01:52 Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm so excited to have with us today the canine lover, the man with a mission with his dogs, Ryan Wimpey. Will you tell us who you are and what you do?

02:06 Hey, thanks, Todd. I'm Ryan Wimpey. I'm with TipTop K9 Dog Training. We're franchise company and basically we help young entrepreneurs or people who want to own their own business, own their own business in the dog training space. So we train them how to train dogs. We support them with a call center, a product company and constant seminars on how to get better. Right. So, we help people and then also on the client front, we help people. If you have a crazy dog ruining your life, then you call Tip Top and we fix the beast and we help them be a good part of your household so they're not just stuck outside.

02:44 Yeah, nobody likes to shove their dog outside all the time anymore. This is not a thing.

02:50 No, yeah, so I've had before a nine year old girl that could walk a 90 pound Doberman before, 140 pound Mastiffs knocking over children, eating pizzas off the counter. In few weeks we got those dogs under control where the whole family can have them listen to them. So it's super rewarding, it's very fun, but also helps dogs out of shelters.

03:12 I love it. Now I love it, I love it. You know, when somebody has a well-behaved dog, it definitely is a lot easier. We are one of those lucky households. Our dog is just a perfect personality for our family, which I think is awesome. We got lucky, but I know that a lot of people have to really work to train their dogs to be a better part of their family, and so I love your mission. Talk to us though, I mean, this is not something to hear about as a very popular franchise model, but I actually see it really, really working. Who are you attracting? What kind of franchisees do you have and how does this model work in the dog training world?

03:49 Well, as far as some of our franchisees right now, I have a guy who's got two locations. He was an HVAC technician before Tippie. Another one, he's got four locations. He was a youth pastor. So it's all sorts of people, Four of our owners own multiple locations. None of them, only one of them had business experience, right? Yeah, we're looking for people with the entrepreneurial spirit who want to own their own business, but don't really know what that looks like and somebody who loves dogs. So we supply them with the initial training, the back end support and the marketing. So if they love dogs and they're open minded enough to learn systems, that they can be in that dog training industry and have that really rewarding, but also profitable work.

04:34 I love it. You know, most people don't know systems and people don't know how to start a business, but they love animals. And so I think what you're doing is really cool because it opens the door for a lot of people who want to just like, yeah, I know that my daughters have done dog walking for neighbors before and all that kind of stuff. But like to turn that into something that can sustain a family or a couple or a whoever, that is not an easy way to make a living. But talk to us about the model. You bring them in, you train them how to train dogs. Is there a certification process? Like what does that actually look like from someone who's never even thought about this industry being an industry, but I totally see it being an industry.

05:18 It's an industry. It's an industry and it's been recession proof. It's been growing at 6 % a year even through COVID. Yeah, so our model people come in for discovery day say that you thought, hey, you know what, I want to my business, but I don't really know what that be. But I love dogs. We come for a discovery day to corporate headquarters in Tulsa. We'd hands on train dogs for like six, eight hours and you'd shadow some appointments you see exactly what that's like. The TV stuff. There's some real work involved. But it's more fun work. And then from there, say someone wants to do it. The initial training is about an eight week process. Two weeks is virtual training where we train people how to do consultive sales. That's not the crazy used car stuff. It's consult sales and also the theory. So we do that for two weeks. Virtual like an hour to a day. Make sure people understand where we're going to be coming from and what they're going to be learning. Then we do a week initial training and that's 10 hours a day, six days a week for six weeks. Very in depth, but we're giving someone, we're basically training them in a trade, right? And so we're training them how to train dogs, how to train people, how to do consultive sales and how to run group classes. That's the focus.

06:36 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How to train people? Talk to me about that.

06:38 Yeah. yeah. So we have method for training the dogs, but then also for transferring your knowledge to the human client and a new trainers, right? Because the human has to be trained too. So I'm going to take any dog, I'm going to train it, it's going to jump on the box when I say so, go to its dog bed, come walk on loosely, stop jumping, etc. But then I have to show mom how to do exactly what I did, right? In a short period of time. 

07:03 Probably.

07:04 Yeah. Only if I want to get paid.

07:07 Well, I was gonna say, the dogs don't pay as well as the owner, so that's probably a really important piece of this whole thing.

07:13 Now, the owner training is exceptionally important and it can't be missed. That's why like the dog whisper makes good TV. But like I need to transfer what I do like instantly to mom and dad. Like they need to get it in five to 20 minutes and be able to replicate exactly what I did. Yeah.

