Mistakes I made when I created the Pet Business Content Planner

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When you’re doing something new for the first time, it can be really helpful to hear from someone who’s gone before you.

So here are the mistakes I made when I create the Pet Business Content Planner for the first two years, and what I’ve learned from each one.

I’m Rachel, and I make a content planner for pet businesses to help them with putting their work out there.

It’s a physical A5 book and has a diary, monthly and quarterly goal setting, a content checklist, awareness days for every month, and a Paws and Reflect section to look back on what worked.

The part that really sets it apart is the Words for When exercises, twelve coaching exercises a year, built from conversations with clients on the challenges they experience.

I take what works and put it into the planner, meaning the support I give one to one can be experienced by people who buy a copy.

I ummed and ahhed about making a planner for years, and it was when I did my ILM Level 7 coaching training in 2024 that I felt ready to do it.

The Words for When section is what makes it feel like me rather than just another planner.

In this post I’m sharing the mistakes I made, so if you’re thinking of making a planner, you don’t have to!

The scrappy first year of the Pet Business Content Planner

I only decided I was going to make the planner in September 2024.

I started work in November and by the third week, I’d handed the files to my designer, Kate Hendry from Finbo Studio and it was at the printers that same month.

I’d already been making awareness day calendars for years, but the pressure of having to get the days in, and for them to be right, and all in one go, was a lot.

The other elements of the planner were things I already had in my head from years of coaching sessions with clients, things that I knew worked and made a difference.

So it was a case of gathering material from lots of notes and putting it all together and then Kate worked her absolute magic in bringing it to life and it looked so much better than I ever could have imagined.

It was a really messy launch where I was winging it but it actually went well and lots of people bought a copy, which was really lovely.

Very giddy with the first version of the planner

Two print fails in two years of making the planner

The first year, the pages came back mixed up, whole sections out of order and this was at the start of December. I was cutting it fine and it was so stressful.

I hadn’t worked out the tech side of things properly so I was sending emails manually, one by one, to everyone who had ordered apologising and saying I would have them out as soon as possible.

It took AGES for the printers to print and send the second lot and when they did turn up, I was made up, they had upped the spec on the cover quality and they looked and felt so good.

I spent the week before Christmas packing and running backwards and forwards to the post office but it was so worth it and all the November orders got there in time for Christmas.

Some were presents so that made me very happy, thinking about people actually unwrapping it on Christmas Day, I still have to pinch myself.

The second year, it was faded pages. This time I had got it sorted a lot earlier so I wasn’t as stressed but still, it’s a nightmare and you want things to be right.

I had a tearful phone call with the MD of the printers and the second lot came out and they were perfect, but the lorry driver wouldn’t take the first faulty batch away so I had 250 planners in my garage for months.

This year I’ve found a printer who’ll do me a proof copy first.

So hopefully that particular sleepless night worrying about what the planner will look like and checking hundreds of copies in case anything is wrong is finally behind me.

Ordering too many planners and working myself into the ground for months on end

Last year I put everything into getting this planner out there. Press coverage, twelve podcast episodes, talks in group after group, and a charity pledge that raised £1200 for StreetVet, a brilliant homeless charity.

You can listen to co-founder Jade talk about their work here:

I was determined to match the number of copies I’d sold the year before, so I ordered 250 copies again. The first year I ordered 200 and sold out by January so bought another 50.

But sales were slower. I only sold about 120 by Christmas, so I had over half the planners I’d ordered sitting there in my hallway.

The other faulty 250 were in my garage, and seeing them all the time just made me feel like a massive failure. It was really hard because I knew when people bought the planner, they loved it.

It was geting them to buy it though, so I learned a lot about being sensible with ordering.

This year I’m doing it differently. I’m taking preorders until the middle of September, then ordering that number plus 20 percent.

This means I won’t be tripping over boxes every time I come through the front door for months on end.

The awareness days – check, check and check again

Getting the awareness days right takes a lot intense work.

I found them all, then hired someone to double check them, then checked them again myself, and a Pug Day still appeared out of nowhere that I hadn’t included.

That’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. People say ‘why don’t you use AI’ or ‘why don’t you get someone else to do it?’

Because I worry so much about getting it wrong that I have to be responsible for it myself.

Plus despite me saying over and over again until I’m blue in the face that I make a planner and if you have an awareness day please tell me about it, people don’t.

Then a day will move, so I will have been told it’s the fourth Thursday of the month, and then the organisation will change it, so I will beat myself up about getting it wrong and feel like I look sloppy.

I’m a bit of a control freak about it and this is something I have to accept.

Talking about the planner for so long I felt like the most annoying person on the internet

This year I was still talking about the planner in June, because I’d ordered so many and I was determined to get them out there.

I decided to do a postage only for the last box, and it meant I could stop pushing it, because I felt really annoying.

Euphoria at the post office when I sent off the final copies for 2026

Getting the pricing wrong

It’s really hard to put a price on something you put your heart and soul into. I work so hard on the planner and the costs are high.

I’m not ordering huge volumes and I invest in design. Last year I made a substantial donation to charity and this was something I really wanted to do, to give back.

So I raised the price to £40, to reflect the cost of printing and the work that goes into it.

Sales were harder, partly because of the economic situation, people are cutting back, and you can get a planner in The Works for £4.50.

Even though mine is specifically tailored to my industry, with so many elements in that I know the hundreds of people I’ve worked with find helpful, it can still feel like a lot to hand over £40.

I ended up moving to a choose-what-you-pay model in February 2026, from £20 upwards, to help shift what was left.

This year, I’m sticking at £30 which I feel is a really fair price, and by only ordering the pre-order sales plus 20% I’m not going to be in a position where I have lots of copies left in the New Year.

What 250 planners look like and I had another 250 in the garage that were faulty

What’s staying the same

I’ll still be out there talking about it every way I know how, press, podcasts, talks in groups, including an in-person one this year at The Dog Trainer School Forum which I’m really looking forward to.

I’m continuing with The Planner Club, a membership I run to support people in using the planner, not leaving it sitting on a shelf.

The Planner Club has a Q and A session each month, a planning call, a 3 hour coworking call, quarterly planning sessions, an online planning day in November, a Facebook community and access to all the training in my Pets Get Visible library. This was my old membership that closed in July 2026.

The idea is you do the planning, and then you do the doing.

It will stay as a physical product, I won’t turn it into a download or make it print on demand and I know this will mean I will lose out on sales.

But I want to keep the personal touch. I pack every single order myself, write every thank you card by hand and queue up at the post office with piles of envelopes.

I want to stay connected to the people it helps, not just sell to them.

The 2027 planner will be going on sale soon, with everything I’ve learned this year built into it.

If you’d like to be first to know when it’s ready, or if you’re reading in the future and you want to buy one, head to rachelspencer.co.uk/shop.

You can also join The Planner Club for additional support and you can read about that here: www.rachelspencer.co.uk/the-planner-club