E120: 반려견 훈련의 비즈니스 측면

got more and more involved in helping other people help their dogs. Hi, this is Christina. Yeah. So my interest in dog training started, well, my family had boxers when I was growing up. We got our first boxer when I was 10. And we're all huge dog lovers. So as soon as I got married and we were settled in our first real apartment, I insisted on getting a dog. And at that point in time, I actually went to a pet store because I didn't know any better. This was probably 25 years ago and got Max, our Boston Terrier. And he actually turned out to be a really amazing dog. We called him the mayor of Boston. We went all over the city together. I didn't really get into training, though, until our next dog, which is Pippa. After Max was gone, we got her in 2007. And I took her to puppy class. And then I saw that they had something called agility. And I decided to try it with her. And we were both hooked and haven't stopped since then. So let me just talk for a moment about everyone's background. Have you guys always been positive trainers? How did you become kind of interested in positive training? Jamie, do you want to go first? So professionally, I have. But as I said earlier, I started in rescue work. And so my first couple of fosters had some reactivity issues to other dogs. And the rescue trainer at the time really wanted me to use a prong collar. He's very heavy into aversives and things like that. And I was resistant to it, but gave in and tried it that way and very quickly saw that it was actually making the reactivity worse and not better. And so I kind of distanced myself and started working with that dog using positive reinforcement and saw how quickly the dog turned around. And that is what led me down to not wanting to use those tools anymore and just being really committed to doing things as kindly for the dog and as easy as possible for both the dog and the person. Awesome. Awesome. Michael? Yeah. So no, I haven't. I mentioned a dog, an aggressive male dog got me into dog training. And I spent about two years with one mentor trying to get that dog to stop biting. And he had some severe bites on men and probably to the point where it was really irresponsible to have him in public. And so I relied heavily on prong collar and the e-caller to try to get him to be obedient. And he was very obedient, very flashy looking obedience. But a couple of things happened. And one, he stopped warning me about him being uncomfortable with people. And then two, he started hating training a lot. And I hated training. Internally, it was awful. It was an awful feeling.

I started not wanting to go out there and do training sessions. I just didn't like it. I feel like now looking back on it, I stuck with it way too long because at the time that was the only person I had to learn from. And so I thought that was the way to correct it. And then I found another trainer, really awesome trainer, actually, Deb Norman. I'm sure a lot of people know who she is. She taught me a different way of training. And she really helped me learn and work through it in a more positive way. And once that happened, I made a lot more progress with him. And it's been no looking back ever since. That's awesome. What about you, Christina? Christina? Yeah, I think, like I mentioned with Max, our Boston Terrier, and the dog that I had as a kid, we didn't actually do a ton of training. It was more just living with them. We did always go to what they used to call obedience class or puppy class with them, although it wasn't like puppy class we do today. It was like basic manners. And I do remember with Max, we got him in 1992. And I remember learning the quote-unquote right way to put on a choke chain. But I don't really remember anything more harsh than, you know, a leash pop or something in that class. On the other hand, we certainly didn't use food to train. And actually, my clearest memory from those days is we were supposed to train a trick to demonstrate on the last day of class. And my trick I was teaching him was to, you know, stand up on his hind legs and dance around. And one day I was in my apartment. I can still picture it. I had a dog treat in my hand like a little cookie. And I kind of looked around to make sure no one was watching. And I waved it around. And he immediately stood up and tried to reach it. And I gave it to him. And I kind of went, oh, my God, that was so easy. I could never do that again. Like a dangerous thing that I had just tried out. That's, I mean, that's just how ingrained it was in the dog training culture there that using food to train was bad. You know, he turned into just a really great dog. And he lived for 14 years. And then after he was gone and I got Pippa, at that point I had been to law school and I was used to doing research and learning things from books. So when she was a puppy, I just started researching and reading everything that I could about dog training. And I went to the bookstore and I happened to find Pat Miller's book, The Power of Positive Dog Training. And I read that. And it just made so much sense to me. So I just looked in the back of the book at her bibliography.

