Today, we have Eve Molzhon of Dog Handler Academy on the show through her company, Eve provides all kinds of stuff online training, business tools for dog daycare, boarding facilities and the like. And she also does consulting services to business owners and probably some services I’m missing. So Eve, you could fill us in on those.

And she also finds time to attend literally every single dog related conference in the country. So that’s pretty amazing as well. Welcome to the show, Eve. 

Thank you for having me. Yeah, I just got back from Impact in Orlando, so. I do, my philosophy is you don’t know what you don’t know. So the only way to find out is to show up.

Hey, it’s a good philosophy. 

Right. 

But it makes you tough to schedule a podcast with when you’re always gone. 

Correct. I know. I know. Running, running from west coast to East coast and all of the above. Yeah. As you said, I founded Dog Handler Academy. I do own two doggy daycare boarding and training facilities and partnered in a third, I run Capable Canine Service dog nonprofit, where we place service dogs with physically disabled autistic children.

And I have Second Chance to Shine nonprofit, which is one that works with the area shelters and rescues to help rehabilitate dogs that need some help to become more adoptable. So that’s my, it’s my big scale today. I, I really wanted to focus on Dog Handler Academy and some of the things that I do to help.

Dog daycare, boarding, shelter, facilities, and training facilities to work better with their staff. I have an online program that helps train those staffers that walk in the door that say, I just wanna play with puppies all day. And we go, great. Do you know how to identify worms and poop? And they go, what?

So I built an online program to help those new hires work their way through and into to become safe and effective in a dog daycare or boarding environment. And then during COVID, when training saved my dog daycare business. I created a handler to dog trainer program, so it’s for those baby trainers to dip their toes in the water of becoming certified and understanding some of the fundamentals of dog training.

Um, then created a dog school program where I teach dog daycare and boarding facilities how to have a training program within their facility, utilizing their own staff. So, so those are all the things that I kind of have going on in, in the dog space. Do love travel, and, uh, try and attend as many conferences as I possibly can to meet fabulous people and to, uh, share any knowledge that I might have.

Well, I should have let you do your own intro. That was way better than what I said, and I missed half of that, so I’m glad you edited it. 

Yeah. You know, it’s one of those things where uh, you know, when we meet, we are talking dog training and when I go to other conferences I talk about other things. So I don’t know what I don’t know.

So I appreciate the opportunity to attend conferences and I also appreciate the opportunity to share the things that I’ve learned, whether through experience or trainings or whatnot. 

Awesome. Well, today’s topic, I think we’re gonna title the episode, something along the lines of how to hold your staff and clients accountable with love, which I love.

I think it’s, we’re gonna all learn a lot here today. Do you wanna start though, by just giving us some of your background, who you are, how you even got into training and daycare and all that stuff in the first place? And then we’ll circle back to the topic. 

Certainly. So I grew up in the trailer park, Eminem, and I could be BFFs, let me tell you, learn similar backgrounds only.

I didn’t become a famous rap star 

yet. 

Yet, yet. There you go. I’ll work on that karaoke later. But, uh, yeah, so I grew up in a trailer park, wasn’t allowed to have pets, loved pets, but I wasn’t allowed to have any. And, um, so you know, that burning desire that like lives on when I get old enough, I’m gonna, and uh, that’s kind of what happened, uh, was 20 years old and my fiance at the time knew I really wanted to get my own dog and he showed up for my birthday and everyone’s gonna go, never do this, never gift somebody a pet that shows up with a dalmatian, that he got off a farm in Iowa.

So we can only imagine the breeding on that dog, right? Beautiful, beautiful to look at, not, not your best bread, dalmatian. So that began my first introduction to what is crate training? What is a muzzle and what is separation anxiety? And Lord, let me tell you, I learned a lot. And as a 20-year-old, I spent almost every paycheck on that dang dog.

But that was the dog that I needed in the moment and really started the trajectory of learning all about. Dogs and animal behavior. And then, uh, from there was asked to sit on a board for a service dog organization. And scary to say that, that was 28 years ago and I’m still serving as president and learned how to train service dogs, you know, fostered and, and started down that journey.

And then, uh, my husband went bear hunting one day, and next thing you know, we have eight hounds at our house. So, um, learned all about scent work and trailing and all of that stuff. So went from service dogs into hunting and then, uh, kind of divvied back a little bit back into service dog work. And I, I opened up my dog daycare ’cause I needed a place for all of my service dog foster dogs to go.

So it was, how can I find a location to house all these service dogs and have it pay for itself? Well, why not doggy daycare on boarding. So jumped into a 15,000 square foot facility. 13 years ago. And, uh, that now has just kind of kept it going. My creation of Dog Handler Academy and really diving into staff and accountability came about during COVID when I had to lay off half my staff.

And I thought, if COVID ends in 30 days, how am I gonna train new people? ’cause not all of my staff were gonna be able to come back. And so I started shooting training videos of how do you set up a suite? How do you, uh, where, where should the food bowl go? Where should the water bowl go? Where should the runa bed go?

And how do we mop appropriately? What is, uh, the 12 different types of body harnesses? How do you take them on and off and figure out how they go on the dog? So that, uh, that started the journey of Dog Handler Academy and, uh, I’m continuing to spread that and create more, uh, modules and, and videos. Uh, currently, dog Handler Academy has clients in 15 countries and we have thousands of subscribers.

That’s amazing. Nice work. 

Yeah. It’s a journey. 

And it all started with a dalmatian, 

all started with a Dalmatian. Miss Sasha, the worst dog I ever had, but she taught me so much. 

That’s a pretty good dog handler, dog trainer origin story is, I had a dalmatian, everyone would know. Like, okay, got it. 

I mean, you know, I’m, I’m thankful, thankful I started with the Dalmatian and didn’t like, you know, jump into like a conne or something else, you know, but, uh, but yeah, no, it’s, uh, the dalmatian, you know, was cute to look at, but really, uh, had all the other, all the other things that, looking back at it now, my journey would’ve been much shorter and much easier, but really, really taught me, you know, took me down that, that road of behavior and psychology.

Well, I’ll tell you what, at the IUCP conference last summer, I think there were three dalmatians there that were all super friendly and super chill. And social. It’s like, are these even dalmatians or do they just like dye a dog a different color? It was crazy. I know. 

I got so excited. I was like, let pet the nice dalmatians.

Yeah. I’ve never seen three nice dalmatians in a room. I didn’t even know that could happen. 

One of ’em on the, uh, cover of our latest CP JI 

saw that playing Frisbee or something. Right? 

Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. No, um, you know the, they always say you get the dog that you need at the moment. And truly that was what I needed.

’cause uh, I think if I had gotten any other dog, I might not have gotten down this, this road with, uh, learning so much about dogs and, and truly learning about dogs is similar to learning about people. You know, what, what makes the dog tick? What, what are the things that are going into the thought process really similar with people.

