance with ongoing support. 

Links Mentioned

• Best Dog Learning & Stuff Website
• Facebook - High Prey Drive Dogs
• Instagram - Train High Prey Drive Dogs
• YouTube - High Pre Drive Dog Training

What You'll Learn

By listening to this episode you'll discover:

•  How to build a membership around a very specific niche 
•  Why annual memberships can work exceptionally well for transformational outcomes 
•  The role of community and personalised support in member success 
•  How Tracy uses technology to create a better member experience 
•  Lessons learned from launching, pricing and growing a specialist membership 

Connect with Claire

For more membership and recurring income strategies, visit:

• Recurring Income Academy
• Claire Mitchell Coach

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a business owner who is thinking about creating a membership around their expertise.

Transcript

Speaker 0:11

Welcome, Tracey. Hi, Claire. Lovely to be here. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us what your business does, please?

Speaker 2 0:21

Hi, I'm Tracey McLean. I run an online dog training business where I help people. It's a little bit of a niche. I help people with dogs that have got a high prey drive. So for people who don't know that phrase, those are the dogs that chase everything that moves or run away off after smells. Sometimes people tell me their dogs are very unpredictable because one minute they are next to them and the next minute they're just gone. Those are the dogs that I help with. How do you get into this? Like most dog trainers, I got into this because I had a dog with a high prey drive and I didn't know how to help him. I actually had two. My very first dog had quite a high prey drive, and he also really disliked other dogs in a big way. I did a lot of work with him, a lot of learning. I did a degree in dog training and behaviour. I did lots of courses with him. He was completely transformed. I didn't ever really focus on his prey drive because I was much more worried about his reactions to other people's dogs. But anyway, he got to be amazing. He would leave prey alone. He stopped chasing things, he stopped trying to kill rabbits and birds and things. He was amazing. I wrote a book about him. In 2007, I adopted this Collie Cross puppy, and my plan was to do dog sports with him because I felt like I was an expert dog trainer by then. I was busy doing this degree and I felt like an expert and I got this dog and he was half a collie, so I expected him to be more trainable than my first dog. He was a mastiff. And anyway, by the time that Colly Cross was a year old, he was regularly getting lost on walks for hours at a time, not just going off for five or ten minutes. I'm talking about hours. I worked in an office at the time, and I sometimes had to phone my boss and say, Yeah, anyway, I don't know when I'll be in because I've lost cooling. I was late for Christmas night out one year. It was just awful. And of course, all the learning I'd been doing wasn't helping. I had no idea how to help him. That's how he got into it.

Speaker 2:30

Gosh. Okay. So, whereabouts are you based?

Speaker 2 2:36

I am based in Scotland. I live in Glasgow now. But because I work online, I work with people all over the world. Distance is no impediment, and people don't have to transport themselves to where I live in order for us to work together, which is lovely.

Speaker 2:52

Let's talk about your membership because I know you've got a very successful membership. How many members have you got? 70 now. So, what's the name of your membership and who is it for specifically? I mean, I think we've got an idea, but just tell us who your ideal members are.

Speaker 2 3:06

The membership's called the High Prey Drive Club, and it's for people, it is quite specific. It's for people who have got pet dogs that have got a high prey drive. I currently have working red cocker spaniels, and if I wanted to work those dogs as gun dogs, there's loads of people I could go to. I'd go to a gun dog trainer to get help. But my clients, they often don't have specifically working red dogs. They didn't deliberately get a dog with a high prey drive. Some of them were actively trying to get a dog without a high prey drive, like I did with my very first dog, which didn't work. All my clients really want to be able to do is just go out and walk with their dog and for a walk not to be a massive drama. So that's the people that I am there to help. People who just want to go out and walk their dog and for it not to be a huge drama every single time.

Speaker 3:58

From your own dogs and studying dog training and becoming an expert and then having to relearn it all again, where does the membership come in? How did that start and why and when?

