Maris Miller-Sonnabend grew House of Paws Pet Care from a one-woman operation to a team of 40+ in five years. Now she coaches DogCo owners to build a brand that holds up as the business scales.
INTRODUCING: MARIS MILLER-SONNABEND
DOGCO’S MARKETING & BRAND COACH
Maris is the founder of House of Paws Pet Care in St. Louis, where she has grown the company from a one-woman operation into a team of 40+ staff in just five years.
With a background in marketing and brand strategy, Maris helps pet care business owners clarify who they are, say it consistently, and turn local visibility into booked clients. She focuses on the practical side of brand: positioning, messaging, offers, and the marketing systems that keep new clients coming in without constant hustle.
At DogCo, Maris coaches owners through building a brand that actually holds up as the business scales, from first impression to repeat client.
MEET MARIS
WHAT IS DOGCO LAUNCH?
DogCo Launch is where team-based pet care companies grow, scale, and become businesses that work FOR their owners, not the other way around.
Through coaching, resources, and a community of serious operators, DogCo helps pet care companies navigate growth in an ever-changing industry with real business education that prioritizes the owner's end goals.
Your brand is either working for you or working against you.
If you’re dealing with:
Fuzzy positioning. You sound like every other walker and sitter in your zip code.
Inconsistent messaging. Your website, socials, and first-contact emails all tell a different story.
Offers that don’t land. People look, but they don’t book.
Feast-or-famine lead flow. New clients show up in bursts, then disappear.
A brand that can’t scale. What worked at 10 staff is starting to crack at 25.
Work with Maris in her weekly Office Hours, offered exclusively in DogCo Launch’s Mastermind.
MARIS’ BONUS
Exclusive to DogCo members.
DogCo Brand Positioning Lab
A Brand Positioning workshop to help you identify your ideal client and your ideal team member. Plus, a resource to help you build your own prompt for an AI bot made just for your brand.
DogCo Brand Builder
Take your positioning and put it to work. Maris walks you through using your brand across your marketing, hiring, and SOPs so every part of your business says the same thing.
You’ll get access at the start of the program in January when you enroll.
In the DogCo Scaling Mastermind, we pull together the core components of what we believe companies need to create effective change in their companies.
These components include:
Strategy. Weekly teaching, implementation and quarterly goal setting.
Accountability. Success Leaders, matched groups, accountability partners and the owner community.
Expertise. Specialists in profit, hiring, retention, marketing, sales, data, AI and productivity.
Systems. SOPs, ProcessBuilder AI, challenges, CRM, snapshots and templates.
Company Development. Support that reaches your managers and your team, not just you.
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With DogCo, you aren't just joining a coaching program. You're plugging your company into an ecosystem built to help you thrive, not just survive.
How DogCo Works
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Each week, Founder Michelle Kline leads live content on scaling your pet care company. These frameworks alternate between marketing and operations skills that have been tested across 300 companies to drive results and impact in pet care businesses.
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Every teaching session is followed by dedicated time to start applying it inside your company. These a working 60 minute session with Michelle Kline to test strategies in your specific company and get individualized feedback.
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Mastermind participants get access to the operational model that Michelle Kline used in her pet care business, which she ran absentee owner. Our SOP library includes over 400 pages of pet care business specific documents: written by hand, not by AI.
The expansive document library includes everything from training manuals for team members and managers to position descriptions to onboarding documents.
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Participating companies are paired with a DogCo Success Leader upon entry into the program. Success Leaders are former graduates that are now on the DogCo Team to support new clients and help guide their growth throughout the year. Accountability Groups are a small group of DogCo enrollees who are matched on company size, stage, goals and complexity. In these groups, you will not have any competitors so you’ll be able to be open & honest about what you’re working on.
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Want more accountability? We'll match you with another business owner who fits where you are and where you're headed.
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Meet with your Success Leader every quarter to review progress, clarify priorities and set your next 90 day goals and strategies.
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Mastermind participants have access to a private online community with other participating pet care companies to learn and grow with each other on a daily basis.
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Office Hours are one-hour Zoom calls offered throughout the week, hosted in turn by DogCo Coaches Robert Strickland (AI & Automation), Doug Keeling (Hiring & Retention), and Corinne Moore (Financial Literacy & Profit), Lauren Dunkle (Data Integration & Strategy), Dave Peterson (Sales), Maris Miller-Sonnabend (Marketing & Brand) and Collin Funkhouser (Workflow & Productivity), plus the occasional surprise guest in specialty topic areas.
All Mastermind participants are welcome to join these calls to ask questions, listen to others, and learn from industry experts.
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Every DogCo coach has one additional resource to help members implement in their area of expertise. This resource is distributed at the start of the year and is here to help your company implement their topic area more deeply.
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Access to CRM software (Go High Level) is included with Mastermind enrollment at no additional cost. Go High Level is a powerful, all-in-one marketing solution to manage lead flow and nurture clients.
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DogCo Launch has partnered with Pawsome Metrics to provide access to 30 spreadsheet templates designed to help track data and metrics, create more visibility, and go deeper with reporting.
The creator of the templates, Corinne Moore, is a DogCo Partner and is available during Office Hours each week to answer questions and provide support.
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Mastermind participants get access to a staff training on Dog Body Language & Handling to support team safety in the field.