So I, I am one of those that I didn’t get into dogs ’cause I dislike people. I got into dogs ’cause I love dogs. But I actually love learning about the people side. So that’s, I’m one of those odd ducks that goes into both. 

Let’s dive right in. So you are gonna lead us through and teach us everything we need to know about holding staff and clients accountable with love.

We’re not using the whip or the stick here. This is 

Oh no, you 

love and carrot approach. 

There you go. Yeah. You, you have to, you have to say accountability with love. It’s gonna be love. Right. Put a little, put a little berry base in there. So, yeah, I mean, I really, I came up with, with that slogan because accountability with love is about holding people to a standards, um, but showing care and concern.

And I think especially in the dog world, we’re empaths and that’s why we like working with the animals because we’re so empathetic to it. And the piece that we have to carry that forward with is that showing that same care and understanding. With the human part that maybe we trip up is that we look at the dog and we say, well, you know, they don’t know any better.

I haven’t taught them. And we make an assumption that with the human, well, they should know better, right? They should have common sense. How many times do we hear that? And the reality is, is that they don’t have that because maybe they haven’t been shown that maybe they haven’t been taught that. And um, you know, a lot of people pick on millennials in the future generations.

And it’s not that those people are different, it’s just that each generation has held different standards. And now we have to figure out what standard does the person in front of us have at whatever genre they might be. And it’s not that you have to be soft or permissive, but you have to be fair and, and hold them to that standard.

So that’s something that I think a lot of us in the animal industry really struggle with, you know. There’s those, uh, soft parenting skills, right? Remember the gen, I mean, Matt, you might be from that generation where they, where the parents were supposed to be the friend and not the parent. I was a latchkey kid, so my parents were around, but boy, I was pretty self-sufficient.

And Jason, I’m not sure how old you are, so I’m not gonna make too many assumptions, but, you know, looking back at that, like each parent has a different leadership style and then we grow up with a certain standard or a certain expectation of this is how we were treated, this is how we should treat others.

And truly, the coin has flipped. It’s not treat others as you wanna be treated. It’s treat others the way that they need to be treated. And that’s, ooh, 

like that, 

that’s the piece that we miss, right? If you were to come at me mad and be like, Hey, I need you to go do this, and my response based on my background is gonna be like, why?

Why should I? I’m a kid from the trailer park. You ain’t sassing me. I’m gonna sass you back. Right To where if you knew my background, you would probably come at me and be like, Hey, so why don’t we do it this way? And I’d be like, oh yeah, absolutely. Let’s go that way. Right? So it’s meeting me where I need to be met, not meeting me.

Where you think it needs to go. And that’s when we’re dealing with a dog training class especially, right? You got a class of four to six people and you’re giving coaching and I like to say it’s coaching and not leadership, but coaching. So you’re coaching all these people in this class and you’re using speech and you’re, you’re using dialect that you are hoping that they get because that’s how you would want another trainer to speak to you.

But in fact it might not be resonating with them because it’s not how they need to hear those words. Do either of you do reactive dog classes? Have to deal with people with spicy dogs. 

I do all private sessions for reactive dogs. 

Gotcha. How about you, Jason? 

Yeah. Not in group. Not in group settings. 

Yeah.

So it’s actually, I’m gonna say a little bit easier and harder for you. Easier in the fact that you have one person to give your attention to, but a lot harder because instead of kind of being generic, you’re dialing into one person. And so you really gotta focus on that one person’s needs versus being open and generic.

And when I say open generic, it’s using terminology that would appeal to everybody versus using terminology that just appeals to one person. When we talk about holding people accountable with love, there are five love languages. And anybody who’s been to marriage counseling knows all about these five love languages because every marriage counselor talks about them.

They’re non-negotiables, they’re words of affirmation on whether you compliment Matt. That’s a lovely hat, Jason. I like your sweatshirt. Right? Words of affirmation. Quality time, which as a dog trainer and especially one-on-ones, you’re giving that quality time, receiving gifts. Most men will say that women, that’s like our top one is receiving gifts, acts of service.

You know, a lot of times they, our clients like to hear, what are we doing outside of our business, you know, what acts of service are we providing? And the one that people get hung up on is physical touch. I mean, Jason, you’re not gonna go and, you know, slap that guy in the butt as you’re, uh, doing your one-on-ones, I’m sure.

But there are physical touch pieces that some people need as part of their love language, and that’s physical touch. So high five, it even could be the, you know, good job giving them the thumbs up. If you think of, even when you’re communicating with the dogs and you’re giving hand signals, although you’re not physically touching the dog, you are giving a physical spatial piece to the dog by just asking them sit down.

Right? You’re using your hand to simulate some sort of a physical component to it. So that’s where a lot of things come, come into play. They’re, they’re very similar, but you have to know your clients. And the hard part is you’re not gonna ask these five love languages on your questionnaire to become a client of yours.

I mean, Matt, are you gonna ask anybody, do they want acts of service or receiving gifts or, or physical touch at all in your I 

was actually taking notes ’cause I was thinking I was gonna update our intake form, should I not? 

Right? Right. So it does get a little hard, and this is where mirroring comes into play.

When your clients walk in with their dog, what are they giving to you? Which of these five love languages are they starting to show you? And then you know which ones to mimic back. And that’s the, that’s the key components. It’s being aware. So if they walk in and they immediately start to compliment your facility or your car or your clothes.

Ooh, they like words of affirmation. That’s a key one. Quality time. So if they, uh, when they’re booking their session with you or during their session and they already start to talk about like next session or what they are doing at home with their dog time. If they’re talking in time references, then they want quality time.

That also will tell you, make sure your phone is put away. Make sure that you are giving undivided attention ’cause that is how they are going to trust you the most. Receiving gifts, if they ask you about discounts, that’s ’cause they want a gift, right? Just saying. So when you’re talking with clients, you know, when they ask, well, what do they get?

How much do they get? How often do they get it? That’s, they’re looking for that exchange, which is what receiving gifts is really all about. Acts of service. And that acts of service gets a little more difficult, um, in the dog training realm as a love language. In a group environment, a little bit easier on a one-on-one because you can have those one-on-one conversations.

But if you’re teaching group classes, usually it’s a, I like, oh, I always give references of other dogs. And then that kind of starts the conversation. If they’re like, oh, you, you know, you work with a rescue, or, oh, you do this, or if they’ve been stalking your social media, they wanna know, what do you do outside of just this?

And, or they might even tell you what their interests are, which is, oh yeah, well, when I’m in the garden, fluffy comes up to me all the time. Okay. You know, they like, they have this extracurricular activity that they wanna talk about, which leads you to believe, they like to have conversations about acts of service and then physical touch.

If they are very hand movement orientated towards their dog and or towards you, that usually is a suggestion of physical touch. So with those people, especially when I’m in a group class environment. I can see their, like arms are flailing. First off, I usually have to tell ’em, stick one hand in their pocket ’cause they’re doing too much.