Speaker 2 4:09

What happened next was so I had really good success with my own dog with that collie cross. He got to be really good. So that was all fine. And I worked in IT at the time, I worked as a developer, and my plan was to keep doing that job until I retired. I loved that job, and that was my plan. And then I got made redundant. We all got made redundant, the whole department. So I decided I would start a business rather than look for another job. So I decided to start a business so that I could help people because a lot of my job was about helping people and also still keep some IT work in my life. So I started an online dog training business and then wrote the platform that my learning takes place on. So I did all of that and I started out, I didn't have a clear direction. I was mostly helping people with dogs that didn't like other dogs or didn't like people. And the year after I got made redundant, I started a master's degree in applied animal behaviour and training. And during that, I really decided to focus in on looking at prey drive in dogs. So I was researching it a lot, and I actually had my dissertation I had two articles published in a journal from my master's degree, which is quite an unusual thing to happen. But anyway, I really enjoyed doing the research and finding out all about it. So I submitted my things to the journal after it was finished, and they then published both of them, which was great. So after I'd been doing all of that, then I thought I should probably focus my work on this because I've now spent a whole lot of time studying it. By then I'd got my first cocker spaniel, and I said I'm deliberately getting dogs that are the sort of dogs I try and help people with, so I should focus on that. So that's what I did. And I started off with like short courses and little things, but none of those felt as fulfilling to me, and I felt as though people could get better results if I did something new. So in December 2022, I thought, you know what, do a year-long course. I've got six parts that people need to learn. So we could do each part twice in the year. I can offer people a lot of support throughout the year and they can learn what they need to learn. So I started off, I did a free challenge type thing that I did online, and then after that, I marketed the new membership to people, and it started in January 2023.

Speaker 6:36

How did you go about launching it that very first time then?

Speaker 2 6:39

So that very first time I did my free challenge, and I just talked about it a lot on Facebook, which was at the time the only social media I was really using. So I talked about it on Facebook. I've got a mailing list, and so I spoke to my mailing list a lot, and I said, Oh, do you want to join this free thing? And then afterwards I said, Oh, and now I've got this special offer. I did half price. For the first two launches, I did it as a half-price thing. And maybe you could join up and see. And because my challenge, I did it live, so people got the chance to come along and talk to me and they would see a lot from me. And that meant that like they had a bit of trust that I would genuinely turn up because it's a big commitment to join something for a year, and some people were a bit nervous about it, but I said, Oh, I will promise turn up for a year and I will teach this to you, and yeah, that was what I did. That was how I launched it. And I think it was such a good deal to start with. It was the cost was so low. I think that very first launch was the best one I ever did. About 30 people joined, and it was just the cost was so low for people, and they were curious as well. Everything I've done, I've found that the very first time like lots of people join up, and then the next launch is like I've I've not yet managed to replicate the very first launch again.

Speaker 8:03

How did you do the challenge then? What was the kind of stuff that you took people through? Because it's interesting using challenges, it's how I launched my Recurring Income Academy. But how did you structure your challenge to get people then into membership?

Speaker 2 8:17

In that very first one, I think for five days I gave them a tiny little piece of content that would be relevant to the sorts of things I'd teach in the membership. It was like I just made a short video, no more than five minutes, and I emailed them out a link to it, and first thing I'd scheduled up an email for five o'clock in the morning, and then in the evening we got together and had I think at the very start, I used a Facebook group. So in the evening I'd go in and do a Facebook live with them for half an hour, and that was how I delivered that very first live challenge that I did.

Speaker 8:53

And so, what did the very first version of your membership look like? And has it changed since then?

