Dog Training Franchise | Meet the Make Your Dog Epic Academy Training Co-Founders Peter Taunton & Clay Clark

Audio Transcription

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was studying business statistics, right? Which was hard for me anyway. And I remember closing my book and I looked at my twin brother and I’m glad I didn’t because you meet a friend and they’re like, Oh, so where’d you go to school? You know, they’re kind of asking me when I’m like, I went to the school of hard knocks. I would rather be street smart than book smart any day. And I learned a lot the same way you did. My dad with his small grocery store, when I was eight years old, he gave me the opportunity to sell popcorn in front of his grocery store. Twenty-five cents a bag, so every Saturday you’d see me there. And then at the end of the day, we’d pay off the popcorn and oil, and then my dad would take half and we would take half. I could never repay him for the education my dad gave me. It’s so valuable. He taught me how to work. I picked up a racket when I was 13 and it was that racquetball was a sport to me that I that that came easy to me right so by the time I was 17 18 years old I was a I was a professional so I spent a lot of time inside the court and at that same club was the same club that offered me a job when at the time I was living in Orlando Florida the club was losing money and they said, hey Peter, if you come back and run this club for us, we’ll pay you $16,000 a year, but we’ll give you an opportunity to buy us out with the profits that the business generates. So for me, that was the opportunity that I needed. I had to get creative. I started bartering. So I went to the carpet store in town and I said, tell you what, I don’t have any money, but I have memberships. How about if you give me carpet and I’ll give you memberships for all your employees?” And to my surprise many of them said, okay. Slowly the membership base began to grow and over a matter of four years the business went from losing 200 grand a year to making $200,000 a year. I went right back to the bank, got another loan, built another club. Now I had two clubs paying one loan. So you know what, when you start with nothing, you’re fearless. Crazy, a lot of your buddies are probably still up in St. Cloud. St. Cloud, hey Peter, let’s go party, let’s this, that. I mean it’s the typical life of a 22 year old. You know, I remember when I came into the club, I remember I had an all-staff meeting and I said, hey tomorrow we’re going to clean. The next day I come to work and before I’m getting ready to start cleaning, there’s probably 40, 50 people there. About three or four of them step forward, speaking on behalf of the group, and they say, hey Peter, we just want you to know, we don’t clean. Okay, that’s not what we do. In other words, that’s not in our job description. I look at them, you’re talking about a character-building moment. I take a step back, I don’t know half of their names, right? I’d been there all of two days. And I said, and you also don’t have a job. I had to do it, right? And those were character-building moments, and I filled in the voids where I had to, but I tell you what, that’s how we were able to grow that membership base so fast, because I said, you know, when people come in, we’re going to call them by name. This club is going to be clean, and we’re going to deliver on our promise, helping people get fit. I took the one club and I built it into six clubs. These are clubs with indoor pools, racquetball, aerobic studios. They were big clubs. I sold them and what it got me to do, it got me to think about what if. So I said, asked myself, what if I eliminate racquetball courts? What if I eliminate aerobic studios? What if I eliminate the swimming pool and child care? All of it. So this club that was normally 40,000 square feet was suddenly 3,000-4,000 feet. Instead of having 50 employees, I had two. The unit level economics came in place. So I built one club and in 90 days, I sold enough memberships in 90 days to cash flow the business for the year. And that was the starting point of what today is known as Snap Fitness with a couple thousand locations around the world and then multiple other brands that we’ve developed since then. Did I know at that time I was going to build one of the largest franchises in the world? Of course not. Your vision of success, now that you’re here, you have it, you got your cars and you got your beautiful home, is it what you think or is there some things, you know, with the success you’ve had, things, you know, maybe you’d do differently or? I’ve never been, I’ve never been lonelier in my life than I am right now, which as crazy as that sounds, I’ve never been lonelier and when people say money can’t buy you happiness, it’s the truth. There’s so much truth in that. I pinch myself every day. I walk outside this beautiful home and my beautiful home in Florida or when I’m voting or playing, whatever I’m doing, I say, how did I get here? Right? And why me, God? Why? What is your plan for me? But you need to have someone