But I also know that when they do something good to them, I can be like, Hey, high five it, you know? And just yell at them that I’m high fiving them through the air and then that gets them a little giddy and they’re like, oh, I just gotta high five. Yay. Spatial pressure, virtual high five. So those are kind of key things that you need to be aware of when you’re having this communication.

And I, I always tell people the reason for this is that dealing with your dogs and dealing with the clients, like as much as we hate to use the terms fur babies and fur children and all of that, the reality is the dog is their world. ’cause if the dog wasn’t their world, they wouldn’t be coming to you, right?

They wouldn’t be trying to fix a problem. They wouldn’t be trying to solve some dilemma that they’re having. If this was just a dog that lived in their house, they wouldn’t care and they wouldn’t even be in front of you. So that is why you have to communicate with them in a way that A empowers them. B builds trust between the two of you.

So that way anything that comes out of your mouth, they’re gonna say, this is valid. I trust this person because they speak my language. And if we don’t build these people up, that’s why they leave you half the time. They always say people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. And as dog trainers, you are the managers of this relationship between them and their dog.

So it is super important that you are managing that relationship by giving that owner some feedback in a way that they need it. If I said, you know, Matt, I just think this podcast sucks. You know, I just, I think your format is horrible. I don’t like it. You’re gonna fire me, right? Like you’d be like, yeah, okay.

You see you later. You don’t need to be my client. To where I’m, you know, I’m, I’ve already come to you, but you’re not communicating with, I’m not communicating with you, and you’re not communicating with me in a way that I need it to be. So I’m just gonna be like, yeah, whatever. If you, if I communicate, I’m like, Hey Matt, I’m just slightly uncomfortable with how I’m supposed to hold the leash.

Like I just, I don’t know, like, how should I do this? And if you’re communicating with me with, Hey, you know what, Eve, I see that you’re doing this and that’s great. High five, I’ll be like, I’m doing it right. Okay, great. Now I am zoned and locked into what you say. So it’s really important that you understand how to communicate with them so that way they, they build trust, they build relationship.

And if you’re building trust and relationship, this also, we’re all in the business of dog training. This also converts to money, right? If you have a client that trusts you, they’re gonna be clients for a lifetime. And that’s important. They’re either referring people to you, they’re gonna keep signing up for your programs.

All of that’s important. When I’m dealing with my staff, these same lifelong love languages do apply. You know, I’m not, I’m not giving everybody gifts every five minutes. They’re not getting bonuses every time, you know, they scoop poop appropriately. But I have to learn how to communicate with them because I have staff that range from 50 years old, down to 20 years old, and it’s super important that I’m communicating with them the way they wanna be communicated with.

And that’s a lesson I learned pretty quick in my business. When staff would leave, either I would let them go or they would terminate themselves. And I always did a survey saying, Hey, tell us why you left. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was my mouth, sometimes it was other staff. Sometimes it was the job, sometimes it was just whatever.

But really understanding my communication style and how I need to communicate with others was, uh, a hard lesson to learn that led me down this, this path of learning proper communication. Um, you know, there is no book, there is no thing, uh, manual that comes with the clients that walk through your door.

There’s no manual that comes with my staff that walk through my door. And so it’s, it’s one of those things that you have to read the subtleties in order to make sure that you have that breakthrough. Matt, how, how often, how long is your program that clients usually work with you? 

You know, it is all over the map, so we have some people that just need a single session to learn how to do their dog, not to rip their arm off anymore when they’re walking, but then we have some that sign up for a year of private training where their goal is just to have the best off leash trained dog that’s a member of the family and they want, you know, a lot of handholding along the way to make their job as easy as possible.

And then everything in between. 

Sure. So when I, if I sign up for your, uh, year long program, ’cause I, I need that. On our first meeting and you’re getting to know me and I’m getting to know you. That’s where this communication piece really kind of comes into play. You’ll learn pretty quickly how fast you can either be brutally honest with somebody or how fast you need to kind of walk them through the steps.

’cause if you tell them right out the gate that they’ve been doing five things wrong with their dog and they’re the problem, do they wanna come back? If you just humiliated them, right? And then there goes a year long of possible money outta your pocket, which makes it more 

well, how do you go about figuring that out?

That, I mean, that distinction makes sense, right? Yeah. Everyone’s different. But how would you dig in there to figure it out? 

Oh, absolutely. Usually the question starts with, so how have you been communicating with your dog? How do you feel things are, are moving forward with your dog? What is the process that you think should be happening with your dog?

And then I would start to listen to the words that they’re using. Are they using words of, oh, well the dog just doesn’t get it. You know, is everything a blame on the dog? Okay, then you lack some self-awareness, maybe some self empathy. And then I need to maybe work on some words of affirmation to build you up so that way you can feel confident that it’s not just the dog, that you too can move things forward when you’re asking the questions, well, how much time do you spend with your dog?

Do you take it out for a walk? Do you do any, you know, any extracurricular, you do an agility? Well, no. Like, you know, we play in the backyard. Okay, so quality time isn’t one of them, right? They don’t, that’s not a valuable component to them and the relationship with their dog. Okay? So what, you know, or when you ask that question and they tell you, you know, I bought this dog the Beone and I bought it the Kong and I bought it this, right?

Receiving gifts, they like, they think that by buying things for their dog, that that’s gonna build that relationship between them and their dog. So that’s where I’m just gonna sit and kind of feed through asking when you’re just asking those general questions about what’s the relationship. Like with their dog, that’s where you’re gonna get into it.

If they tell you they like to sit on the couch and watch Netflix and pet their dog for, you know, Netflix, marathon of murder, mystery, physical touch, they have to constantly be petting the dog or touching the dog. So they’re gonna tell you a lot of those things just in your general conversation of what is life like with their dog in their house and how they’re, they’re having that interaction with their dog.

That’s their love language. 

Interesting. Now, I should have said this at the beginning, but Jason really wanted to do some role playing with you on this podcast. So make sure when the time comes up to rope him into a role play, 

Matt definitely made that up 100%. 

You know, it, it’s one of those things, you know, a lot of times when I, when I’m talking to people like, you know, the love languages, people go, oh my God, it’s so, you know, that means I, I, I have to be really soft and vulnerable.

You have to be vulnerable, but you don’t have to be soft. Um, still hold expectations, right. Jason, when you’re, uh, sitting down with those clients, I’m assuming you have an expectation list of what you expect of your clients to be doing at home. 

Yeah. It, it varies, but yes. 

Yeah, so same thing. Um, you’re still gonna have those expectations and just hold them accountable for it.

The difference might be in how you’re delivering that. So gimme three expectations that you, that you give for your, uh, clients. 

Again, varies from client to client, but most of the time it’s gonna include walking, right? Some level of getting the dog out, walking the dogs, uh, you know, for a certain period of time, certain number of times per week or per day.