Speaker 2 8:58

Do you know it hasn't changed significantly? So I started off and I would record a masterclass, so those usually last for about an hour. And to start with, that was all I did, and I would let people download the slides. I created a private area for the members so that they could send messages to me and I could reply and share video with me. Because I found um Facebook groups, I find them really overwhelming to try and teach in because there's no way to make it show you things in order. And so I found that if I was trying to teach in a Facebook group, I'd just miss loads of things because it doesn't show you it in a coherent order. So I created something that would show me things in a coherent order, and over time it has evolved, so I've revamped that area so that now people can subscribe to their own little advice thread. Each person can create their own advice thread, and then only that person and I can talk up in there because I've got complete control over the code, so only the person and I can have the conversation about their dog, and it keeps the advice really clean. And then I've got a separate area where folk can talk among themselves more. I do have a Facebook group for the members, I don't really use it very often at all, but they quite like to share success stories, and the people that have been in for a year and have left can still stay in that group and keep in touch. So it is a nice group, but I just don't really participate in it. And yeah, and I've added over time, like some people said to me, I really hate watching long videos, I just hate it. So then when I make the slides, they're often quite wordy so that I've got all the information, and I create a separate worksheet with short video tutorials so that they can see what I mean. So I've added that in, and recently somebody said to me, Tracey, I would really like to be able to look at a transcript while I'm watching it. Her English is not her first language, although her English is very good. She felt like having a transcript would help as well. So I also started to upload them to YouTube because it does that. Um I will bring it all more in-house, but for the moment we just use YouTube for that. So whenever somebody says to me, Tracey, it would really help me if I could do whatever, then I just add it to my list of developments and down the line I add in the functionality. So it evolves. And every month, like I will sit down and review what I'm going to talk about in the next month's masterclass. And if it needs updated, I'll update it. People if members have been asking me different things, because obviously it it evolves as new people join. So if people are asking me different things, and it feels like it makes sense to include some new things, like I just add that in. So yeah, I've got a broad structure, but it does keep evolving as it goes.

Speaker 11:46

And is it easy for you to manage your membership? Is it quite light touch?

Speaker 2 11:50

It is, it's super easy for me to manage. It sounds like it would be a lot of work, but what I've done is I've structured it so that it's easy and manageable for me to run. And it might not be for somebody else, but for me it is. So every morning I go in during the week, I take weekends off. But every weekday morning I go in and I check the members' area and I see what questions people have asked me and I reply to them. And then I do the same thing usually at some point in the afternoon. And if I need to take time off, I just put a notice up and say I'm not going to be able to check who to be away or whatever. But it's not a huge work overload for me, and that's partly I've worked in IT for a really long time, and the job I did, I worked remotely from our customers, they were 500 miles away, and so I was really used to doing like calls. Like we didn't have video conferencing then, we had to do it on the phone. But I was really used to talking to people, I was really used to writing documents to help people, I was really used to explaining the same thing a lot because dog training is a bit like IT, it takes people time to understand something, so having to explain things more than once, and I was used to that structure of people would come and ask me questions and I would answer them because that's what my job was. So I've replicated that, and it feels easy to me. So yeah, somebody else might say, Oh, that just sounds like a lot of work, but to me it feels really easy. So, when did you actually launch your membership? I launched it in December 2022, and I did the first month of it in January 2023. So that's it, it's now in its third year of operation, which is great.

Speaker 13:32

And did you try anything in your marketing and launching that didn't work?