Mastermind participants are able to access this training for unlimited team members through the year.
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If you’re ready to sell your pet care business or to acquire another business, you’ll have access to a Buy-Sell Network where you can list your company or see others for purchase.
Please note: there are additional fees associated with listing your company and for engaging in the purchasing process.
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A development space for your admin and management team, built for skills, leadership and retention.
The DogCo Manager Community is a no-cost private community for managers, admin, and leadership in your company to help provide them with more specific training through DogCo and to help them build peer community.
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Early access, member pricing & a ticket to the VIP night!
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Go High Level onboarding videos and Snapshots by Robert Strickland
30-day Marketing Challenges with Michelle Kline
Additional webinars, content, and courses by Michelle Kline through the year
Guest content and speakers
Tech Tutorials
Early access and special ticket pricing for the 2026 DogCo Business Summit conference
Everything included in your enrollment
MEET ALL THE COACHES
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ROBERT STRICKLAND
AI, TECH, & AUTOMATION SPECIALIST
With over 18 years of experience in the pet care industry, Robert Strickland is an entrepreneur and automation strategist dedicated to helping pet business owners streamline operations, save time, and scale effectively.
As the founder of NextLevel Pet Businesses, Robert leads a community of pet care professionals, providing guidance on leveraging automation, AI, and technology to enhance client experiences and maximize efficiency.
In addition to coaching and consulting, Robert owns and operates a successful pet sitting and dog walking business, giving him firsthand insight into the challenges pet care professionals face.
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DOUG KEELING
HIRING & RETENTION SPECIALIST
Doug Keeling runs an award-winning pet care company and is an industry-leading speaker and business coach specializing in hiring and retention.
As the creator of The Pawsitive Hiring Course, Doug helps pet care business owners build their dream teams. The course includes lessons on preparing to hire, navigating a multi-step hiring process, and managing and retaining team members.
Doug can also be found on YouTube as “Doug the Dog Guy,” a leading YouTuber in the pet sitting and dog walking industry with over 8,000 subscribers.
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CORINNE MOORE
FINANCIAL LITERACY & PROFIT
Corinne knows pet care finances from both sides of the desk. She spent 7 years as the owner of Paws and Claws Pet Service in Wisconsin, and today she's a bookkeeper at a firm that serves only pet care businesses. Corinne is currently working toward her CPA license, with accounting coursework underway at UW–Stevens Point.
She recently founded Everjade, which builds tools made specifically for pet care owners, and she's the creator of the Pawsome Metrics spreadsheets you’ll see in DogCo. As DogCo's Data & Metrics coach last year, she worked with dozens of owners to make sense of their numbers. Now she helps owners master the fundamentals of finance: reading a P&L, managing cash flow, and knowing what their business can afford. Her style is plain-language and judgment-free and her goal is that everybody understands where their business’s money goes.
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COLLIN FUNKHOUSER
WORKFLOW & PRODUCTIVITY
Collin helps pet care business owners stop running their companies out of their heads. Most owners aren't short on ideas, they're short on a system for turning those ideas into finished projects while the daily fires keep burning.
His approach comes from his training as a scientist. During his graduate work in biology, Collin learned to define the outcome first, isolate what matters, and let results drive the next decision. He coaches owners to run their businesses the same way: prioritize what actually moves the needle, break big initiatives into work that gets done, and protect time for the important things so they stop losing to the urgent ones.
Collin co-owns Funky Bunch Pet Care with his wife, Meghan, serving central and southwest Missouri since 2012. He also co-hosts Pet Sitter Confessional, a podcast for pet care business owners with more than 740 episodes.
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MARIS MILLER-SONNABEND
MARKETING & BRAND
Maris is the founder of House of Paws Pet Care in St. Louis, where she has grown the company from a one-woman operation into a team of 40+ staff in just five years.
With a background in marketing and brand strategy, Maris helps pet care business owners clarify who they are, say it consistently, and turn local visibility into booked clients. She focuses on the practical side of brand: positioning, messaging, offers, and the marketing systems that keep new clients coming in without constant hustle.
At DogCo, Maris coaches owners through building a brand that actually holds up as the business scales, from first impression to repeat client.
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LAUREN DUNKLE
DATA & INSIGHTS STRATEGIST
Lauren Dunkle is the owner of The Pet Lady, Ltd., a professional dog walking company serving Chicago’s western suburbs since 1991. Since taking over in 2015, Lauren has developed a passion for using client and business data to make smarter, more strategic decisions.
As DogCo’s Data & Insights Strategist, Lauren helps pet care business owners understand the numbers that actually matter. Her focus isn’t just on tracking data; it’s on understanding what that data tells you and turning those insights into practical action.
Her philosophy is simple: you don’t have to be a “numbers person” to use your data well.
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DAVE PETERSON
SALES
Dave Peterson is the owner of Bethesda Dog Walkers, an award-winning pet care company serving hundreds of client households with a team of professional employees.
After acquiring Bethesda Dog Walkers in 2024, Dave rebuilt the company’s sales and onboarding systems, growing monthly recurring revenue 4X in one year while shortening the onboarding process from weeks to hours.
As DogCo’s Sales Coach, Dave helps pet care business owners turn more inquiries into long-term recurring clients through better offers, faster follow-up, and a simple, question-led sales process.