You know, there’s gonna be, um, again, kind of case by case. If a dog’s garden, there’s gonna be certain things. If a dog’s aggressing, other animals in the house, there’s gonna be certain things. Um, one of the things, one of the expectations I have for them, ’cause I’m usually dealing with multiple people in a household.

So one of the first things I do is I make them between my first initial consult or first lesson, and the second one, they have to sit down and come up with house rules. I don’t care what the rules are most of the time, but they all have to agree on what the house rules are, and they have to post ’em on the fridge by the time I get back for the second one.

Beautiful. 

I like 

that. Okay. I do too. I like that one a lot. So you’re telling ’em they have to go out and walk their dog and I’m gonna say, well, you know, I, I, I work 10 hour days and then, you know, I got two kids and you know, I, I’ll try and fit it in. Is that usually a response that you hear? 

Uh, I, I, is there a little, little struggle?

Yeah. I get that from time to time. Yeah. Ally’s soccer practice is on Wednesday and we’ve got this on Thursday and Yeah, sure. 

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it. It’s life, right? Like they’re, they’re gonna say that and some people will be like, well, it’s a non-negotiable. You have to do that. Well now that’s guilt. You just guilted me, right?

And now I don’t know that I like you that much. You just made me feel like crap. To where if you’re like, yeah, life is busy. I absolutely get it. And this dog is a commitment. And your kids are a commitment and work’s a commitment. So could the kids and you walk the dog, right? Like, how can you have that conversation with them without making them feel like crap because they haven’t been doing it, or they’re, they’re concerned, they don’t have the time to do it.

And again, I’m just making an assumption it’s a mom. ’cause I’m putting myself in that, that role there. One of the things that you can always do too, is just be like, I hear what you’re saying. Empathy, right? Like have some empathy with them and be like, life, life gets busy. So if you skip Wednesday because you got soccer practice and whatever.

So you’re gonna do, so you can do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, or like how the key is to empathize with them in a way that I can agree with most of what you’re saying, that, that things are busy. But how do you then turn that around for them versus saying, well, this is non-negotiable, and guilting them and making them feel like crap is, if you make a client feel like crap, they don’t wanna see you, they may not trust you, they may not believe everything you say because you’ve already guilted them and they also may not bring you the truth because they’re afraid now that, that you’re just gonna judge them.

So you can still hold the boundary, still set the expectation, be empathetic, and then hold them accountable with love by saying to them, Wednesdays are tough. So either if you could maybe literally grab them, hook ’em up to the leash before you hop in the shower, throw on some sweatpants and run around the block twice.

Um, and then, and then go in and take the shower or. You know, take the kids and, and make it an event. Maybe take them to soccer and you walk on the outer perimeter. So by having that little bit of empathy of acknowledging what she said would build that trust with her, that you’re not going to guilt her into something and it’s gonna create buy-in, because then there’s that problem solving piece that the two of you’re working on together.

Now, I love the whole idea of them coming up with, uh, with the boundaries and putting it on the fridge. And that one, I, I already envisioned marriage counselor in my head, right? Like, you know, one person saying, oh, it’s gotta be this, and the other person say, no, it’s gotta be that. So if they write ’em up and they, do, they bring ’em to you first and like you kind of 

No.

No. So I just, my objective with that exercise is to, because what I find, uh. Uh, in a majority of cases is that if you have two people living in a house, the dog has to keep up with two sets of rules. If you’ve got three people living in a house, now we’ve got three sets of rules, right? Dad lets a dog on the couch.

Mom doesn’t, it’s off limits. The kids. Maybe they do, but only when, you know. So the exercise of write the house rules down. Most of the time I don’t give ’em any real parameters unless there’s some behavioral issue that that’s gonna get in the way of that. But it is just, look, you gotta sit down and agree on what the rules are because if you’re not clear, this dog will have no clarity in your home and will be in a constant state of conflict potentially.

That’s what that’s all about. 

Perfect. And so, um, the words that you’re using, so I’m, I’m just gonna challenge you here ’cause ’cause I can, ’cause Matt said I could do this. 

Sure. He, he didn’t say you could, he actually, if I remember correctly, he actually asked you to do it. 

I was, I was just trying to be nice, so, so when you’re telling people you need to do this because otherwise it’s conflict for the dog in the home, I would rephrase that too.

When you have two sets of rules in the house, how do you think that makes the dog feel? Like? Let them take it into themselves and that way they’re gonna go be like, so you told the dog that they have to eat in the crate and you told the dog that it can eat in the kitchen. So then the dog sees the bowl and it stands in the middle of the room and it’s waiting.

That creates anxiety. That creates pressure within the dog because he doesn’t know what the expectation is. Or mom’s home and the dog curled up on the couch and dad comes home and says, don’t you dare get on my couch and gets all gruffy with them. ’cause he doesn’t want ’em on the couch. How do you think the dog feels about those situations?

And so I would challenge you just to say, put, put them in the dog’s mindset and then that way they’ll be like, so when they walk in the door and the dad sees the dog on the couch, he’d be like, okay, I shouldn’t be a jerk because mom allowed this to happen. But it will, it will help them to, I’m not gonna say be softer, but to just to really process how they have been screwing it up when you put it more on them versus you telling them.

So that’s how to hold them accountable with love. 

Great point. 

Right? It is hard as a pet parent, like it is hard. And I remember the first time I, I went to a training class and was told my dalmatian was a jerk and I was humiliated and I never went back. And I got the, you need to be doing better with your dog.

And I was like, I know that’s why I’m here. And she goes, well, you need to stop, blah, blah, blah. And I literally had a finger doing this to me. And I don’t know why that didn’t just stop me from ever pursuing, going down the path of being a dog trainer and working with dogs, because that sure made me feel like shit.

And so anytime that we can have those conversations and just put the, the thought process back on the human and do it with a little bit of empathy and get them to, to put themselves in the dog’s position, you’ll get better buy-in. And I will tell you too, it will also make the training a little bit easier because now they’re gonna be having that thought process in their head.

Okay, Matt, so I just did it to Jason. Your turn. Oh man. Right. So what are some homework items that you give to your clients? 

Certainly daily walk. Then assuming that we’re working, we’re to the point where they have obedience homework, which we almost always do some sort of daily obedient session and we don’t do long obedient sessions, but they’re definitely given something to do on a daily basis.

And then whatever their behaviors they’re looking to modify are making sure we’re doing something proactive on those behaviors on a daily basis. Not just reactive, you know, dog did this, now I try to stop ’em, but setting it up in a proper way every day. 

Okay, so I have Fluffy, and how are you gonna tell me that I have to work on an obedience session?

How this is our first session together? 

Could be, how are you gonna, how are you communicating to me that I need to do some obedience every day with my dog? 

So the intro to all of our lessons is, is explaining the style of our training and the spirit behind it. And a big part of that. They’d already, you know, would’ve heard from me that.