Speaker 2 13:36

Oh, yeah. Loads I have tried. So my plan when I first set off and the first launch was really successful. So then I thought, oh, this is great. I'll just do this challenge like maybe once a quarter, and then I'll get some new people to join up every time. Excellent, that that's what I'll do. I found that sometimes I would do the live challenge and people didn't sign up. I think I had one launch where like only one or two people signed up, and at that time I would only open access to join the membership at the end of the challenge. So then that was like a real problem to me because then people couldn't buy it. If they didn't buy during that week or whatever I had it open, they couldn't then join. So I did a bit more work so that people could join at any point. But then how do I explain to people that they should join now? Because to me, the urgency is really obvious. There is a real urgency for people, their dogs' lives are very short. That's the reality. Our dog's lives are relatively short compared to our lives. And if you spend the first five years of your dog's life not really making any progress and then losing confidence because it feels like you'll never make progress, people end up like for their dogs' whole life, there's a bit of a battle every time they take the dog on a walk, and that's a shame. So to me, that's where the urgency is. I am still working, I think, on communicating that effectively to people because to me that's where the urgency is, and that's why people should join now and not wait. But it was it creating that once I made it evergreen so that they could join whenever they wanted, it that has been that's an ongoing journey of discovery for me. But yeah, I've had loads that haven't worked. I did a disastrous thing a couple of years ago, or last year, I think it was at the start of last year, where I've got two tiers in my membership. I've got one where people get lots of contact with me, they can be in touch with me twice a day if they want, I will give them as much support as they need. And I've got a lower tier that's much lower cost, where they get the monthly masterclass, and we have once a month we have a QA call. And uh so I've got some people in that style of membership, and really for that one, the numbers there don't really make any difference to me. It's no extra work, no matter how many people are in it. Like maybe a bit of admin work behind the scenes, but it doesn't create any extra work, whereas the VIP version potentially creates a lot of extra work if there are a lot of people in it because of the constant contact. So I thought people are really worried about money. I'm gonna offer this at a really low cost for a limited period of time, and that'll get people to join up. And I did two or three launches like that, where I let people pay a really small amount of money. And my feeling now is that was a massive mistake because two things happened. The first one is it didn't sell as many places as I thought it would, so from a cost point of view, it wasn't worthwhile for me. But the other thing that happened was doing that attracted people who didn't value it at all, and I had some really negative comments from people who not from everybody, like most of the people that bought those really low-cost offers were absolutely lovely. But I did have some really quite unpleasant messages from people who objected to me like reminding them that if they wanted to upgrade to the VIP version and to get more support that they could do. I had a couple of really quite unpleasant messages from people complaining about that. Well, this is just a way to sell more stuff to me. I'm really angry about this. Um, and in the end, I decided that it was a real mistake to do discounting at all because it's such good value for the price. The price is really low for what I give people, and I decided I didn't want to lower that any further because then people weren't valuing it, and I don't feel like I was valuing it properly either. I don't think it was helpful for me, and I don't think it was helpful for the people that I want to help, because I want to help people who are ready to put at least some effort in. They have to be willing to spend a few minutes a day training your job.

Speaker 17:57

It is strange, isn't it, how different price points attract different people and the expectations of those different people. So it's definitely a learning curve. So, what price, if you don't mind telling us, did you start off at and launch at? And what did you drop it down to be nice? And what is it now with the two levels?

Speaker 2 18:14

So when I first launched that lower tier version where they just get the master classes and a call a month, it was something like £110 for a year. So it was a bit less than £10 a month, which was a really good deal. But people would still come to me and say, Oh, so much money, Tracy, I just can't afford it. So then I did what I did when I dropped it down was I said to people, you can pay £30 or £60 or the full amount. It must be £120. That would be the sort of thing I would do. It must have been £30, £60, and it must have been £120 was the original price. And so some people did take me up on the offer and they just paid the full amount. And a lot of people paid the £30 amount, and a lot of those people got in touch and said, Thank you so much, I couldn't have possibly afforded this. And at least one of those people later on upgraded to the VIP membership. So it's not that everybody that joined was really ungrateful. It was that was a minority, but you know, those comments sting. So now the price for the full VIP membership is about £500 if people pay up front, and if they can pay in four installments, it's slightly more if they do that, like 10% more or something. And for the lower cost option, the masterclass series auction, it's £118 if they pay up front and like £33 a month for four months if they want to pay in installments because some people prefer that. And for the moment I'm happy with those prices. I know some people we charge a lot more, some people we charge a lot less, but for the moment those prices are working for me.

Speaker 19:51

So by its nature, it's an annual membership. And did you do that because people need the time to work with their dogs? So rather than just joining for a month and then binging and then leaving, is it as much for you as it is for them, or how did you work that out?