And I worked my way back reading all the books that she cited until I got to all the way back to Don't Shoot the Dog. And then I worked my way back up to the present time, you know, with reading The Other End of the Leash and Culture Clash and all those great books. And then I think I'm also lucky that what caught my attention was agility. So I fell into kind of a good support group that, at least in my area, the agility trainers are generally positive reinforcement based trainers. My first instructor, actually, whose name is Nadine Perry. She has been a student for a long, long time of our own FDA's own Julie Daniels. So they're really deep into positive reinforcement training. And so I kind of fell into that group and I never really knew anything else. So to kind of get to our main topic for today, what got you guys each interested in the business side of things? So it was actually the kind of the other way around for me. I was a lawyer before I got really interested in dog training. When I once I had PIPA, I was already a lawyer for several years. Just over the years, as my network of dog friends grew, I realized I have this great network of small business owners and that I had this opportunity to do the legal work that I have the knowledge and experience in. And I can help support a cause that I believe in, which is positive reinforcement based animal training. It's so fun for me to work with dog trainers and talk to them about what they're doing in their businesses and figuring out how we can help them. So that's how that combination came about. So actually, I'm much the same as Christina. I sort of was interested in business before I became interested in dog training. I remember very clearly to this day, a high school accounting class and people asking you what you were going to be when you grew up. And I said, well, I'm going to own a business. I just don't know what kind yet. And so, you know, I have a couple of my degrees in accounting and master's in business administration and helped a couple of other businesses before meeting Michael and getting really involved in a dog training business. And so I came about it from the business end as well as the dog training end. And so I love, you know, we built our business that helps us provide for our family. And so much like Christina said, wanting to help other positive dog trainers be more successful and be able to feed themselves and take care of their family and getting positive training out there. Yeah. So for me, I was already had a business, a dog training business before I met Jamie.

Not a very successful one, but one that made some money. I've never been a good employee. I've always worked hard. So I guess by that definition, I would be a good employee. Like whenever I was in a job, I worked hard. I made sure I did what was laid in front of me. But I always challenged authority or I always challenged the way things were done. And that's not always perceived very well when you work for somebody else. Then I quickly realized that my earning potential was limited in a job. For me, I was always jumping job to job because I would go to another place of business and ask them if they would pay me more to either do the same thing I'm doing or something close. And when I got a yes answer, I would leave and I would take more money. And then I realized that if I was in control of how much I make for my own time, I could make even more money. When I decided to become a dog trainer because of the aggression stuff, it was like a perfect fit. And I struggled a lot to try to figure out how to get that to happen in the beginning. There was a lot of years of not eating very much. And then it just worked out. And once you figure out the method, then it becomes a lot more easy to accomplish. And for us, like helping with other dog trainers, I started noticing that dog trainers felt alone a lot of times in their business, whether it's with case issues or whatever. And then there was a lot of dog trainers feeding them poor information because they weren't very good business owners. And so then they were just spreading misinformation. And so that's what kind of got me into the support side of it. For those, I guess, who are listening who until now have primarily trained their own dogs, but maybe they're kind of curious about becoming a professional trainer or they're just getting started on that road, right? What's one thing you think they should think about before jumping in? For example, not to be totally biased, but I'd certainly say that they should think about getting a website up with some basic info just so they have somewhere to send people to learn more about what they do. Michael, do you want to start? Yeah, definitely a website. That's huge. But you can learn from your own mistakes or you can learn from other people's mistakes. And when you're getting into anything, if you're just going to jump into it, which I myself have done, and take the bumps and bruises, well, it's going to be a long road and a tough road. And it's going to lead to feeling alone.

