Business success stories: Lisa Sinnott, St Paws Training Academy

Recently, we had the pleasure of talking to Lisa Sinnott, Owner of St Paws Training Academy, to find out how her business has been doing in the last few years.

Why did you approach STANTA for business advice?

I first approached STANTA in 2016 when I set up my first business, a dog walking business. Having not run a business before, I thought any advice I could get would be valuable to get me up and running. I saw Mel who helped me with my business plan. At this stage I was walking one dog a week. My business grew well over the next four years, I had 5 staff members as there was so much demand, and then Covid hit. Overnight my business ended. No one needed their dog walking anymore and so I had to say goodbye to my staff.

Moving to the present day, I gained a postgraduate university degree in clinical animal behaviour and am now a dog training and behavioural specialist, operating as St Paws Training Academy. I returned to STANTA earlier this year for advice on starting my new business from scratch, creating a new website, SEO and learning about how to market myself.

This time round I met with Steve who advised me on developing the business. He guided me to look at different segments and other areas of Hertfordshire to market myself to. Understanding who my ideal client is, communicating my values through my website copy, making it clear what I offer and how I’m different to others were all key takeaways.

How has the business advice helped you?

STANTA’s business advice helped me gain clarity and gave me lots to think about that I hadn’t thought about before.

I felt calmer and clearer afterwards with an action plan rather than a mountain of ideas. The advice given made me realise that clients have diverse needs and that I need to approach them differently. I have since developed a variety of packages and services and I focus on my clinical animal behaviour credentials and experience as a key differentiator.

There are unfortunately a few cowboys that offer dog training services. I hear second-hand from people after they’ve been working with others that it hasn’t worked, or their dog’s behaviour worsened. I often have to do a fair bit of unpicking.

My approach is to look at the dog’s behaviour holistically; diet, sleep, behaviour, what they do day-to-day and the emotion behind the behaviour. The context and emotion behind the behaviour is key to why things happen in a certain way.

The best thing about STANTA is that they are very welcoming with lots of great advice. They help you to make connections with other people and networking groups. It’s really important to have community when you’re starting out.

Sometimes it can be rather intimidating as a very small business – you know what you need to do, but the way people sometimes say things can make you feel stupid. But I’ve never felt that about STANTA.

Have you taken advantage of any of the workshops STANTA runs?

I did the Effective Selling workshop, the Building your Brand workshop and the Bookkeeping workshop. I really like the training workshops and that they are face-to-face rather than online.

I also enjoyed meeting other businesses on the workshops. It can be quite lonely, especially if you don’t have staff, so meeting other people, bouncing round ideas and just generally engaging and interacting with other business owners is a great thing.

And finally, how is your business doing today?

I’ve been helping more dogs than I did last year, which is my ultimate goal. I run puppy classes throughout the week and see six dogs in each session and a good number of behaviour clients each month.

I’m enjoying doing lunch and learns in vet surgeries, spreading the word, whilst helping to make the vets a more dog and cat friendly place. I also did a talk at Oaklands College to animal care and animal management students which was well received.

Since setting up St Paws I’ve also launched my St Claws Academy, exclusively for cats. I love animals so I want to help as much and wherever I can.

I was recognised as one of 30 finalists (out of 1,000!) at the Everywoman Awards and won the Runners-Up Artemis Award – I also got to mix with lots of amazing people and MBEs.

I’m proud of my 32 reviews on Google. I like to ask for feedback rather than just ask for reviews so I can constantly improve my business. This gives me real insight into what my customer wants on a regular basis.

I’m doing a podcast now to reach a wider audience and BBC Breakfast invited me recently on the famous sofa as a guest to give my views about dog behaviour.

For me, my biggest achievement is helping people with their pets and giving them some understanding of why their pets are behaving the way they are and busting some myths.

Molly, a French bulldog crossed with a boxer, is a recent example of a dog I worked with – she was really scared of other dogs. Her owner had described her as an ‘angel indoors but a devil outside’. She’s still on a journey but is vastly improved with my help. She can get out of the red zone much quicker if she does flip over now.

I’m so happy that I’m able to do this for a living. I get a lot of satisfaction seeing how improved the animals are.