Speaker 2 20:05

The work I'm doing is often things that that people will have been told more than once, probably by multiple dog trainers, that it's impossible because I was, and because of that, there's a lot of mindset work that needs to be done, and people have got a lot of learning that they need to do, and they do need time. That just you can't do that learning in a month, you just can't. So I set it up as a year-long programme because I felt as if I had a year I could cover everything that I think is most important, and people would have the opportunity to have as much conversation with me as they wanted to, and they like I don't throw them out at the end. Some people stay for more than one year if they're still learning. Like some of my clients have got really difficult dogs, and they've been working for a long time, and they have just got a lot of learning to do, like I did when I started out with this. I had a lot of learning to do, and it took me years. And also, I am a dog trainer, so it's normal to me to take time on it. People who are not dog trainers have a perception, and I just I think that the dog training community is part of the reason for it, because what you'll typically do if you get a puppy, you'll sign up for a six-week puppy course, and I think that gives people the perception that after six weeks they've learned everything they need to learn, and they haven't even scratched the surface of everything they need to learn in that six-week course. But I think that is partly where it comes from. So I've been learning about gun dog trainings. I got my first spaniel, and I've been going to see one of the trainers I see for at least three years now, probably approaching four years, because I think I started seeing her when my older spaniel was about one, not long after lockdown, and she'll be five this year. So I think I've been going to see the same trainer for four years now. And every time I see her, or every time I learn something, I think there's so much more to learn. So I did say to people, I want you to come and work for me for a year. I don't want to just join for a month and go away again because I feel like more time is important. So that's why I made it a year thing. I want it to be as effective as possible.

Speaker 22:09

And so how are you getting people into your membership now then? Are you still doing the challenges? I know you're letting people join anytime, but what are you finding is working best at the moment? Because it does change.

Speaker 2 22:20

It does. So I've been experimenting a little bit. So I turned my challenge into something people could just sign up for anytime. That's been reasonably successful, but I now feel as though what I might do next is do a short course that's paid for and see if people pay for a shorter course. Will that make them more likely to then spend money and sign up for a longer course? So that's what I'm going to experiment with. Give them a quick win. Do something because the thing that I found with that free challenge, it was more effective than I thought it was going to be. So I have got hundreds and hundreds of testimonials for that. There are some people who never bought anything from me because they did that little thing and it fixed their problem. So now I'm thinking about what if I do something similar and pull out all the best bits because that challenge has changed over time as well. Pull out all the best bits of it, make a shorter course that people pay for, and then if that fixes their problem, that's absolutely fantastic. And if it doesn't, I've got something else that they can come in with that will be much more in depth. So that's what I'm going to experiment with next. See if that helps. Tracey, how do most people find you at the moment? People seem to find me in various ways. Lots of people find me by Googling because I've now got quite a lot of blogs and I'm quite active on social media. So people will often find me through Google. I think some people find me through AI searching, through asking AI questions, because I know it sometimes recommends that people come and see me. Some people find me because I sometimes work with other dog training organisations, so folk might have heard about me that way. I do podcast interviews when people ask me to, and so some folk find me like that. Yeah. Stay as active as I can so that I can talk to people and then they can find out about me. Somebody joined my membership recently and she said to me, I've been following you for a year and I've been working on other things with my dog, but I now think it's time to do your work with the dogs. So people just find me, they see what I'm doing, they read my blogs, they maybe set up my email list, or they follow me on social media or something, and then or somebody mentions them. Somebody else that joined quite recently said my dog trainer recommended that I join in with you. Um I've been doing this for a lot, I've been working in dog training alongside IT. I've been doing it for a really long time, and so we get to know people, and then people recommend and they say, Why don't you go and look and see what Tracey's doing? So that's like where people mostly seem to find me. I recently had an email from a book publisher saying, We really like your work. Would you consider writing a book? And they're a good publisher, they've published a couple of books that I really like on dog training. And I emailed them back and I said, Funnily enough, I am writing a book. I have been writing a book since I finished my master's degree like three years ago, and it's going very slowly. So, yes, I absolutely would be interested in working with you. So I signed a contract with them. So I'm working away, they've given me a deadline which is helpful, and also they'll be able to help out with editing and things like that. So it's really nice to be able to. I do work in with somebody else if I possibly can. So yeah, I am busy as well writing this book because they came along and so they found me somehow. I don't actually know how they found me, but they found me.