to share it with. You need that. That’s one part of it and then living life with purpose. What is the what’s the rest of my life life look like? It’s it looks like diversity I Love my my lodge and in Africa in the Serengeti and and trying to do good there Try to make a dent in anti poaching I could show you some of the most inhumane videos of poaching that you can imagine that literally you’ll be in Disbelief of what it is. It is a lot of work yet to do, for sure. Well, I mean, you have that presence to you. People, you know, you’re good leaders and people want to follow you. The more people see you doing things, the more people follow on and then they’ll do it and people will follow them. I hope you’re right. You know what? I’m a really passionate guy. Hopefully, when people are hearing what I’m saying, I’m just hoping that they can grab little life lessons along the way. Being an entrepreneur is getting in there every day, spitting in your palms and going after it, chasing it down every day. And win or lose doesn’t matter. I always say, if you haven’t failed in business, you’re not trying hard enough. Failing is part of growing. Pain is part of growing. And that’s not only in business, that’s in your personal life as well. I can’t stress it enough. Don’t be afraid to fail. Liberty on the Lake is always going to be an event to raise money for causes, worthy causes. I’m going to have it right here. There’s not a better place, there’s not a more beautiful piece of property. Just the way being out on this peninsula. I mean, imagine today they expect over a thousand votes on the lake. Most of these boats have between 8 and 10 people on them. So you’re going to have 10 to 15,000 people just on the lake alone watching this concert, let alone the 600 people here. And if we can bring awareness to causes, boy, what a great way to do it. First and foremost, it’s great talent, raising money for a great cause, and then always making it available to the lake. I want the people on the lake to have as much of a concert experience as all of our special guests do. It’s my pleasure here to bring up my friend, Mr. Tim McGraw. Tim, come on up, my brother. Tim is going to play at our Twin Cities Summer Jam next year. It’s the third week in July every year for the next 20 years. And he believes in giving back. He believes in, you know what, I’m going to live my life with purpose purpose because he’s been given a gift and he takes that gift to help other people. How do you want to live? How do you want to live this life? What’s your legacy look like? Is it singing or is it the differences you make in people’s lives? And how did you give people a leg up? How humble and kind were you? And that is what it’s about and doesn’t matter if you’re worth 10 billion dollars or worth two dollars. So Liberty on the Lake, it’s about that. It’s about great talent, great concert, great musicians, raising money for unbelievable causes. I start my day at 3 a.m. I went through school and it just wasn’t positive for me. I don’t recall enjoying it. And then I discovered business. Everybody at school wants gum and no one has gum. If I sold everyone gum, I could make some money. My whole brain works, find a problem, there’s four steps, find a problem, solve the problem, sell the solution, nail it and scale it. So when I’m like 14, 13, I’m selling gum in quantities. I’m going to Sam’s in bulk and then the principal calls me and says, Mr. Clark to the principal’s office, Mr. Clark to the principal’s office, I’m like, what is going on? Sir, Clay, are you selling gum? I am selling gum. He said, you can’t sell gum. I said, okay, I’ll stop. Then I found out people wanted cassette tapes. You remember Milli Vanilli, Paula Abdul? Everybody wanted, it’s like, straight up now tell me, do you really wanna love me forever? And people always wanted that Milli Vanilli. Blame it on the rain that was falling. And then we had tapes, cassette tapes. So I bought a cassette. I’m like a 13 year old kid. I’m high speed dubbing tapes. You got the tape? I got the tape, so I give you the tape. I’m not selling drugs, but it’s kind of like a drug thing, because it’s illegal tapes. I’m giving you tape, $15, and I’m buying more tapes. I got some black market candy and music career going on. And then when I went to the worst event of my entire life was the Students Against Drunk Driving. The people planning Students Against Drunk Driving were drinking vodka during their water bottles and in class. So I put my hand up, I said, Miss Page, I think that that DJ was terrible. She says, well, why? I said, you can’t play Cotton Eye Joe after Regulate. That’s why no one’s dancing. The guy’s horrible and he’s like in his 50s and he’s a chain smoker. All right, ladies and gentlemen, up next, our next song is gonna be an incredible hot song. It’s called Regulate. And he goes and smokes. That kid gets ridiculous. Anybody can do better. So she says, well, if you can do better than you do it yourself, I said, I will. We’ve never had more than 300 kids attend a dance, approximately. For every student that comes after 