So for me, I think one of the biggest things that you can do is surround yourself with people who are already successful doing it. And this way, you have a way to ask the questions ahead of time and not run into the difficulties that you may have if you just try to tackle it on your own. I think, well, two things. One is more of an overview kind of thing. I think actually when you're starting a business, most people are going to be thinking about, you know, what am I going to do first? What am I going to do next? But I think it's really useful to take a moment and think about where you want to be in five years or where you want to be in 10 years. Because that's going to inform, you know, to a certain extent what you do now and how you set up your business at this point in time. But as a really concrete first step, I say insurance. Most of the legal stuff that we do is risk management. So, you know, thinking about what risks there are to your business, how likely they are, how bad it would be if, you know, the thing actually happened. And insurance is the first way to address most of those risks. So I do think that if somebody was going to start, I would tell them, you know, first get insurance. And the other stuff can come later. Do you mean insurance specifically in case somebody gets bitten or are you talking about like a broader type of insurance? That's probably the main one, a general liability insurance. You know, most people who are starting, but there are, you know, several different kinds. And in the class that I'm going to be doing, I talk about what the different risks are and what the different kinds of insurance are. But, yeah, I think that's the main one, the first one in case somebody, you know, a client or a customer gets injured. Christina, you would not like how I started. Let me guess, Michael, you did not have insurance when you started, huh? I had a leash in hands. That got bit. That got bit a lot. To bring it around, as they both said, I think my biggest thing for people would be to treat your business as a business from the beginning. Okay. So a lot of us get into dog training and it's a hobby at first. So we don't set up the processes and procedures that most businesses have. And we'll answer our phone at 9, 10 o'clock at night because we want to land the client. So we don't set business hours. We'll bend over backwards to see that client on Friday night at 8 o'clock if that's what they want. And I've talked to other dog trainers who have been in a lesson with somebody and they said, well, what do you do for a living? Well, I'm a dog trainer for a living.

But, you know, it's that they're not setting up and treating their business as a business from the beginning. So along with insurance, which I agree with Christina, is very necessary. You want to have your processes and procedures spelled out and you want to treat your clients as customers with that same customer service that you would want. But also making sure that it's not too personal and you're not giving too much of yourselves as a buddy-buddy versus an actual business. Yeah, I think that's an awesome kind of point to make there just because you're right. A lot of the times, especially dog trainers, you start off as a hobby and you kind of – or you start off working with your own dog, right, because your own dog has some issues. And then slowly move into that helping other people category. And it's super easy to have somebody say, well, can you help me? And even if you maybe had insurance under one business and now they want you to come out to their house and you're just not there yet, like it's very easy to get swept up and not stop and think about, okay, what other things does the business need to be a business? So I think that's a really great point. If you guys were to talk to somebody today who is just about to start down that path, I'm sure everybody on the call has made a mistake once upon a time in their career. But is there anything that you think that new dog trainers often overlook or maybe a common mistake they make? Jamie, do you want to start? Yeah, sure. I think new trainers often the mistake that they make is being too dog trainery, if that makes any sense. So we're all super excited about this class that we just took and this new terminology that we just learned. And we're trying to turn all of our clients into dog trainers. And so that can be overwhelming for somebody who's already overwhelmed with the way that their dog is behaving. So trying to have all of the knowledge that's necessary, but bring it back down to a level that your clients can understand and can implement. So if we overwhelm them with too much science talk and information, they may not get the practice in that they need to be successful because they just aren't quite sure where to go. I like that line overwhelming someone who is already overwhelmed with how their dog is behaving. I really like that. Michael? So financial management, I think a lot of new dog trainers poorly manage their money. And it's totally reactionary because they're just starting out. They don't have a lot of cash and maybe they took the leap too soon.