Training is often about giving the job some sort of structure and a job on a daily basis, and it’s providing clarity. And Jason used that word just a minute ago, but it’s something you can do proactively throughout the day to get your dog tired, to get them a sense of purpose and to also get them to understand your words, your body language better, so that when you need to communicate, you have all that kind of ready to go.

So then when I’m giving them their homework, what I would explain is, the last thing I want is you need something from your dog and you can’t get the dog to do it, and now you are mad or the dog is mad. So on a daily basis, I want you working on some of this obedience so that you’re ready so that when you need something from your dog, they understand it and you have that muscle memory built in.

If we’re just doing this once a week, we’ll never get there. So it really needs to happen on a daily basis. 

Oh yeah. Okay. Well, I work at 5:00 AM and then I get done at noon, and then I have a one hour lunch, and then I can come back. So like right before bed work. Okay. 

For the obedience, certainly what I would then, what I like to do is I build people a little checklist and they’re very informal, but the vast majority of the time you don’t need to do a training session the way you had pictured in your mind of 30 minutes of he’ll sit down, stay, come, I’ll build a checklist.

So I wanna see you if we’re working on recall, and the front door’s a trigger, let’s call him away from the door, 20 times per day. But you can do one here, one an hour later, three in a row after that, you know, one a little bit after that and just check it off on your list. So you could hopefully squeeze a lot in throughout the day.

Okay. Well, I suppose I can. And people like, so when people give you a little bit of gruff back, like, okay, and then if they bring you, do they bring you the checklist so that way you can have conversation. 

So we do in-home training. So like Jason said, he wants the house rules on the fridge. I like the checklist on the counter.

And so I do reference during the lesson that the beauty of this checklist is next week when I come, we can go through it together and you can walk me through, okay, this was a struggle. This thing went really well, this one was a struggle. And the idea is that I’m already making it clear. We’re gonna go through that checklist together.

Perfect. 

Okay. So you’ve come to my house. I didn’t do my checklist. You now have to have a bad conversation with me. Give me your bad conversation. Okay. 

And for the record, for everyone listening, if you ask me my skillset, I am definitely better at training dogs and identifying problems than I am identifying the issue with the dog’s behavior and creating a plan.

That’s my strong suit. But I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna cut in better than Eve at this. 

This is role playing. This is what we all need to work towards, right? 

If I. If I walk in and I see the checklist isn’t filled out or it’s not done completely, I would just say, Hey, let’s, you know, talk about how the week went.

How did everything go? Hopefully they’re already telling me they didn’t get a chance to do it because of whatever. And then I would probably launch into a quick conversation of the more consistent you are, the easier this is gonna be. And then what I have found is most people are, if you’re looking for guilt, if you guilt trip them about the happiness of their dog, it’s the easiest way to do it.

So I would say, I know you’ve been super busy this week. I get it. I’ve got three kids. We’re really busy. But for Fluffy, the best thing you can do for him is work with this on a daily basis. If you miss a few days here or there, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not gonna ruin everything, but it’s gonna make it ev everything harder for Fluffy.

And that’s the last thing either one of us want. 

Yeah, that’s fabulous. I mean, so you’re showing some empathy, which is great. ’cause empathy is the key thing. And then mirroring the fact that they have a busy life. You have a busy life. That was great. Those are great things. And really the piece that you would wanna look at is what do they need to build themselves up to motivate them a little bit more?

And that would be the one piece that I would challenge you to find. Like, do they need a gold star on their check mark or something from you on that sheet? If they did do them all right, like so that, uh, that gift of a star would be a gift to them if that’s their love language. And you should be able to see that if you’re in their house and they have a lot of crap, do they, do they need that physical touch?

Like, um, so if you walk in and that list isn’t done, maybe the hand on the shoulder of, all right, been a rough day, let’s get fluffy and let’s go. Or do they need just, and when I say physical touch, you can use spatial pressure with that too, right? Do they need you to kind of step into them or step back from them and be like, Hey, I see the list isn’t done.

Let’s take a breath. Been a rough week, right? Okay. What are we doing moving forward? So physical touch is also that spatial pressure that you’re giving to them. So that would be another one that you could certainly use. But really looking at at, because now you’ve, you’ve gotten to know them at this point, like what is their love language?

Because that is what’s gonna help to get them to do these things. A lot of our clients, and I tell people this coming to a trainer is, you know, just like an addict going to recovery, going to a meeting, you know, the fact that they’ve called you, they’ve met with you. That’s their first step to say, I have a problem and I need help.

So the more that we’re giving that empathy and feeding into those love languages, the more that you’re creating buy-in. And I’m just gonna use this example, Matt, that you gave me or that I gave you of, you know, if the list isn’t done, and I’ve heard trainers do this to people before, I don’t know that I wanna work with you.

You know, you don’t seem to wanna put in the effort. Oh, okay. Refund my money and have a nice day. I guess I’ll go find a new trainer. Right? So being able to take a step back and Matt, I don’t know why you gave, you didn’t give yourself enough credit like you did great there of. Just empathizing with them that, hey, life is busy.

I’ve got kids too. Things are gonna happen. And I would even just stop before you get to, Hey, fluffy isn’t gonna learn anything. If we’re not creating that muscle memory. I would more so maybe go down the road of though we missed this week, what are there two extra days that maybe you can build up to it?

Right? So instead of saying Fluffy’s not going to learn anything, by not having muscle memory, it’s just a, how can we kind of slingshot this a little bit more? Do you got a couple extra hours that you can donate throughout the week? Or could we do a morning, you know, on Thursday the kids don’t have school, could you do a morning session and an afternoon section of homework with the dog?

So just think of more problem solving pieces versus putting all that onus on them. And definitely look at that. What is their love language to motivate them of words, of affirmation, putting a gold star and if they haven’t done the list, then you’re not doing the Gold Star. So then maybe next to the list you can add in a few extra pieces that they can utilize and work on.

So those are my two little things. Thank you for being good sports on that, by the way. 

I know 

it’s not easy. 

What do you think about? So I love the love language thing and that’s something I think I could definitely learn a lot of and, and think about more. We train our, our, our trainers on trying to understand what would motivate a client, but different than a love language.

I mentioned just a minute ago about that kind of the guilt of the dog, but for some people it’s money. Some people it’s, they don’t wanna waste the money of their training. So when it’s someone like that, we all try to motivate by saying something along the lines of, Hey, it’s, I get it, you’re busy. The last thing I wanna do is see, you waste money though, and we do 10 lessons and we haven’t made much progress, then we have to do another 10.

And some people are really motivated by that. Others could care less. And it’s really about being unfair to the dog. How much do you think about things like that and is that tied in to, is that love languages from a different direction or do you think that’s something completely different? 

So when you’re talking about money, that’s usually gifts, right?

So that those people are, that, that gift thing, right? The gift is their time, the gift is the money, right? So those are the people that their love language is, is that gift giving. And what I have typically found is that people will do anything for their dog. And money is typically not an, not the thing that will motivate them.