07:30 Wow, love it, love it. Now, I definitely get those on my feed periodically of that guy with the glasses that instantly converts these rabid dogs into gentle giants. It's kind of cool to watch, but I don't buy it as being a regular thing. So as you're training this process and training the system. Are there niches? Are there types of dogs? Are there things that you stay away from? Or is this pretty much a universally accepted methodology of working with different types of dogs?

08:04 No, so it basically will work for every type of dog. Some of the dogs that aren't dogs, like a wolf hybrid, right? Might not work. So before we've trained some timber wolves that have worked and we've trained some wolf hybrids and some of them they're just not domesticated, but any domesticated dog. Yeah, I went out to like 10 years ago to a lady's house and she had a Russian bear dog, a Russian Orchaca, and they guarded the board of Siberia. And it was trainable, but the aggression was never going to go away. She also had a wolf. It had tunneled underneath her, her back porch, like 12 feet under. And I'm like, that's not a dog. I'm sorry. I'm not going to help. Like that's not a dog. So, but basically any dog we're going to be able to work. So we do a first lesson for $1 at every location. We go out and we show a client's results in 10 to 15 minutes before we ever show them packages. We don't sign up anyone without actually working with their dog making sure that our method is going to work. Yeah.

10:43 I love it. That's very cool. That's very cool. All right, so that's how you're doing it. Now talk to us about the model because franchising can be really hard, but franchising can be really rewarding. And I'm imagining the way that you're attracting your potential clients who are the franchisees are again, they're people that love their dog, probably have their own dog, and they are looking to make a living doing what they love to do, right? I mean, you've talked about the HVAC guy, you've talked about some other people, like the business skills and teaching them how to actually operate the franchise. Talk to us about that conversion process and who's a likely candidate. Yeah.

11:28 Yeah. So anyone could be a likely candidate if they can, you they have to understand it's still work. Any franchise is going to be a work. This is just very rewarding work. So. If someone is like a, hey, they're already they don't have a problem with the work and they love dogs and they have some hand -eye coordination, if they're able to go through that initial training program, they do a discovery day. They don't have to have that much business experience because the thing about buying into a franchise is. You get 20 years of our experience automatically in our systems. So then the support model is basically, hey, we do marketing for you. We buy everything below wholesale, super deep discount and sell to you at a great wholesale price, anything and everything basically they'd need. We have a call center that does all their inbound and outbound calls, books their calendar. We do their billing, right? So we do their billing plans. 

12:32 That's crazy.

12:33 Yeah. So basically they really just need to learn how to train dogs and train humans. Yeah. And that's it. And then they have to hire an accountant to do their books. So that's really the thing. And then we help them. We do a monthly coaching call with all of our locations too, where we help them with some of the HR stuff, hiring, firing, building the team, growing people. Cause a lot of them have never been in a managerial role. Yeah. So then we do to start with, we do weekly and then we do weekly for the first three months coaching calls and then we do it the other week and then we do once a month ongoing. Yeah.

13:07 Wow, I love it, I love it. No, this is really, really cool. Honestly, for many people out there listening, and for maybe people looking for that right fit for their job, I can tell you first -handedly that my first business was in the golf business because I love the golf. And who'd thought I could make money doing something in the golf industry? And what you're presenting to people is, hey, a lot of people love their dog, a lot of people love other people's dogs, and you don't have to be stuck at $10 an hour walking someone's dog. You can be making a few hundred thousand dollars a year as an operator of a dog training business. Talk to us about the financial model there.

13:45 Yeah. So most of our most popular packages, they range like 2 to $4,000. A lot of our private lessons, they bill anywhere two to $300 an hour. You can never because we're showing big results in that hour. And with dog walking or grooming, you can never bill higher than like 25, $35 an hour. So it's not really sustainable. But we're going to do in one or two hours at Tip Top Canine someone else like arandom PetSmart Treat Trainer, they're making $12 an hour, they're never gonna be able to replicate the results in the dog or in the human. And that's why we get that high price. Yeah.

14:24 I love it, I love it. Well, this is exciting. So as you built the franchise model, mean, what kind of drove you to think that you could even pull this off, first of all? Second of all, what kind of training did you get to build it into a franchise model? I mean, it's one thing to do it on your own, but how were you able to replicate that and build it into an actual model?

14:46 Yeah. So what we did is we just learned from other people's mistakes. And so when people fire off and they just grow and scale their franchise business is too fast. A lot of times destroy the brand and they have to show franchising with the franchise disclosure document. Like I have to show everyone's name and number. I have to show all their income numbers every year. So it's very transparent. And so make sure we had the model scaled. 