And so they're just trying to survive and they're in that survival mode. And so they never put money away. And I really do think that they should follow that 10% rule where you're just stashing 10% of your cash no matter what it is. If you make $100, put $10 away for those rough times, for those winter times. Because I can't tell you how many dog trainers we've seen in the marketing group say, well, what do you do in the slow times? I'm really scared. I'm eating ramen noodles. Well, then that just tells me that we've not managed our money appropriately. And in the springtime, in the summertime, when things are really high and awesome, we need to be planning for the winter time. And so that's one thing that I think dog trainers should really get through their head in the beginning of their business, no matter how much money they're making. And that's scary. I get it. But the difference between living check to check and financial freedom is using your money to purchase things that make money for you that you don't have to work for. And that has to be the ultimate goal for a business, right? Profits. Profits. Another thing I would say is when they do get to a point, kind of building on that, your money making money for you, when you get to a point where you are busy, your marketing has to continue. And you can't always do it in person. So being able to invest wisely in advertising and things of that nature where your money is making money for you, that's important. And a lot of trainers are afraid to make that leap, maybe because they don't know how to use them. They don't know how to use Google ads or Facebook ads or whatever it is, or they see their competitors doing it and they're afraid to do it. But I cannot tell you how much you can actually make when you're using ads. It's super powerful. I mean, it's good to hear that it's possible to kind of figure those things out and get it to the point where it's really making money for you. I know I tell my marketing students all the time, you want to try different marketing methods and find the one that when you put $1 into it, you get $2 back out. Because then, like you said, your money is making money for you. You have a money machine that is fairly reliable. And if you have a money machine, why would you stop putting money in it? So, yeah. Christina? Yeah, I have sort of a kind of a picky thing that I find that entrepreneurs do is they start out strong and maybe they decide they're going to incorporate an LLC. And they do the whole thing and then they don't follow through. And it's probably because they don't see the value ongoing.

And that's why I think it's really important to understand first why you are doing it. And then if you do decide that you should incorporate an LLC, then you really have to commit to it and carry through year after year. Because otherwise, it really is just a waste of time and money. And that, I guess, applies to all of your sort of business processes or things. You know, if you really think about it and then make the decision of what is right for you and your business and then commit to it. When you say they don't follow through, do you mean they end up no longer continuing with the business? Or there's something about like registering that they don't? Yeah. Yep. There are annual requirements and people tend to just then let it go and they don't keep up the certifications or the reports that they need to do to the state and the fees. Uh-uh. And they just let it last then. Gotcha. And, I mean, with the simplest solution, not just to be – to have an accountant or somebody who is kind of doing that stuff for you? Or is that something that most people – most business owners are doing for themselves and they just – Yeah. I think the problem happens when people are on a really tight budget and so they try to do it themselves. You know, then they're overworked. And, again, it's just another thing that you have to spend time and money on. And, again, they don't see the value in it. And it may be that, you know, it's not necessary for your business. But just, you know, think about it and make the decision. And if it's really just a time issue, then, yeah, then you can get an attorney or an accountant who can do it for you. Obviously, you can always pay someone to do it. I think the problem that I see is people just simply let it lapse, just kind of give up on it rather than making an informed decision. If I can just say the same thing as Christina, I think that goes back to also treating your business as a business. And I have a background in accounting. But even, like, the last couple of years, our business is bigger than what I'm comfortable doing, even with my background. So it's investing maybe not too early, but early on to have somebody who's helping you make those decisions, either a lawyer or a CPA, to make sure back to your 5, 10-year plan that you're hitting your goals and getting there financially as well as professionally. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I will say that, you know, I hired somebody else to do that stuff because that is definitely not my strong point.

