We were lucky to catch up with Kristyn Echterling-Savage recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kristyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

Beyond the Dog has grown significantly since our humble 2005 beginnings! We started, and continued for nearly 10 years, with Sean and I operating every aspect of the business. We didn’t have a single employee and were terrified to give up control. Our lives revolved around building our business and being intimately involved in every aspect.

Finally, in 2014, we realized we couldn’t keep the pace that we had for so many years. We added one trainer and a few months later our current office manager. Within 3 years we hired 3 more trainers. Looking back we likely micromanaged every trainers’ case load. We slowly became comfortable with the idea of relying on others. We had the ability to teach other like-minded trainers our specific training protocols and they were able to deliver high-quality services that our clients expected from Beyond the Dog.

In 2017, we had our sights on a larger expansion and moved from Kansas City to Houston to open our second location. We hired a trainer prior to moving to help support the transition. It was an extremely chaotic first year and certainly wasn’t a smooth transition, but we made it work! Kansas City remained stable with steady growth and Houston started to explode. We now had awesome managers in each city helping to train newer trainers and support their case loads.

In 2020, we partnered with one of our managers to expand to Austin. Soon thereafter we used the same model to expand to St. Louis. This allows for growth while ensuring the quality of our services remain. We are so proud of our brand and the work it represents so it’s critical that our name continues to hold that reputation. This model has proven to be effective in doing so and we plan to open 3 more offices in new markets within the next 2 years. What’s even more exciting is being able to offer our managers opportunities for growth and entrepreneurship!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Sean and I got into this industry through marine mammal training. We always had a passion for working with animals and even more so with domestic animals. It’s our calling in life! Once we started training dogs we were determined to become true experts well beyond what our competition could offer. We spent more time training dogs in a year than others did in 5 years. We lived and breathed our craft, shaping our training to be the most effective while remaining animal-centered and humane. I earned a PhD and am now a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Sean is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant. Combining our hands-on experience and credentials have allowed us to fulfill our dream of becoming experts in our field. We hold our partners, managers, and trainers to a similarly high standard. We have built a business and brand that we are proud of!

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Ha! Yes, we met working at a marine mammal facility. We started dating and then started training dogs together. We started Beyond the Dog, got married, and later had kids. People often ask how it is we work together, but it’s all we have ever known. We’ve been doing it for 20 years now! It’s not always easy but there is no one either of us would trust more.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Gosh, we really didn’t. We had a little money saved for a poorly designed website and business cards, but our business truly started as a grass-roots operation. We didn’t have the capital, but we had the heart, passion, and the energy. Our first marketing campaign involved us walking door-to-door. We saved as much as we could and poured any dollar we had back into our business. We were hungry for business then and are that way today!

Contact Info:

• Website: beyondthedogtraining.com
• Instagram: @beyondthedoghouston
• Facebook: @beyondthedoghouston
• Linkedin: Kristyn Echterling-Savage
• Twitter: @drkristynsavage
• Youtube: @beyondthedogtraining
• Other: Tik Tok: @beyondthedogtraining