15:28 I love it. That's smart.

15:29 We actually licensed a few stores for two years. So 2017, we opened up five corporate locations and we licensed them to where they're basically a ran owner operator. And we fixed all of our issues with the model doing that. So after two years, then we franchised four out of those five.

15:30 Oh! Very cool. 

15:31 Yeah, so to work through all of our issues, work through all the problems with the model because the corporate store obviously is running great. But, you know, we had to make sure that everything was really dialed in and super tight before we could just turn it up.

15:45 There's no doubt about that. And again, for those of you listening who have considered starting a business or looking for an opportunity, it's so smart if you've never operated a business before to work with someone like this operation here to really kind of put into effect an effective way to do what you love to do as opposed to trying to figure it all on yourself. mean, Ryan, how long did it take you to figure the model out that you could replicate?

16:14 Yeah, so I started training 2008, 2010. I started Tip Top Canine and I was training dogs like 50, 60 hours a week. And then I'm getting on forums trying to learn, you know, trying to learn Google ads, trying to learn SEO, know, trying to Windows movie maker, whatever, trying to make my own videos. So, you know, it was hard, man. And if I wasn't doing that, then I'm also like trying to figure out how to get leads and starving. And so, you know, it took a good seven, eight years to really, really nail everything down. And then, you know, after we just kept systemizing everything, one day we just go, well, I'm not going to just sit around five hours a day because now my business runs without me. I'm going to have to, you know, we're going to expand. We're going to corporate or franchise. And then my wife and I got together and we're like, well, I think the franchise model makes sense if we were going to give employees equity anyways. People, when they're an owner, they just have more buy -in. Right? And so we chose the franchise route instead of the corporate model. Yeah.

17:23 Love it. Love it. All right. So looking back on your growth, because this has been a long time in the making, but looking back on your decisions that kind of led you into the franchise model and into kind of the execution of this and having probably the first time you saw someone take it off your hands and operate and have a successful year probably felt very rewarding. But what was kind of the number one or two thing that you had to kind of change in your own thinking of your business to see that growth actually happen.

17:58 Yeah, the first key thing that really had to happen for the growth is I had to put down the leash and put on the CEO hat. 

18:10 Yeah. Ooh, love that. 

18:11 Right. So we had a sales coach and executive coach that my wife and I were driving two hours away once a week to go meet in Oklahoma City. And he was like, hey, if you're going to grow it, you're going to have to put down the leash at some point. You know, and so, I had to stop training dogs 60 hours a week and I had to sit down and write out systems. And that was really the biggest thing saying like, Hey, you know, like I heard Seth Godin on interview. Hey, when do you hand something off to other people? And he was like, they can do it 80 % as good as me. I just keep offloading. And that was hard for me as a founder and as an owner. They're just never, they were never as good. Now I have people just as good as me, but a long time. That was the hardest part. The other thing, like we went over the licensing instead of jumping right into where we wanted to go, doing it lean startup wise, making sure we fixed out all the kinks, not trying to franchise perfectly right off the bat, but license the concept, fixed all our issues and then went to franchising. think those two were the biggest key things.

19:16 I love it. I love it. And what are you seeing as a challenge for new operators? that obviously is, know, client acquisition is a hard thing, but when you're setting up calls, doing their marketing, what are you seeing as the big challenge for these guys and how are you working them through it?

19:29  I think the big challenge was really early on was just making the model working for people with zero business experience. My first two was the HVAC guy who had no business experience and another lady and she she'd worked for her brother's gym. Right. And so they're like hey here's everything you order. Here's how to order it. Here's the different logos and PDFs and everything else. And they're like hey they don't have this paper stock. What else should I get. Hey, gloss matte or whatever. How do I deal with the embroidery companies? Hey, I don't want 24 hoodies. What am I supposed to do with that? Hey, how do I order? know you gave me the list of 40 vendors, but like how, like how do I deal with, et cetera, right? How do I run the payment plans? What do I do if this doesn't happen right? So we had to make extra systems. So now we have all those systems taken off the plate of the new entrepreneur. And I think that was my biggest challenge was thinking that they were going to be the same as me after 15 years. If I showed them how to train dogs, then obviously they would know all those other things and it would just be easy. But they didn't. We had to take those systems, had to make systems to take those minor business system issues off the plate of the new entrepreneur. I think that was without a doubt our biggest challenge. Yeah.