And it's money well spent to put this stuff, send this stuff to somebody else and know that when it comes back, it's going to be right. It's going to be done correctly. It's something that I don't have to think about or worry about or, you know, it's not cheap, but it's, you know, it's a reasonable business expense. And it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot cheaper than doing it wrong. And getting caught. We're talking about, you know, if you file wrong with the state or you don't do your taxes right, the penalty is an interest and possible, you know, other repercussions for that. It's definitely worth putting the money out beforehand. So we talked a little bit about somebody who's brand new, but I want to talk for just a second about, you know, kind of the other side of that coin. So people who have been at it for a while, maybe they've been trying to get their dog training business up and going. Maybe they still have to work another job in order to, like, financially just, you know, have the lifestyle that they need. Or maybe they're just struggling. They're like Michael and eating a lot of ramen. What kind of advice would you offer? What questions should they be asking themselves to kind of try and get back onto a better track? Christina, do you want to start out this time? Yeah. And I guess I have to go back to what we were just talking about, and that is get professional help. And it doesn't have to be. And I know that it's hard when you when you are struggling to then like pay somebody. And it and and it and it doesn't have to be, you know, a lawyer or an accountant or a consultant or a coach. If you can do one of those, that's great. But it can also be a trusted friend or like a score advisor or the small business administration. I think at that point, you do need to, again, step back and look at what you're doing and figure out what's working and what isn't and figure out a plan for moving forward. So that would be my advice is to get either professional help or get some kind of coaching or get some kind of input so that you can really take a hard look at what's at what's going on and come up with a plan to go forward and attack attack it again. I love the SBA mentioned just because I think that there are a lot of resources out there that especially if you didn't come into it, looking at it as a business, maybe people aren't aware of that are low cost or even free that they can take advantage of if they do a little bit of research. So absolutely take a look at what your local business groups offer. You know, if there are meetups, if there are presentations.

I mean, I know that I've given lots of free marketing talks locally to things like that. And, you know, being able to get in there, you know, ask questions, ask smart questions afterwards. You know, you get free advice from people who are really out there and, you know, charging good money if you were to do one-on-one time. And it can be a great way to kind of get your head back on straight. Jamie, you want to go next? Yeah. And I don't be afraid of your numbers. Don't be afraid to track. I know that this is something that you teach in your marketing workshops and classes and things, Melissa, but you can't know what's not working unless you are tracking everything. So you need to know how many people are finding you. You need to know how many people you're talking to. You need to know how many people you're signing up and you need, you know, don't be afraid to look at that information. Don't be afraid to get feedback from your clients on what you could do better and continually improve. But if you don't know where, you know, if you don't know what's happening in your business statistically, you can't make changes to improve it. And so don't be afraid to get into those numbers. One of the things I think that I've realized the most, like, so we have the marketing group and we have a support group that we run and talking to the trainers in it and getting information from them. A lot of them don't even have a roadmap. Like Christina was talking about earlier, your five-year, ten-year plan. A lot of them don't even have those goals down or even backwards plan from there. Like how can you possibly know where you want to go or what you want your business to do if you haven't dreamt a little bit, right? Like, and that's really the way I like to look at it. Yeah, they're goals. But, you know, thoughts become things. Our dreams become realities if we're working toward them. So to spend some time dreaming to as much detail as they possibly want, where they want to be a year from now, three months from now, five years from now, writing it down. And then from there, backwards planning. So like what Jamie was talking about, looking at the statistics, how many does it take to get one? Okay, then how many do I need to talk to? You know, like having that written out and there is something magical about doing that. And I can't tell you how many times we've done that. And I've put together a plan and then I was like, we're going to execute this plan. And then we do. And then the number of clients I expected don't come from the avenues I anticipated. They come from somewhere else.

But had we not done that, you know, they wouldn't come at all. And so there is that element of like whatever you call it, the universe is going to provide so long as you are showing up every day, proving that you are deserving of those fruits. So to speak. Right. Yeah. That you're working towards it. And don't quit. Like it's hard. Yeah. Like it is hard to run a business. It's not easy. And I just want to say too, and you're talking about the five, 10 year plan and having your goals and backwards planning. Make sure that you're planning small enough down to the month, week, or even day. You know, I know these are the three things that I need to do today to move my business forward today. These are the top three things I need to get done this week, this month, this quarter, this year. And so breaking it down into small achievable goals for yourself to help keep you winning and moving forward and motivated. That's one of the things we're doing with our trainers growth group. And they've all seen such great progress being able to, because it's smaller wins. And so breaking it down smaller has helped them a lot. If I'm somebody who's struggling in my business, I'm most likely struggling in my life. I'm most likely struggling in a lot of other areas. Take a look at who you hang out with. And if they're not helping you win, get rid of them. I know we've probably heard it many other places, but it's the truth. It is the absolute truth. Because all they're going to do is drag you down and make your life and your business harder. Well, that's why the FNZ community is so great, because they're all so supportive and they're great people to be around. A little plug for this. I definitely agree with that. I mean, I will add, though, that all these problems we're talking about, they're not – I know we're talking specifically about dog trainers, but I've definitely – before kind of getting invested in dog training as a niche, I absolutely worked with lots and lots of small business owners. And it's such a global problem. I'm sure Christina can weigh in on this too, but small business owners in general, they have a hard time setting goals. They have a hard time stepping back and working on the business instead of in the business. They have a hard time figuring out those key pieces to make sure the business is running as a business until they get it. And then once they get it, it's a game changer. I mean, I have a client I've worked with for years and years. He's actually somebody I still work with who's not in dog training. He's one of very few clients these days that are outside that field.

