Dog Sled Trainer Becomes Women’s Fitness Coach

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey there, hello, it's Chris Guillebeau. I'd like to begin today's episode with a shout out to everyone 50 years old and better. Now listen, there are a lot of you guys out there. For probably a decade, I've been getting emails that begin, you know, I'm probably not your average reader. I'm a bit older than some people.

They go on to talk about being 50 or 55 or 60 or 70 or beyond. And now with the show, I get them as well. And the emails say, "Well, I'm not your average listener." I think I'm a bit older than most people listening to Side Hustle School. Well, first of all, who cares about average? Like I certainly don't.

Nobody wants to be average. And those of you in that 50 or better group, most definitely aren't alone. A lot of people want to create change in their lives at different seasons. So feel supported, be encouraged. And today's story is from a woman turning 50 who makes a big lifestyle change and then transforms her transformation into a coaching program for other women.

Oh, and she's also a former dog sled trainer, which I think is a first for the show. I'm gonna say thank you to our sponsor, and then I'll bring you her story. Stay tuned. [Music]

Mary Black and her husband, Mark, trained sled dogs in Minnesota for 22 years. Before moving to a small town, they spent 10 of those years living off the grid in the back country, six miles from the end of the nearest road.

They fed the dog special diets for peak performance, massaged them to ease their aches and pains and loved them on both good days and bad. But on one of those days, Mary and Mark looked at themselves and said, you know, we're taking better care of the dogs than we are ourselves. Even though dog training gave them plenty of exercise, they didn't eat well and they constantly felt exhausted. They wanted to make a big change and Mary went first. She stopped smoking and began hitting the gym.

Mark followed suit and they both got hooked on a new habit of getting healthy and getting their lives back on track. They weren't the only ones to notice the drastic physical and lifestyle transformations that they were making. Friends, family, and even strangers at the new gym started going up to them to ask what they'd been doing. Not only were they getting fitter, it seemed like they had found the fountain of youth and were reaping the rewards. They felt better than they had in decades, and that's when they decided that aging gracefully is fine, but aging youthfully is even better.

They decided to document their journey and share what they've learned with others, so they created a free WordPress blog called Aging Youthful. Right around that time, Mary turned 50 and she had a talk with herself. She knew that 50 birthdays didn't necessarily make her old, but it did mean she probably had more birthdays behind her than in front of her. What she wanted to do more than anything else was to help women like her stop wishing for the youthful days behind them and instead start living a more youthful, vibrant life full of purpose and passion. She felt like she knew these women because she was one of them.

Both online and offline, Mary kept coming across other women who felt the same way. They wanted to do more with their lives than pay bills and endure the feeling that life was passing them by. Mary knew she could help them and she decided to put her focus on women in the 45 to 55 age group instead of on all women in general. This felt scary at first because she was greatly narrowing her market, but it also made a great deal of sense. She could talk specifically to the needs and desires of these women instead of in more general terms that wouldn't be as relatable to everyone.

She decided to offer a 12-week coaching program that mirrored her own journey with three different elements, the mind, the body, and the soul. She began allocating an hour each weekday and anywhere from four to 15 hours on the weekends to build out this program. The logistics were pretty simple. She used Microsoft Publisher to create the content for her weekly lessons and she added those lessons into her email service MailChimp so that they could be sent out weekly through automated sequences. Settling on pricing was a bit more challenging.

In the end, Mary decided that the best way for her to determine a fair rate was to see how much time she was gonna be investing on this 12-week program and then determine what she felt okay with being paid for the service. She ultimately landed on $147 because she felt it was important to get people in the door with her program and feature testimonials on her website that would encourage others down the road to sign up. She offered a discounted early bird rate to get people to sign up early and then gradually raised the price prior to the start of the program in September. Mary knew the importance of having your market see you as an authority. She wondered if her backstory as a dog sled trainer for 20 years, her own mind-body transformation, and her history of going after and getting what she sets her mind to would be convincing enough to the women she hoped to serve.

Despite her nervousness, it was more than enough for the 25 women who enrolled in Mary's program. That first program ended, and following its success, she's now launched signups for her next one. Startup costs were low, just about $200 for her website, domain registration, and PayPal fees, and she's now consistently earning money each month. That extra money has been great for lots of reasons, but perhaps most of all, it's helped her prove to herself and to others that life doesn't end at 50. Today she says she is happier, healthier, and more motivated than she's ever been, and she's using this new path as an opportunity to set an example for other women.

Her long-term goal is to go full-time with her coaching, be able to give back more with her time and money. Age doesn't define you or limit what you can achieve, and it's never too late to try something new, perhaps even a side hustle. So if you're building out some kind of coaching program or you hope to do something similar, maybe not the same demographic, but you feel like you have a story and you have a structure, you have something that can really help people. As you see in the story, you can build your course or your program or whatever it is using some really simple tools. The content is much more important than any technological bells and whistles.

Microsoft Publisher is what Mary used. I remember using Microsoft Publisher myself many, many years ago to do some really basic design, and I was definitely not a designer, but in a pinch I could figure out what to do using that software. And if you don't have access to that, maybe you have pages for Mac or something else. In other words, there's probably a way somewhere. And Mary also used MailChimp for her email service.

MailChimp has a lot of customers for a good reason. They're very accessible, it's easy to use, it's affordable, at least when you get started with it. These days I use something more sophisticated, but when you're just getting going, MailChimp works fine. It's far more important to focus on your message, focus on how that message is gonna reach the right people and how you're gonna serve those people, just like Mary did. Now I also liked how she decided on her pricing.

This is very similar to what I recommend in day 12 of the Side Hustle book. Just like there are some advanced technological tools, there are some sophisticated pricing strategies you can use to determine what the optimal price for an item is, but you don't need to worry about that when you're just getting started. What you need to think about is what is this worth to you? For the time that you're putting into this, whatever your startup costs are, what is the minimum financial return that you want to receive for it? And hopefully you're gonna exceed the minimum, like I want you to make more than just whatever the floor is.

But this kind of gives you a starting point. And for Mary, for her first course, $147 was the starting point. I think she's raised the price a bit now, which is good. That's what you should do as you get better at what you do, as you improve your marketing, as you improve the actual service or product. So good for her, congrats to Mary.

Also, like I said, if I'm not mistaken, the first dog sled trainer we featured on Side Hustle School. I would actually love to learn more about how the world of dog sled training actually works. Maybe we'll do an episode on that at some point. So if you're out there and that's your thing, let us know. And assuming that's not you, you can still remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/392. That's 392. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back tomorrow with the weekly recap. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.

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