300, can I keep the door? I’ll take care of the food, I’ll take care of the beverages. I just want $5 per person that comes in after 300 and all the food and beverage. She says, it’s on Mr. Clark. I go, oh, it’s on. So I’m passing out flyers, and I didn’t know you couldn’t invite other schools to your school day. The night of the event happened, the people show up, and there’s maybe a thousand kids, or there should be like 300 kids, and they’re not from our school. And the energy is epic now. People are crowd surfing, and I’m making crazy amounts of money, and I’m going, I’m going to make $5,000 tonight. The crowd surfing was out of control, and the principal asked me to stop, and I said no. And I asked the crowd, do you want to stop? And they said no. I said, do you want to stop? No. Do you want to fight for your right to a party? And then the principal kicked me out. I met Vanessa when I was going to Oral Roberts University. She was a cheerleader and I thought she was super attractive and she’s super smart. And so even to this day, she’ll say stuff and I’m going, oh, I should write that down. So I feel like I’m kind of married to like an attractive Yoda. He’s allowed it in his grace and goodness and mercy, right? Because he has a plan for good, for goodness. And so I get so excited about everything. She does. I do, that the God is doing right now. We had our first business, DJ Connection, which is a mobile entertainment company, and we grew that to be doing 80 events a weekend. It was crazy. We ended up selling that, and we started something called Make Your Life Epic, and that’s what Clay does, is coaches people and their businesses and helps them grow their businesses. He sees patterns like no one I’ve ever met in my life. I remember he kept telling me things I needed to do and I kept going, you don’t understand my business very well. Like you may understand other businesses because I know you coach a lot of successful companies, but you don’t understand the business we do. What I later found out is that every business owner he coaches tells him that in the first three months. After a little while, finally, things were kind of rough that I was dealing with and I went back to him and I was like, what was that you told me to do again? Things just took off from that point. I achieved a certain level of success and people kept asking me if I could coach them or teach them how to build a scalable business. I said yes to 160 clients. One of the greatest parts about Clay is he’s not just a guy that builds your website, but he coaches you. He’s the only one I’ve seen with his level of expertise. Clay and I sit at his desk one month ago, and he put together a video just for my Facebook marketing himself. And that was just his focus, is helping his clients, helping them grow their businesses. That’s 100% of his locked and loaded focus. So I’m working with clients on a one-on-one basis, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t want to grow beyond that point. When someone says, hey, can I pick your brain and could you teach me how to grow a company? I thought, well, what if I could record a show? That way I could say, yes, I can’t sit down with you personally, but I could say, you could listen to my show about how to build a workflow, or my show about how to do accounting, or my show about how to do branding or sales or marketing. We have the incredible opportunity to interview this celebrity chef, Mr. Wolfgang Puck. He is now on the Thrive Time show, Gretchen Rubin. 24-year NBA coach, Paul Press. Exclusive interview with Lee Cockerell. Basketball player, David Robinson. On today’s show, entrepreneur, Seth Godin. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Alright Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re going to be breaking down what Robert Kiyosaki has recently been talking about. Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author, the New York Times best-selling author and real estate investment guru, has recently been talking more and more about octa non verba. You say, what’s octa non verba? Well, one, it’s Latin, so don’t get too concerned there, but it’s octa, again, it’s octa nonverbal. What it means is, what it means is action. You need to watch what people do and not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. You know more than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. ♪♪ I heard about Clay Clark and Make Your Dog Epic through a business conference. So I was working for one of Clay’s clients, Score Basketball, and I went to one of Clay’s business conferences and it completely changed my life. I asked him there how to get mentors in my life that were business owners, not just employees, and he completely changed my life and now he’s actually one of my mentors and I view him as a brother. What appealed to me most was that it’s one of the few things that you can make a lot of money and enjoy it. So it’s one of the few things you can do as a hobby and make a lot of money. So your hobby and what makes money doesn’t always coincide. So it’s really awesome that I get