Now, I say typically there are those people who are like, Hey, I had to, you know, put this all on my credit card because this is a huge thing for me to jump into. Absolutely. Like you will, you’ll always have a few of those people. But most of the time if they’re saying, if you’re thinking that the money is the motivator, it typically isn’t.

Typically it’s that self worth, that self value, and they have put their self worth into that dog. So when the dog’s a dick. They think that they’re a failure, that they’re an asshole, they’re humiliated, right? Their, their self-worth is all wrapped up in this relationship with the doc. And that’s where the fact that they’ve even reached out to a trainer was a huge leap for them to say that they couldn’t do it on their own.

So they’ve already taken a little vulnerability hit by calling you and, and being your client. There are people that absolutely, you’re gonna say, Hey, the faster that we do this, you know, time is money. The reason I always caution that too a little bit, is you also don’t wanna put the pressure on yourself of somebody then using that against you.

You’re just here to, to take my money. You’re just here to take my money. You just wanna drag this out for a year ’cause you wanna take my money. So that’s why I always caution utilizing that money motivator and even using that in conversation because they might flip that back against you. ’cause they think that’s your love language, that you are looking for the money and not looking for the value of the time and the effort that you’re putting into it.

So, so it’s a double-edged sword, right? Gets to be a little tricky. But yeah, if, if they, if they really kind of harp on the money aspect to it, I would look to, typically money is associated with self-worth. So that’s where you would wanna use the affirmation pieces. Most likely they need words of affirmation in order to boost their self-esteem.

So people are willing to spend money if what you’re doing is making them feel good. 

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So on that note, Eve, I think for me, one of the most difficult clients, and we get a lot of these are people that are very busy, they’re pretty well off, they’re willing to spend any amount of money, but they don’t want to do the work.

And the reason they’re comfortable spending any amount of money is they’re used to bringing in a contractor to whatever, right? Build them a deck and you do no work. You give the contractor money and then you have a brand new deck. Obviously with dogs it’s not like that. I find those to be the most challenging sometimes.

’cause you have someone who thinks money can solve all problems and they’re willing to pay a lot for a dog trainer, and we know how that can go side sideways. What are your thoughts on that and how do you go about dealing with someone who likes the dog, but they’re just trying to throw money at the problem to make it go away with as little effort on their part as possible?

So I have two answers for that. One, you need to create a program that allows them to keep coming into your world so you can keep helping to solve their problem. If they’ve got money to spend and they want you to help solve their problems, create a program that allows them to do that. Maybe it’s a membership program.

You’re doing stuff over Zoom, what have you. The second piece is your, your bigger piece is how can you hold them accountable? How can you hold them accountable to put in some time and effort? Because that also takes the toll on us, especially if you’ve got a waiting list. If you’ve got people that you know, you’re turning away clients that you really wanna help, but you just can’t fit them in, that’s where burnout kind of comes into play too, because when you’ve got clients that wanna give you the money, but you just feel like you’re spinning your wheels, doesn’t make you feel very good either.

So holding them accountable, uh, the way to flip those people is to ask those open-ended questions and the open-ended questions are All right. So we just did this lesson with Fluffy. So you tell me, let’s look at your calendar. You give to me how you think Fluffy is gonna learn the best. Do you think you wanna work 15 minute sessions, 30 minute sessions?

You tell me where can this fit in and let them build the program. Let them build the solution because that’s gonna create buy-in on their part. Um, you talked about a checklist. Checklists are great. There are some people love checklists ’cause they wanna check it off, right? Other people have avoidance issues and they’re gonna look at the checklist, but it’s been two days and now they’re not gonna do it because now they’re just gonna come up with an excuse ’cause they feel stupid ’cause they didn’t do it.

So when you have an avoidant, that’s what they’re gonna do. You know, like that pile of laundry that doesn’t get folded, they’re just avoiding it and they’re just hoping that eventually you’ll just use all the clothes and it will go away. So they’re gonna avoid the checklist ’cause they just hope you keep coming back and train their dog and then everything will be good.

The other piece to it is. How to create some sort of relationship equity such as Bri. You know, you said Tuesday afternoons are great. That, uh, those would be the days that you can go for your walk there With technology, there are programs where you can send an accountability text, Hey, shoot me a picture of you and Fluffy out on a walk.

Create that accountability and however it is that they can fit it into their lifestyle. The other, the bigger piece to it, um, especially if money is of no object, is there a social status that they kind of aspire to because they are affluent and they have money to spend and they just want you to train their dog.

Um, so a social status where social, they can send you pictures, then you videos and maybe it’s in a private Facebook group. So then that creates some accountability where you actually tag everybody. All right, everybody, it’s Tuesday. You tag them all in the post. Show me pictures of you out with your dog.

’cause they want that social status that, oh look, I’m out with my dog. Everybody see me, right? And we find that most people that are affluent also want to have that social status that says that they have it all. And that’s a part of the equation. The second piece to that is how can you not how can you, but when you’re communicating with them and you’re gonna find out like a few sessions in, right?

Like you usually don’t know right off the bat. So you kind of had a few sessions in, you go into their homes. So then I like to do what’s called mirroring. If I would be like, okay, so I’m here and we did these sessions last week, we did these sessions the day before, the week before. We’re looking at your checklist.

I need some accountability. So you hold me accountable. Now what can I provide to you of value? And typically they’re gonna go, well, can we just, can we just work through the things from last week? We did that. We did that last week. So now I need accountability from you of what am I providing to you today?

And that. It gets them kind of down a thought process of, oh, if I have to tell you what I wanna work on, then I don’t know because I haven’t worked on it myself. And so there’s gonna be a little bit of awkwardness there. And then you say, okay, so, so since you haven’t been able to tell me like what you wanna work on, let’s go to the list and then let’s figure out what I’m gonna work on and what you’re gonna work on.

And then, so you’re just kind of mirroring how they would want, how you would typically come into the session and be like, okay, today we’re gonna work on this because they’re not doing their homework. You ask them to come back to you. It creates a different change in their mindset and that’s one way to kind of work them through it.

But yeah, holding them accountable does get tough when they, they’re like, well, I just want you to come and train my dog. Can’t you just make fluffy, behave themselves? And a lot of times they want fluffy to behave themselves ’cause they wanna go out on the walk. They want people to see them in their neighborhood with a great, well-behaved dog.

They don’t wanna be the neighbor whose dog is kujo behind the fence. And so utilizing some form of social endeavors of pictures and having ’em, you know, join a private Facebook group so that way they post pictures, you can tag people. Those are all great ways to do that as well. Most. And I always say most, most of those people, that is what they’re looking for.

Now, when you’re having that conversation, it’s really easy for us to get irritated and be like, listen, I don’t wanna be here wasting my time. You don’t wanna put in your effort. I don’t wanna put in my effort. In fact, I know I went to a seminar once and a, a trainer actually told me that he kicks people out of his program when they don’t do their homework.