And I've had the amazing opportunity to watch his business start as this teeny tiny thing where he was just giving advice to people. And now he's got three employees working for him. And, you know, he's doing six figure business stuff. And, you know, some of his individual deals are, you know, $50,000. It's like, it's a big, it's a big deal to have your goals, know what your goals are, stop and look at your goals regularly, evaluate how you're doing, know where you want to go next. And like Michael said, it's hard, but once you can figure that piece out, things go so much better. And it's like, it's just like dog training, isn't it? You have the, you have the goal, the goals, and you have to break it down and you split it down into the smallest pieces and make sure that they're achievable for you so that you get, like Jamie said, that you get, that you have some success. And that's motivating to keep going. That's what I love about dog training. It's life. Dog training is life. Yep. Absolutely. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and doing some thinking just about the idea that, you know, a good teacher or a good coach will set you a challenge that is hard enough you have to stretch. It's hard to achieve, but it's not impossible. It's not enough to make you give up so that when you do achieve it, you feel that sense of success and you feel a sense of achievement. And it's harder to do when you're running a business, but you kind of have to do that for yourself, right? You have to set yourself goals that make you work for them, that you know they're not easy, but that when you accomplish them, you can enjoy that moment of, hey, I did that. So real quick, if you don't mind me adding to that a little bit. Go for it. Yeah. And then have a community, like Jamie mentioned, the FDSA community, but like have a community that celebrates with you. Like, you know how many times it's just demotivating to do something really awesome and then be happy about it? And then you go to your mom and she's like, oh, cool. You know, have somebody to celebrate with because if you don't, then it's, you know, like it can be demoralizing and you might lose motivation. I want to kind of round things out and see if maybe you'd each be willing to just kind of share a lesson you've learned or been reminded of recently. You know, when it comes to all this stuff, when it comes to starting and running a business and kind of tell us that story. Michael, you can go first.

The lesson that I've learned that I continually learn in life is that if something is repeatedly showing up in your life and you feel like you're just learning the same lesson over and over again, then we have to take a look at ourselves and maybe we're not actually learning the lesson. Right. So like whatever I set for myself as a goal or whatever I want, you know, like I know that our success in business, especially with me and Jamie, is directly related to how well we're working together. And if we're not working well together, then our business is going to suffer. And that's not just as business owners or co-owners, you know, co-owners or dog trainers. It's it's a husband and wife, too. So when I ask, you know, the universe or myself for, hey, look, I want the strength or skills to be a better communicator with my wife. Everything's going to align to teach me that lesson. And if I don't learn that lesson, that lesson will smack me in the face over and over and over again until I learn it. So be open to learning the lesson and really internalizing it. And, you know, just know that when you want something in your life, if you're willing to ask for it, it will come to you. And all you have to do is is learn it and make, you know, keep taking the steps toward it. So in preparing for this, one of the key themes that I wanted to impress upon us all is that customer service is the hugest part of your business. And it's the thing that's going to make it keep growing. And so for us, those of us who started it, because we love working with the dogs, the dogs aren't paying our bills. And so if you approach your business with customer service at the front and foremost of every interaction that you have with the idea that anybody who not anybody, but the majority of the time when you're meeting frustrations from somebody else, it's not about you. Everybody is going through their own thing. And so it may be coming out, especially when we in this day and age, how we communicate through computer and email and text a lot. It may come out a way that it's not intended to. And so to always take a step back and think about how you can be the kindest you to this person and keep customer service first and foremost. Christina? A lesson that I have recently been reminded of is that starting your own business is really hard. There's a lot to figure out, but you have to start somewhere. I just recently left the firm in Boston that I had been with for 19 years and I opened my own practice. And I swear, I went around and around with some of the decisions like the website and the domain name.

