We were lucky to catch up with Olivia LaBarre recently and have shared our conversation below.

Olivia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Part of me wishes that I had started my animal communication and Reiki business sooner than I did because I love what I do. But another, wiser, part of me knows that I started it exactly when I needed to. Looking back, I can see how each step I took led me to where I am now. The story is long and winding, but I’ll give you an abbreviated version here:

Before I started my own business, I had a nearly 15-year career as an editor and writer that morphed into doing content strategy and marketing at some large tech companies. I was becoming increasingly unhappy with that work and the values of the companies I was working for, but I was unsure what to do next.

Instead, I focused on enriching my life outside of work. This led to adopting a dog, Milo, and then another dog, Lucy, after meeting my partner. I also decided to go out on a limb and try Reiki energy healing for the first time because the talk therapy I had been doing for years just wasn’t enough anymore.

I remember sitting with the Reiki practitioner, telling her how unhappy I was with my career. When she asked me what my heart wanted, I surprised myself by what I blurted out: Something at home so I could be with my dogs—and maybe even something involving my dogs.

After my first Reiki session, I began feeling more connected with my intuition and the world around me. I continued going, and it made such a difference that I decided to join my practitioner’s next class so I could learn how to do it for myself and others.

Then, in early 2018, I was laid off from my job. I took that as a nudge from the universe to try different types of work, so I did small stints as a cheesemonger, bartender, a freelance editor, and more. I also completed advanced Reiki training and began practicing with animals at our local animal shelter and at home with my own dogs.

As I continued my Reiki practice, my connection with my intuition continued to grow, and some psychic and mediumship abilities that had tried to stuff away long ago became more prominent. I decided to embrace these spiritual abilities and take some classes to develop and understand them.

One day after taking a class, I mentioned to a teacher that I had to get home quickly because my dog Milo had started pooping on the floor. I told her that I didn’t know why he was doing it, and she suggested that I just ask him about it using some techniques we had learned in class.

So I did ask Milo, and although he didn’t want to talk about the poo right away, he had some other things to say—and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Animal communication felt so natural to me, and I realized quickly that it was part of what I was meant to do next.

After some more learning and practice, I began offering animal communication professionally along with Reiki for animals and their people. Because of my previous career, I already knew how to do many of the things that new solopreneurs often struggle with: I could build my own website, write and edit my own copy, write and manage email newsletters, and more.

I continued to do some freelance writing and editing work as I built my animal communication and Reiki business. I let my last freelance client go in 2023 and have been working for myself full-time ever since. Now, I get to be working from home with my dogs all day, and the work I do sometimes even involves them. It’s something my heart wanted but I didn’t think was possible when I blurted it out during my first Reiki session.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I’m an animal communicator, Reiki practitioner, Pet Loss Bereavement Specialist, writer, artist, and most importantly, person to dogs Milo and Lucy (and others now in spirit). Through my work, I help animals and their people reach new levels of understanding and healing—in all seasons of life, death, and beyond.

I believe that our animal companions are so much more than pets, and when we open ourselves to meaningful communication with them, our relationships transform in soul-deep ways. I also believe that nurturing deeper relationships with animals, both living and in spirit, is an act of resistance, liberation, and healing—one that can transform how we understand ourselves and each other while helping us reclaim our inherent connection to the natural world.

I offer both one-on-one support and community spaces where people can explore these connections without judgment, develop their own abilities, and find others who understand that animals are more than “just pets.” Most of my sessions and classes take place virtually on Zoom with people around the world. On occasion, I also do in-person work at events here in NYC.

People come to me because they love their animal companions deeply. Sometimes they just want to check in so they can help them live their best life. Other times they need support through a tough situation with their animals: anxiety, illness, behavior challenges, moving, traveling, new family members, or an end-of-life transition. Or, their animal companion has died and they want to hear from them in spirit, understand their signs, and get grief support.

Others want to learn animal communication themselves but think that it’s not possible for them—that it’s an obscure gift that only “special” people possess. I love busting that myth and helping them see that the only difference between us is that I decided to acknowledge this innate skill and practice it. It’s amazing to see their reaction when in their first class, they communicate with an animal they’ve never met before, bring across information they had no way of knowing, and get validation from the animal’s person.

And finally, I’m also an artist, and my work with animals inspires and guides my creative practice. Often, animals show me visuals that stick with me until I at least attempt to recreate them. (I’ve shared some of them with you here.) I also drew pet portraits for a little while, but I’m taking a break from that to focus on (very slowly) illustrating the children’s book I wrote about pet loss and drawing what I see during my sessions with animals.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

A little more than half of my clients come through referrals. This makes sense to me because I prefer to nurture deep, ongoing relationships rather than just providing services. I also tend to work with really lovely and supportive people who are quick to refer others to me.

Some people decide they’d like to hire an animal communicator but don’t know who to choose, so they ask their friends and family for recommendations, and I come up. Others don’t know animal communication exists until a loved one tells them about their session or class, and then they want to try it for themselves.

The other half of my new-client base mostly comes from online search. I have some great reviews on Google Business, and I tend to rank pretty high in search for what I do. This has resulted in not only in many regular session and class bookings, but also some cool and unexpected in-person opportunities: I began doing mini sessions at dog birthday parties in NYC, and I was even asked to do them at a wedding and a doggy daycare holiday party.

Just this past February, I was hired to do animal communication sessions for celebrities, influencers, and Discovery staff at an activation event for the Puppy Bowl. When I asked them how they found me, they said it was through search.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I love this question, because I believe we need to unlearn some of what we’ve been taught in life so we can uncover our innate animal communication abilities and use them skillfully. That’s something we talk a lot about in my classes, but it’s not what I’d like to cover today.

While many of the skills and lessons that I learned in my previous career have been helpful for running my own business, much of it was amid a culture that encouraged doing anything to get the job done well—even if it meant sacrificing my own wellbeing. It took me reaching burnout as a solopreneur to realize that I had brought so much of that unhealthy culture with me (even if it was mostly subconscious).

It was horrifying to realize that I was partially operating like the extractive and oppressive systems that I was trying to move away from in my work. I had to get really clear about my values and what upholding them looked like in all areas of my business.

Only in the past couple of years have I learned to be a kinder and more compassionate boss to myself, and I’m still working on it. That looks like giving myself more space in my schedule, connecting with other small business owners, saying no to some client or collaboration requests, hiring people to do things that go beyond my abilities or energy, and so much more!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.olivialabarre.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/olivia_labarre/