Hey, if you’ve got a waiting list and you wanna do that, great. I think when people are coming to a trainer, they already feel defeated. They feel like crap, and they’re looking for you to show them, but they also need you to validate them in some way, shape, or form. And so if you’ve got somebody that says, listen, I just want you to train the dog.

Like, I, I really don’t have the time, energy, or the effort. Just tell me how much it is. Or here’s my credit card. Charge me monthly. That works. I think the flip side to those conversations are, I can do this for you, but I wanna do it with you. I wanna be in this relationship with you and the dog, because then you’re taking that guilt and that weight and that feeling of crap that they couldn’t figure it out themselves, off their shoulders and be like, I wanna see you four months from now.

Walking that down, dog down the sidewalk. Have the neighbor walk their dog down the sidewalk, and I wanna be watching you and cheering you on from the sidelines because I know that you have it in you to get it done with the dog. I’m just here to give you a high five and to offer you some pointers. So building them up to feel good, they’ll step in.

I have a lady who has been enrolled in my dog school program for two years. Her dog is perfect. I, we have nothing to do. We do tricks with the dog. We’re teaching at park, or it’s a cattle dog. I mean, I’ve gotta, you know, doing all the things. It’s simply because she loves to see us post her dog on social media, doing all those things.

She’s paying me 200 and some bucks a week for two days of training. Like, it’s, it’s silly. And she’s bringing her dog to daycare on the opposite days. So she’s like one of my best clients financially. But yeah, you know, for her, she, she wanted to see her dog on the Facebook page. She’s a fluent, she doesn’t actually wanna work the dog, but she wants to show everybody else that she has a great dog.

Now she 

accomplished. 

Mission accomplished. Now, she also does admit, um, ’cause she did take a break from me and then she brought the dog back. She goes, I do all the work. I walk the dog daily. She goes, it’s my husband and my daughter that don’t do anything. And then the dog thinks it can get away with crap.

So back to your Jason. Everybody has something on the refrigerator. Totally get that right. But yeah, so for her, we just built the program that, um, ’cause our, our rule used to be they could sign up for a semester, then they had to take a semester off, uh, before they could re-enroll. And, um, we just said, nevermind, you can just keep paying us money and we’ll just keep playing with your dog.

But she, we did create buy-in for her ’cause we said just coming to us isn’t gonna be enough. She needs to also walk the dog. So yeah, she walks the dog and once a month we do a, Hey, we wanna see a check-in, show us you walk, show us you walking your dog. And then everybody posts pictures of them out with their dog.

And that’s a private Facebook group. 

Private Facebook group. So they have to answer a question to join the dog school Facebook group. And the question is. What’s the name of your dog? In our, in our dog school program. So it’s not complicated, but uh Yep. It’s a private Facebook group and uh, you know, it’s just like creating your own tribe, right?

Super important. And that way what we have found too is the clients that have been in our dog school program for the last three, oh my gosh, five years, I lost track of time. Five years are the biggest cheerleaders for the people who just came into the group and they’ll be like, oh, my dog used to do that, and now they walk great.

Or my dog used to jump on the neighbor, you know, people ringing the doorbell and now they don’t do that. So those people help us with the love language of affirmation and the high fives by commenting on our, our Facebook page. Yeah. 

Awesome. 

Oh yeah, go ahead. 

You, you hung me and Matt both out to dry here.

So, um, I feel like it’s only right that if it’s your turn now, so give it. I’ve got one for you. So we, we get, we get a lot of people, we run a school, we bring people in and, and, and the reality is they do some pretty strange things with dogs and then they learn and then all of a sudden we see them start to judge pet owners who are doing the same silly things that they were doing before they started.

So you go to somebody’s house and, and the dogs, let’s just say they’ve got a puppy and a puppy’s peeing in the floor, and they’re rubbing their nose in it. How do you handle that one? How do you, how do you, what do you tell these folks who are now judging people for doing silly things that they maybe once did?

How do you deal with that client? What would you tell those, those new folks starting out? How would you coach them through dealing with somebody doing silly things with dogs? 

Oh, absolutely. And in fact, that’s something I go over in my reactive dog class to my students. Okay. I always tell them, you know, as, as they’ve progressed and.

Um, I get some of my clients that go, Hey, can I just come to one reactive class? Like, I haven’t been there in six months, but I just wanna keep my dog in practice of being around ob obnoxious dogs. And I’ll be like, sure. And same thing, they’ll walk in the door and, you know, you’ll see them kind of side eyeing and, um, so as people progress and, and they get good.

So maybe towards the end of your, your program, you have to remind them, say, Hey, as Mayo Angel said, when we know better, we do better. We need to help other people realize that when they know better, they’ll do better. And it’s your job to take everything we’ve taught you and to move that forward. So help people understand that maybe what they’re doing needs to be better.

Don’t ever shame them. ’cause if you shame them, they’ll never walk in the door. And yeah, you have to give them the pep talk. You have to educate them because it is, you know, they’ll, I’m a 14-year-old, so talk about being judgy. Let me tell you, we actually don’t go to a musical festival anymore because the last time, well we only went twice.

The second time, we watched a fat chocolate lab dragging a retractable leash running through the crowd, grabbing food off of people’s laughs with two teenage daughters running after us. And my daughter looked at me and I said, not our circus, not our monkeys. And she goes, mom, this is causing me anxiety. I can’t be here.

So it’s true, right? Like when you know better, it is hard not to judge. So our quote is, is always Maya Angelou of, you know, when we know better, we do better. And now it’s your job as somebody who now knows better and has done better to help other people walk through the door. And that’s it. That’s also my nice way of asking for a referral.

I’m not shameless, I, I always ask my clients for referrals, but, but that is it. You know, when we know better, we do better. And now that you’ve got the knowledge, help other people to walk through the door. And if we can help everybody to know better and to do better, what a great, great world the place will be to have relationships with their dogs.

I think that’s a big one. Yeah. Yeah. A big piece to a lot of this too is for those of, you know, we’re all running businesses, right? Whether you’re a solopreneur, you’ve got a facility, doesn’t matter. Touching base with people is the also second best thing that you could ever possibly do. So like when I have new hires starting in the dog daycare environment, it’s, I’m gonna say it’s scary, right?

Like they’ve never been with a large group of dogs. I mean, we do 80 to a hundred dogs a day at my facility. We divide ’em into six playgroups. I know, I just saw Jason’s eyes bug out six different groups. So, you know, 15 to 20 in a group, very manageable and. There’s no way to prepare somebody to walk into that environment and their anxiety is up, their stress level’s up, especially in the mornings when the dogs are coming in and barking.

It’s like having 50 kids in a Chuck E Cheese. It’s, it’s a little loud at first in the mornings. So we touch base with our clients and we touch base with our staff. We, we have what’s called the, the five minute check-in. So, uh, every 14 days they get a five minute check-in where I meet them, where they are.