I should make business cards, but I don't want to make a business card till I know my email address. I won't know my email address till I know what the domain name is. And I don't want to do the domain name yet because the website's not done. Just on and on. And I finally, I just went ahead and I was like, all right, I'm just going to order some simple business cards. I put my old Gmail address on it and my cell phone number and I started handing them out. So, you know, you just, it is, it's hard. There are a lot of decisions to make. They're all kind of interrelated. But you just have to start somewhere. So just, you have to do the best that you can and be careful and follow the law. But you just have to do it. Get to work. Awesome. I like that. I feel like that's a great kind of takeaway to end on. I do just want to quickly kind of plug everybody's upcoming stuff. So everybody that we're talking to teaches at the FDSA Pet Professionals Program that's getting started. The first set of classes run July 7th. I'll have my Marketing 101 class that very first week. I know Christina's got her legal aspects of launching your business basics coming up July 14th. And then Jamie and Michael, you guys have your social media and your business, how to use it to grow your impact on July 28th. Christina, do you want to talk for just a minute about what you'll cover in that legal aspects class? And then Jamie and Michael, maybe you guys could just briefly share what you'll cover in the social media class. Sure. So in the legal aspects of launching your own business, it's the first part of a two-part series. And it's going to cover choosing a name, insurance, contracts and waivers, and a couple other things. There are six things altogether. Ethics. And I'm missing one, but you get the flavor. It's sort of the basics. And I'm really going to go into the legal aspects of those specific issues. So I'm looking at your description. I've got choose a name, insurance, that isn't LLC right for me kind of question, licensing and permits, contracts and waivers, when to tell if you need a professional, and the ethics piece. So that sounds awesome. It sounds like it's the perfect class if somebody's just getting off the ground and want to make that switch. Jamie, Michael, I don't know which one of you wants to kind of talk about the class, but the social media business class? So it's, as you said, using social media to grow your business and your impact. So we're going to talk about branding, how to use that video, how to attract, engage, and convert your clients using social media accounts.

Because this is a very personal business. You know, people are inviting us into their lives and into their home. And so we're going to talk about the various ways to use social media platforms to get people to know about you, to get them wanting to work with you, and to, you know, build a good business, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, what we see a lot of times, I think the problem with a lot of dog trainers in social media is that they're never establishing that know, like, and trust. And that's really what social media is about, is showing people who you are so they can get a feel for you. And not getting wrapped up in the vanity metrics. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've created a video or a post that just didn't get a lot of likes and shares and whatnot. But then I'm talking to a client on the phone, and they're like, oh, yeah, I watched your video. That's actually what led to me wanting to work with you. Yeah. And using it to your advantage to help you land clients, not just to try to – it's not a popularity contest. It's a tool that helps you sell is really what it is. Well, thank you, guys, for joining me. I really appreciate it. It was fun to kind of talk about business-y stuff, you know, for a change. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. As a reminder, for the next couple of weeks, we'll kind of be doing a little less typical for us episodes where we'll be chatting with instructors of the new program, the FDSA Pet Professional Program, kind of talking about different things that affect dog trainers. But I will try and kind of tie them back to things that are interesting for even those of you who don't do this stuff professionally. We're going to do a chat about puppy classes and kind of looking at what you want to look for if you're looking for a puppy class, but also from an instructor's side, how they can structure a good puppy class, things like whether playtime is a good idea in that puppy class, and how to handle tricky training situations. So don't miss it. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice, and you'll have our next episode automatically download to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in, and happy training.