to change the lives of dogs and make money while doing it. So it’s really, that’s really what appealed to me. Since our grand opening, once we started training dogs, it took about 10 weeks for us to gross $20,000 in sales. The weekly coaching call helps a lot, so when you buy a franchise, it already has the systems and processes in place. So that’s why franchises succeed. So it’s kind of like bowling with bumper rails. So even if you try, you can’t mess up because the guidelines are already in place. But then when you add on the weekly coaching calls, it is awesome. Because now it’s like I have a ramp and I just have to push the ball down and the franchise gets it in place. So really all you have to do is the work and then if you do it, they tell you on the coaching calls and you stay within the franchise, you have really no choice but to succeed. Yes so having a team that handles all of the customer scheduling has freed up so much time because now I’m not training dogs while trying to answer the phone and schedule people and take care of reschedules and scheduling first times. So it just frees up so much time so you have so much more time freedom while doing it. If I didn’t have a team to handle all of the customer scheduling, my schedule would be chaotic. I mean, I’d actually probably have to hire somebody to do it for me. So I would be answering calls, trying to get a hold of people, trying to reschedule, trying to take inbound calls, trying to do outbound calls, trying to get new leads, trying to answer old leads. It would just be super chaotic. super happy we have a team that takes care of all of that for us. So having a team that takes care of all the marketing for you, that takes care of all the SEO for you, that takes care of all the lead generation for you is awesome. Because now it’s just another stressor off your plate. So they’re answering the phone calls for you and they’re doing all of this for you. I mean it is awesome. I’m not designing new print pieces to send out to people. They know what they do works, so they already have their marketing tool that works. So you’re not guessing and trying to reinvent the wheel. They already know what works, so it’s awesome having them behind you. So if I didn’t have a team helping me with turnkey marketing, search engine optimization, and lead generation, I would have to learn a lot. So I’d have to learn how to make a website canonically compliant, how to write the articles, how many articles, how to make a website rank, how to do a Google My Business listing, how to make print pieces, how to design print pieces, what colors work, what am I allowed to do, what am I not allowed to do, where should I do that? Should I do the Dream 100? What is the Dream 100? How do I create a list for the Dream 100? What events should I do? What events should I not do? I mean, there’s a lot there. I could just go on all day because there’s books about each of these subjects written and we don’t have to understand any of that because they’re taking care of it all for us. So my life would be crazy if I had to learn all of that stuff. What does a day in the life look like for a Make Your Dog Epic franchisee owner? Basically you’re waking up to do the hobby that you love. So you’re seeing your schedule, if you have an event you’re going to an event and you’re interacting with people, you’re telling them about dog training, you’re showing off your own personal dog, or you’re going to lessons and you’re teaching Fluffy how to sit, calm, down, place, heel, you’re doing all of it and you’re helping these people through their issues and it can literally be life changing for these people. So it’s a super rewarding job and business to own because you’re actually making a difference in somebody’s life and while being paid well to do something that you love. So a day in the life is basically just checking your schedule and you’re going through all of it whether it’s lessons, whether it’s managing people, whether it’s doing events, but that’s basically a day in the life. What I like most about owning this business is how much fun you can have while making good money. Because a lot of people don’t know this, but more people are not having kids and they’re getting dogs and they’re spending more money on their dogs than they are on their kids. And everyone loves dogs. So 50% of households own a dog and all of them, if they could, would get their dog trained. So it’s a really rewarding thing to do. So it’s one of the few things where you can have a job that you love while getting paid well. Because your hobby and what pays well doesn’t always coincide. So it’s really cool that you get to do that and that’s probably one of the best things. You get the time freedom and financial freedom of being able to do something you love. You never really feel like you’re working because you love to do it. Alright, so the most challenging aspect of owning a Make Your Dog Epic franchise is at first it’s learning the dog training. But Make Your Dog Epic does a great job of making sure that you feel very competent and that you