20:49 I love it. You I've done a lot of these interviews, like a lot of them. And I think that that's, you just nailed probably two of the three most common issues I hear is that most people lack people, they have people problems, they have processes problems, and they have tools problems. And I think that what you've done as a franchisor is really created an elimination of those three things and just said, okay, we're going to train the person, we're going to give you systems, and we're going to give you tools to kind of manage this stuff. It sounds like you're solving a lot of problems and giving people a real opportunity to grow in their own environment.

21:29 Yeah, that's the goal. The goal is, hey, people that want to grow and just aren't quite sure how, you know, they're willing to put in the work that they can own something where they don't have to have half a million dollars to start a franchise. Yeah.

21:47 Love it. Love it. Wow. Wow. Very cool. I love it. And it's something people are passionate about. You know, we live near a resort town and I think that every time we go into that resort town, it feels like there's more dogs than humans. And I know that you've got a very, very captive audience when it comes to dog training and people wanting to have their dogs be the best dog they can have. you know, are there key markets? there key, you know, someone's listening to the show thinking, man, is this gonna work in my marketplace? How will they know? And what kind of training advice do you give them to do that?

22:18 So here's, I'll share this crazy, crazy stat with you. 2019, 2000 pet owners were surveyed and 34 % of them said they prefer their pets to their own children. Crazy, right? Another study in 2014, they did brain scans on showing moms a picture of their kid and a picture of their dog. And the brain lights up the exact same. So when you take those two statistics, 34 % of people like their dogs more than the 34 % like their dogs more than their kids and the brain lighting up the exact same. It's not necessarily like a what is a good market? Like, is there enough market? So I mean, if there's a town with 200,000 people and a decent median income, someone can at least owner, operate or have one employee there.

23:17 I love it. I love it.

23:18 There's literally dogs everywhere. And then the number one reason outside of someone moving that a dog gets surrendered is behavioral issues. Non -aggressive behavioral issues is the number one reason. And then aggressive behavioral issues is the next one. And we can fix both of those. Yeah.

23:32 It's awesome, it's awesome. That's really cool. So looking back at your experience at building this out, mean, obviously you have had time on your hand, but is there anyone in your corner who you wanna give a shout out to who's kinda been there to help you navigate this growth journey with you?

23:50 Yeah, biggest shout out would just be to my wife, Rachel. We really went vertical when she came on board. She was helping one of my friends, Whitney, in his multiple businesses scale. And I was like, you've got to please come work for me. And she brought a ton of organization, a ton of HR and people management. And she's a people grower. She grows people. And that's hard to find, especially, you know, just in today's environment, those people just command big salaries. So her coming on board, when she came on, she came on right before we started licensing about a year before that. And she really helped us nail stuff down so we're able to grow.

24:33 Well, you know, those are the perfect type of employees, right? Because they, can, it doesn't always have to be financial subsistence, right? That's awesome. Very cool. Well, dude, I love the model. I love what you're doing. And I honestly love how you're helping your franchisees have the best chance to success here. And, you know, so far, what have you seen longevity wise? I mean, it sounds like several of your early pilot programs with franchising have returned to buy more franchises. Is that right?

25:15 Yes. So, so currently we have 19 locations and 10 owners. So three owners, yeah, three have either two, three have two locations. One has four locations. So we have, we have a lot of people that are starting to open up second and third locations. In the DFW area, we have a couple with two locations. They're getting ready to open up one in Colorado, first quarter of next year. So, 

25:31 Wow, awesome.

25:32 Yeah. It's been exciting. Especially if you think about like in the DFW area, they were like a graphic designer and a mortgage broker, like no dog experience. The guy with four was a youth pastor. Another guy was door to door pest control. He just opened up a second one in Utah. It's awesome. So they're good, hardworking people. And now what's awesome is they are. But in the beginning, they weren't they weren't like as business savvy. And now they're becoming like real entrepreneurs. Like they understand business. They understand how everything worked. Where in the very beginning they didn't. So it's awesome to see their growth because now I mean, when you manage multiple patients and big teams, you have to actually be an operator. Yeah.

26:20 Love it, love it. Dude, way to go. And way to go in building this out. I'm super proud of you. For those of you listening who are interested in the opportunity, we got links down below of how to connect with Ryan and figure out how you can become a dog trainer and you can become a business owner and you can do all the things you love and make some good money in the meantime. So Ryan, way to go. And for those of you listening, you can do it too. Just listen to the cues. There's a lot of subtle cues here on this episode. And Ryan, you like literally all three of the main core problems that most people have. And I love how you've been able to help people work through it. Thanks, man.

26:55 Yeah, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on, Todd.

26:55 All right, we'll see you later.