Speaker 25:51

So I'd love to hear about some of the success stories that you've had with your lovely members, your proudest moments.

Speaker 2 25:58

So yeah, I think my proudest moment is seeing how effective this work is. I wasn't entirely sure how it would be when I obviously when you start something new, it's difficult to know. So I am consistently really proud of my members and really proud when I ask them how they're getting on, and they say, Oh, this is just changing my life. So I have one client who's in America, and she has said to me before, This is what I've been looking for for years. Now she's a very engaged dog owner. She has attended lots and lots of dog training classes and seminars, has worked with some really amazing trainers, and she's very experienced with dogs. She has one right now who's a challenge, but she's a very knowledgeable person. She said that what has always been a problem for her is she's always wanted more support than it was possible to get. Because when you work face to face, you typically turn up for the class or the workshop or whatever it is, and then you go home, and that's it. You don't have all that much contact with the trainer in between times. So she had been looking for years for a way of working with a dog trainer that could give her that day-to-day support, so she's delighted, and she's making good progress with her dog, but she's just delighted to be able to get the amount of support that she can get, which I'm also delighted about, and she thinks it's quite funny because obviously we're geographically so far apart, we can't meet up in person at all, but it doesn't matter because I am able to be there for her regardless. So she's one, and one of my very first members joined up with a dog, she was thinking about me homing him because his behaviour around prey was so extreme, and she was like, I'm at the end of my rope with this dog, I don't know what to do, and I like can't get through to him. And now they have got the happiest of lives together. She really understands her wee dog, and they're having such a good time. They go away off now and they do like dog training courses and things together, they've gotten quite into it, and yeah, she sometimes will send me video and say, Look at this, look at what he's doing. There's no way to change them so that they don't have a prey drive. That's part of who those dogs are. But she has really taken that on board and it has worked with that wee dog to the point that she's achieving things I like just wouldn't have thought would be possible for them, not based on where he was at the beginning. Yeah. It's just they've got so many stories like that where people have come along with a dog that's really challenging them, and then they stay, they do the work, and eventually things just fall into place for them, and life is much better for them. So, yeah, it's a really nice thing to run because of the success that people are able to get through it.

Speaker 29:00

So, where does your membership fit in your business and what does it allow you to do that you maybe couldn't do before?

Speaker 2 29:07

Well, my membership is like the main part of my business, really. I occasionally add in other wee bits and pieces, but it's the main thing because it brings me the most fulfillment, so that's where I want to focus my energy. It's I feel like it's where I can make the biggest difference. So it's the main part of my business. Um thank goodness for it. So three years ago now, I couldn't have launched it very long. I must have only just launched this membership when one of my nephews had a really serious skiing accident and he broke his back very badly. He now uses a wheelchair to get around. He's incredible though, he's just the most incredible young man. He's taken up car racing, he's only 17, but you're allowed to learn, if you're disabled, you're allowed to learn how to drive when you're 16, at least in Scotland. I don't know if that's the UK, but you're allowed to learn to drive when you're 16. So he passed his driving test when he was 16, and he passed his racing licence a few weeks before he passed his road driving licence. He's absolutely incredible. I do know I've never heard him complain about the changes in his life, and he's just making the most of it because of his accident. At the time, I lived not a huge distance away, but I was about 30 or so miles away from my sister and her family, and that was because I worked, that was where I work. I lived close to my work, and obviously now I work from home because I have an online business. I have got a great deal of flexibility in my working day. I'm not anymore like tied to work from the hours of nine to five Monday to Friday. I work every day pretty much, but the days are so flexible that I moved to Glasgow two years ago. So I lived a mile away from my sister now, about a mile away from my mum. And having a business that was really flexible allowed the time to be able to make that move. Moving house is not an easy process, and it's time consuming. So I was able to do that. My sister helped massively, she was super enthusiastic, so she probably spent more time on it than I did, but it let me move down here and it lets me spend time with my family. I can go during the day and see them, and I can meet my sister. Uh got a little dog not all that long after my nephew's accident because he felt as though the whole family really wanted a dog, and I kept on saying, Are you sure though? This doesn't feel like a good time to get a dog, but I was completely wrong. It was the best time to get a dog, and they all love that wee dog so much. So we we can go out and we can walk our dogs together, and we can like during the day. My sister also runs a business with a lot of flexibility, it just lets us spend time together and it lets me be present for my family in a way that just wouldn't have been possible previously, and still earn money, absolutely. My employer that I had before was very flexible, and I did work part-time, but even so, there are you know, they want you to be at work during working hours. It's made a massive difference in terms of the flexibility that I could have in the day and just being able to structure my day in a way that makes the most sense for me rather than in a way that makes the most sense for somebody else's business.