So that’s another kind of key component to this. Meet people where they are with the five love languages. So if my new hires out in the play yard, scoop and poop, I walk out there, I’m like, Hey, scooping poop today. Huh? And they’re like, yep. I’m like, awesome. So what’d you do this weekend? Yeah. Or what, what plans you got for next weekend?

Right. So I’m asking them some personal questions to drop their guard, because if I immediately start in with, Hey, so you’ve been here a couple weeks, how’s it going? 

Oh, it’s. 

I am not gonna get anywhere. So I need to open them up a little bit. And also I’m still getting to know them. I’m still getting to know what their love language is, so then I know how to have these conversations with them.

It’s no different with your clients and especially if you’re dealing with reactive dogs or people that are really, you know, have some spicy dogs. They need that check-in. They need to know that like you think of them other than when you are face-to-face with them. That is something that is so important that touching base with them.

Um, they just need a five and you can do it virtually, a five second check-in. You can simply send them a text and you can automate all this. By the way, I know some people are going, when do I have time? Uh, you know, respond to emails and answer phone calls. There’s chatbots. There’s automations. Fricking hire yourself a virtual assistant.

I have five. No, I have six virtual assistants that work for me part-time. I’m their side hustle. They print out reports of training clients that maybe we haven’t seen in a couple of weeks, and they just send them a text message through our app. Um, hey, just checking in. Been getting your walks in with Fluffy, been working on that 15 minutes of obedience, like whatever it is with their program.

And they know that you care about them, that you care about their dog, that you are a part of their family unit that want what’s best for them. And I will tell you that this helps my relationship with them. They trust me that I care about them truly. This also helps my bottom line. I get a lot of referrals on people stay in my programs.

I’ve created so many programs to keep them in my world. Um, they show up at special events. One of my staffers, her mom was involved in a house fire, and so she had to be gone for a period of time. I had clients pouring money into her Venmo account. So when you can create this tribe of people who believe in what you’re doing to help them, it really expands tenfold.

And I know I talked a lot about how this works with, with your clients, but truly, it, it works magic with your staff. I’ve been open, I’ve had my one facility for 13 years. I have two staffers that have been with me 12 years. I have seven staffers that have been with me five years, you know, and this, they pick up poop and they play with dogs all day.

Like, come on, this is waitress and, and service style work. And, um, they have stayed with us a long time. And it, it really comes down to the more that you can, um, be empathetic with them, give them love, show them their love language, hold boundaries. Because as you can imagine, a 15,000 square foot facility with that many dogs, I got a lot of boundaries and a lot of expectations that have to be met.

Uh, it just really changes the culture. And I know culture’s a buzz buzzword in corporate America, but you have a culture in your dog training business. You know, it’s not just how you train, it’s how you’re communicating and, and that’s a culture that you’re creating within the tribe of people that believe in you.

That is 

a 

lot of good 

info. We got a, we got a board retreat face to face coming up next week, so I’m, we’re gonna jump on the phone this weekend. I’m gonna get all the inside scoop and I’m gonna use this on the board next week. 

Absolutely. Virtual high fives everything. 

Yeah. Yeah, 

right. I mean, truly like if we’re talking right now and one of you were to put up that little high five signal symbol, even on the, on the zoom, I’d be like, Ooh, I can just kinda high five.

You can’t help but release that dopamine by doing that. It’s these subtle little things that are so monumental, and I think a lot of times as dog trainers, we can get frustrated. Because we look at it as, you’re not doing what I asked. You don’t, you don’t really care about the dog. If you did, you’d be doing this.

You are wasting my time. And that’s not usually the case. They called you. They called you. So that is not the case. 99% of the time. You just need to figure out how to communicate with them. And because we’re talking about their fur child, their baby, their dog, the love of their life, the thing that has gotten them through the darkest moments in their life, you have to treat this like a marriage, like a relationship, like you’re dating.

And you have to use all those right words and all those things to make them believe in you and to trust you and to know that you’ve got the best intentions with them in their doc. 

So Jason, you’ve got your work cut out for you at the board retreat to do all of that. 

I’m just bringing Eve with me.

That’d be good. And you like you could just turn and look at her and see if you’re doing it right. Just put a little 

earpiece in and do the microphone and I’ll just feed you all the words. 

I wanna see Jason just leading it and using marker words and like Yes. And toss people a little piece of candy every time they do something you like.

And it’ll be days before anyone figures out what’s happening. 

Blue Bluetooth, Bluetooth, high fives, the whole nine yards. 

Yeah. 

So you gotta bring candy. Right. Okay. Because some people want gifts, some people want gifts. So bring some candy Jolly Ranchers, you know, whatever that you can throw out to people.

You know, you’ve got the virtual high five acts of service. That’s, that’s where you can actually say, how can I be of service? Right. How can I help you achieve that? That’s an act of service. ’cause you’re offering yourself as a service to, to, to the board members or to somebody. I will tell you that, uh.

This works in your personal relationships as well, people. Um, but no, there is a book called The Five Love Languages. I highly recommend you give it a glance through. I’m sure it’s on audio book. I’m horrible. I, I have to admit I hate reading. So I’m an audio, audio book person, so I’ll listen to it. But it is important, you know, and a lot of the big coaches out there talk about this, you know, Brene Brown, Simon Sinek, I’m Gary Vaynerchuk.

Um, you know, he talks about how he used to see Bob on Thursday and Hey Bob, how’s it doing? How you doing? How are the kids? And then he would fire Bob on Friday and Bob would be like, what? You’re a jerk. Like, you didn’t even give me, you know, any feedback that you were having a problem with me and you just fired me.

And I think that’s, that’s the kind of thing that we do with our clients. You know, we, we just get upset with them, but we don’t wanna say anything to them or we’re rude to them ’cause we’re not speaking the language that they, that they need. And so I’m just acknowledging that fact and really trying to always think of.

What their needs are and how to put yourself in their position because they, they wanna spend money with you, they wanna work with you. They want a better dog. They don’t wanna be humiliated when somebody comes to their house or when they take fluffy for a walk. And, um, they just need to know that you have faith that they can achieve that goal.

Well Eve, for all the listeners, we’ve got a lot of dog trainers listening. Some are independent trainers, others run companies and run daycares. Where could they go to find out more about you and the different services you offer? 

Absolutely. Well, I’m always dropping funny little nuggets on Facebook and Instagram.

So Dog Handler Academy or dog handler academy.com, uh, is typically where you are going to find me. Um, I will say that, uh, I really focus on the things that you need to do in your business. And I leave all the dog training, uh, videos and shenanigans to the other people. 

Love it. Awesome. Well thank you for taking the time today.

This was great. I think it’s gonna hopefully help a lot of people. 

You don’t know what you don’t know 

and I think there’s a lot we all don’t know, but this board retreat’s gonna be amazing ’cause Jason’s gonna channel his inner Eve and he’s gonna, 

now I’m getting the head 

easier. You Well thank you. You appreciate it.

Absolutely.