PROJECT
K9 Insight
Six systems, one business. Built and connected over several years, so the practice could grow, without the admin growing with it.
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR & TRAINING · ABERDEENSHIRE
DO IT FOR ME · SHOW ME HOW
SCOPE
Website · Bookings · Learning · App · Finance · SOPs
SCALE
1,500 clients · 30+ services
TOOLS
Wix · BusyPaws · Premiere Pro · Xero · Firebase · Netlify · Claude · Stripe
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WHAT SITS BEHIND K9 INSIGHT
Not one project. Six, running alongside each other.
K9 Insight started as a one-person dog training practice. There was plenty of demand, but the founder was the only person delivering the training, which left no time to build the business around it.
Anything that wasn't training kept getting pushed back: bookings, admin, marketing, the website, new services. The business was only growing as fast as one person's diary allowed.
I came in to take that side off his plate. Over six years it grew from basic training sessions into a clinical animal behaviour practice, with mentorship programme, a bespoke app and online resources.
01 · WEBSITE
More than somewhere to list services.
Designed and built in Wix, with its visual identity, structure and content developing alongside the business. As new services, classes and learning resources were introduced, the site evolved with them.
Integration with BusyPaws connected the website to the wider client journey, so clients could book services and classes directly and reach their client portal
The work extended past the visible site too: SEO and GEO, indexing and search visibility through Google Search Console.
The K9 Insight website was one of my earlier builds, created a few years ago. I'm overhauling it now with everything I've learned since: better structure, SEO and accessibility. Watch this space for the before and after.
VISUAL DESIGN · WEBSITE BUILD · CONTENT · CUSTOMER JOURNEY · INTEGRATION · SEO
WIX · BUSYPAWS · GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
BOOKING SYSTEM · CLIENT PORTAL · CLASS SCHEDULING · FORMS · PAYMENTS
BUSYPAWS · STRIPE
02 · BOOKINGS
Connecting the customer journey.
As K9 Insight grew, BusyPaws became the system that connected clients to everything they used. One-off appointments, classes, ongoing clubs, memberships and digital learning.
Each service was set up with its own booking route, and behind it the forms, client information and payments needed to make it work. Client portals gave people one place to manage their bookings and find their resources. Group memberships handled the ongoing clubs, and classes could carry companion video content alongside them.
Subscriptions added another route to the learning material, so clients kept access to the videos without booking again each time.
The result was a journey that held together from end to end: finding a service, booking it, paying for it using Stripe, and getting the resources and support that came with it.
03 · LEARNING
Taking learning beyond the session.
Classes and workshops didn't have to end when clients went home. Companion videos gave them something to come back to, reinforcing the exercises, demonstrations and ideas covered in training.
I filmed the training content and edited it in Adobe Premiere Pro, bringing the individual videos together into structured companion courses clients could work through alongside their classes.
Over time that became a growing library of reusable material, supporting the face-to-face classes, and standing on its own for clients who took video access through a subscription.
FILMING · VIDEO EDITING · COURSE BUILDING · DIGITAL LEARNING
ADOBE PREMIERE PRO · CAPCUT
04 · MENTEE APP
Building what the programme needed.
It started with welcome documents and programme content. But as the mentoring programme took shape, there was more to keep track of than a set of documents could comfortably hold: logbooks and diaries, progress against the curriculum, mirroring hours, sessions to confirm, and messages going back and forth between mentor and mentee.
My early career was in software and IT. The coding is long out of date, but the part that stuck is understanding how a system should be structured: what data it needs, how the pieces connect, and what has to be decided before anything gets built.
Using Claude Code, I built it into a working web app with separate mentor and mentee views. Firebase and Firestore handle sign-in and data, and the finished app is deployed through Netlify.
When the first version started to creak, I didn't keep patching it. I mapped what it did, redesigned the data structure on paper, wrote a proper specification and rebuilt it cleanly, without losing any of the existing records.
Mentees log their sessions and see where they are against each competency. Mentors confirm the work and keep track of everyone in one place, instead of across documents, spreadsheets and email.
PROBLEM SOLVING · APP DESIGN · WORKFLOW DESIGN · USER EXPERIENCE · APP DEVELOPMENT ·SYSTEM DESIGN
CLAUDE CODE · FIREBASE/FIRESTORE · NETLIFY
05 · FINANCE
Keeping the numbers in order.
The operational side of K9 Insight included the day-to-day finances. No bookkeeper and no accountant. The accounts were mine to keep accurate and up to date.
In Xero I handled bank reconciliation, raised credit notes and posted manual journals where adjustments were needed, keeping the records straight as the business ran rather than untangling them later.
I also took the business through Making Tax Digital, moving record-keeping away from disconnected manual steps into one consistent digital workflow, and handled the submissions.
BOOKKEEPING · BANK RECONCILLIATION PROCESSING · FINANCIAL PROCESSES · MTD SUBMISSIONS
XERO
06 · SOPs & HANDOVER
Making the business less dependent on one person.
Most of K9 Insight's day-to-day processes had grown up through experience. They worked, but a lot of the detail about how they worked lived in my head.
With an admin handover coming, I used ChatGPT as a working partner to get that knowledge out, talking through each process step by step and turning years of practice into structured SOPs covering client set-up, bookings, classes, payments, memberships, club dates and routine administration.
The aim wasn't a folder full of instructions. It was to capture the decisions, the checks and the small details that make a process work in practice, so the business had a consistent way of working and training someone new got easier.
PROCESS MAPPING · SOP DEVELOPMENT · KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER · HANDOVER TRAINING
CHATGPT · CLAUDE
WHERE IT LANDED
The business grew. The admin didn't grow with it.
Close to 1,500 clients, many of them booking, paying and finding their own resources without anyone in the middle
Course content produced in-house rather than bought in.
Mentees tracked in a purpose-built app instead of spreadsheets and email
Accounts reconciled as they go, not in a panic at year end
How the business runs is written down, not held in one person's head
Nikki has been responsible for trying to keep some semblance of order in the day-to-day running of K9 Insight, managing accounts, helping steer business strategy and, increasingly over the years, making sure we kept pace with the ever-changing world of technology.
She has also designed and built a number of custom app and software solutions specifically for the business - often solving problems before the rest of us had even realised they existed!
Alex - K9 Insight
Built a few years ago and currently being rebuilt.
HAVE A CHAT
Tell me what's stuck
You don't need to know exactly what you need yet. Give me the messy version and we'll work out the rest with a free 30-minute chat. No obligation.
Prefer email? nikki@collabnik.co.uk