Speaker 32:37

What are your dreams and plans for your lovely membership?

Speaker 2 32:41

What I would really like to do with my membership, and this is a five-year plan, but what I'd really like my membership ultimately to look like is I'd feel like I can support a hundred VIP members. So I'd quite like to have a hundred VIP members, and then I'd quite like to have about 900 members who are at the lower tier level. I feel like if I can help a thousand people a year, that feels like a good number to me. So that's my that is my goal and my dream for my membership, and that's what I'm working towards right now.

Speaker 33:17

Excellent, and I know you can do it. So, what advice would you give to somebody who's sitting on a membership idea and isn't launching yet for whatever reason?

Speaker 2 33:27

I would say to do it, put it together, figure out the problems one step at a time, but just keep doing it. When I started my business, I was working in IT and I still had my job, and we were actually not only were we working to put ourselves out of a job, we were directly having to support the work to get rid of us. But also, I had some line management duties, so I was also having to make the people in my team redundant while going through the redundancy process myself. It was a really hard time, and I decided I would start this business. I was busy learning about making a website, so every morning I used to get up and I spend a wee hour or two before I went to work working on my website, and sometimes I would be completely stuck and I added PayPal payments into it like for two weeks every day. I just swept, I can't, I can't never get this working. But I just kept going every day. I kept going a little bit more and a little bit more until eventually I did have things that worked, and I expect that to continue every so often. I come up against something I don't know what to do now, or there's some challenge and trying to get people to join my membership, I don't know what to do now, and then find a solution to that. I think sometimes what puts people off is they're trying to find a solution to problems that don't happen, that don't exist yet. It's like a what if. Well just do it and then see if the what if happens, then deal with the what if, because it might not happen.

Speaker 35:01

That's really good advice. Is there anything that's surprised you about having a membership?

Speaker 2 35:06

It surprised me how much I like it. I think that's what surprised me. It's how much enjoyment I get out of running it and helping people. And like the things, it's that whole curse of knowledge thing, isn't it? I often think everybody knows this. Like I looked at a video that somebody'd sent me this morning of our dog, and I said, Oh, this is so fascinating. This really tells a story, and I edited the video to put in a few captions to show her the story that I could see in what her dog was doing. And I thought, she already knows all this. And I felt that surge of imposter syndrome where I thought I'm just telling her stuff that she'll already know. And then she replied and said, That's really interesting. I didn't see any of that. But it's that curse of knowledge thing, isn't it? Where you feel I certainly always feel like everybody just knows that I'm just regurgitating stuff that everybody knows, and I have to remind myself that's not the case. Everybody doesn't know what I know.