know everything you need to know about dog training so that you can go out there and make a difference. And they have ongoing learning so if you ever struggle with anything you can always call the head trainer, you can learn however much you want, you can always come back and shadow as much as you want. There’s no limit to how much you can learn or help you can get. After that though, it turns into half dog training, half human training, because you’re training humans as well. I’ll let you guys guess which one’s harder. So it’s just managing the people side of it once you already know the dog side of it. And that would be what I would say is the hardest, most challenging part of Make Your Dog Epic. Who do I believe would be a good fit for the Make Your Dog Epic franchise? I mean there’s a lot of people. If you have work ethic and you love dogs, you’re a great fit. So as long as you’re coachable, you’ve got work ethic, and you like to be around dogs, you’d be a great fit. If you hate dogs, probably not a good fit. If you have no work ethic and you’re just trying to not work and just throw money at something and throw money back at you, then this probably isn’t the thing for you. But if you want something that’s very rewarding and also pays you well, then this is it. As long as you have that work ethic and you’re coachable, then you’re going to be a great fit for Make Your Dog Epic. How does owning a Make Your Dog Epic franchise help me achieve my financial goals? I mean, the goals that I used to have, they’re not even goals anymore because I’ve surpassed them. So now it’s like I have goals now that I didn’t even know were possible to have those goals that were like realistic. I thought you had to make it to the NBA or be a lottery winner or something like that to be able to have the goals that I have now, but I mean it’s it’s completely changed my life so I can’t speak highly enough about it. I’m Teresa and this is my dog Rex. You wouldn’t know it, but a few weeks ago he would never have been sitting here like this. I found Make Your Dog Ethic because my friend had sent her dog to them and it was amazing the difference that that training made with her dog. My name is Christian. I’m from Austin, Texas. I moved to Utah earlier this year. I found Make Your Dog Epic on Google and their training has been fantastic. My dog is finally able to listen to me. I’m able to have a better relationship with my dog and I would recommend Make Your Dog Epic for anyone who is trying to have a tighter, more close-knit connection with their animal and their loved ones. Hi, my name is Chloe and this is Louie. I’m from Syracuse and we are just so grateful for Make Your Dog Ethic. They were so amazing with us. I would describe the training as very personalized. From the time that we had our first assessment, they were able to figure out what Louie needed and all of the lessons were very personalized to his personal needs. He’s doing so much better and now everyone else can enjoy the happy dog that I have. So, so grateful for them and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. This is Nathan and Kendra Manwaring in Morgan, Utah and this is Skye and we had an amazing training experience. I think they did a great job with her. recommend Make Your Dog Epic to anybody. Every time that people come over and they ask, they say, wow, we probably should have done that. And I go, well, you still can. Tyler and his crew there are great. And if one day we ever get another dog, we’ll be using you guys again. We are Wayne and Sue Hayes from Tulsa, Oklahoma. We went to the Home and Garden show and we met TJ there and Akili and we’re impressed and left our name for a phone call. It’s been night and day. Wonderful. He does the loose leash walking. He stopped being aggressive toward other dogs and other people so far so he’s it’s just a pleasure to go walking with him now. And he’s learning commands, he knows what off means, and we still use that. And he knows what come means, like say he walks well, and he’s just a different dog. I would say get off the fence. It’s just been a pleasure. We tried two other dog trainers who just gave up and accomplished nothing. But we started seeing results in the first week. Walking Tiberius was the number one problem for me. He would pull me. If you could picture a cartoon character flying behind their dog, that would be me. And he pulled my shoulder out of the socket last time I took him to the vet. So I really struggled with that. I dreaded ever taking him to the vet because of that. So now he’s able to walk with me on the leash and not pull me, and that is wonderful. He wouldn’t drop stuff if he got it in his mouth. He would be very resistant to putting it down. Now I can walk him and make him listen to me when I tell him not to pull. I say Make Your Dog Epic is amazing. I love the way our experience went with JT, you. I feel like you’re very energetic and you just make it happy. You make it feel good, what we’re doing. You make it feel good, what we’re doing. And Tiberius has come home just himself only a better version.