Speaker 36:03

So I'm curious because you said that sometimes people get their dogs deliberately because they don't want a dog with a high prey drive, and yet the dog does have a high prey drive. So, what are the most common breeds of dog that people struggle with that have a high prey drive? And what are the most unusual ones that you've had to come up with?

Speaker 2 36:21

Yeah, yeah, no, cockapoos often surprise people with their prey drive because they're like nice fluffy little family pets, but they are bred from two gun dog breeds, and so some of them they don't all, but some of them have got very high prey drive, but not, even cavalier spaniels. Now they are a toy breed, but I have worked with a cavalier who hunted like any other spaniel, absolutely to watch her, she is small, but she just looks like any other spaniel. But even spaniels, even spaniels, uh, people get them because perhaps they're very active and they want to go on lots of walks, so they'll sometimes go out and get a working bread spaniel because they like to do a lot of walking. But those dogs, yes, they're very high energy, they absolutely a working bread spaniel is a very high-energy dog, but they need a lot of training if you want them to be able to go on walks with you rather than just taking off following their nose into the countryside and then potentially not coming back for a while. So even spaniels, like one of the gun dog trainers I went and can see I see at the moment when I started seeing her, she said to me, So are you really struggling? So I'd said, Oh, I'd just like to book in and do some one-to-ones with you. And she said, Oh, you have are you finding your spaniel really difficult? And I said, Oh no, I'd quite like to compete with her, so I'm just interested in learning. I don't know anything about gun dog training, and I'm I or I don't know much, I'd just like to learn more. And she said, Oh, because often dog trainers really struggle with working-bred spaniels because just follow their nose, and um, it can make them very difficult because there's lots of prey absolutely everywhere. You know, I used to walk rurally, now I live on the outskirts of a city, and actually the wildlife situation here in the city is more challenging than it was when I lived rurally, so don't even spaniels surprise people sometimes.

Speaker 38:25

You said something that surprised me there. You said that cockpoos are a combination of two gun dogs. Poodles are gun dogs, working dogs. Poodles are poodles.

Speaker 2 38:34

Yeah, they typically the standard poodles would be more used as gun dogs, but there are a couple of people in the UK breeding standard and working standard poodles on shoots. They're water retrieving dogs. That's why they have that ridiculous haircut that everybody laughs at. It has a purpose. So they take off most of their fur so that they don't go all heavy and wet when they go in the water, but they leave these puffy bits over their shoulders and over their leg, their ankle and their uh wrist joints to try and just protect them from the cold of the water, like the haircut. The haircut everybody laughs at has a purpose for a working dog that's bred to for water retrieving, which is what they're not commonly used anymore, but they originally were gun dogs, and some people do still work them as gun dogs, more likely the standard poodles because they're that bit bigger, the very small ones you probably wouldn't be able to do.

Speaker 39:32

That's really interesting. That's something I didn't know. This has been the fascinating chat. I've learned a lot about dogs with uh high prey drives. Um, thank you so much for your time. This has been really interesting. I would love to know how people can find you because I'm sure you're gonna have people listening to this and thinking, I really need Tracey.

Speaker 2 39:52

So the best place to find me is on my website, which is based doglearning and stuff.co.uk. Some people do just find me by googling my name. But I'm also on, I've got a Facebook page which is SainHigh Pre-Drive Dogs. I've got a YouTube channel as well, started TikTok and I've got Instagram. So people can find me in all of those places as well.

Speaker 40:19

And I'll put those links in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for your time. This has been really interesting, and I've loved hearing about your membership. And yeah, wish you all the best of the future.

Speaker 1 40:30

Thank you so much. It's been a lovely conversation. My nice week to spend a Friday afternoon.

Speaker 40:36

I love that chat with Tracey. The High Prey Drive Club is such a fantastic example of a niche membership that meets a real need. And I learned something new about cockapoos. So if you want to find out more about Tracey or her membership, check the show notes for links. And if you are sitting on a brilliant idea that could become a membership, even in the most unexpected niche, then come and join us inside the Recurring Income Academy because that's what we're here for.