How Fred Hassen and Sit Means Sit revolutionized the world of dog training.
Here is a really amazing youtube video that I found. A lot of the things that you see on here take a really stable
’stay’ command, and there reliability at doing very difficult things, with a large number of dogs and breeds is
very impressive! Enjoy!
Sometimes in life, you just have to get out there and do things outside the norm.
Zig Ziglar does a heck of a job of motivating people around the world no matter what the occupation is.
Our Franchise owners can learn a lot from him.
Rules for Success from a Motivating Taxi Driver
Zig Ziglar February 1, 2008
One morning in Houston, Texas, I caught a taxi (to go to a breakfast meeting) and during a short ride I heard one of the finest sales talks on America and free enterprise that I ever heard. The cab driver had been a professional healthcare provider in his native Nigeria, but he preferred living in a free society, with the opportunity to do what he pleased, and so he was very excited about being a cab driver in Houston.
During our conversation my migrant friend quickly turned to motivator, and his enthusiasm led him to give me some rules for success! I offer them here so that you might benefit from them, too.
1. Pay your bills.
2. Obey the laws.
3. Keep your eyes on God. God is in charge.
4. Run from lazy, crooked people.
5. Make your workplace your home.
6. Love and honor your boss.
7. Keep your promises.
8. Mind your own business.
I was motivated by the cab driver who was excited about his dream and having the opportunity to live it. He had set his goal long ago. He was living his dream. He wasn’t waiting until he could get into something better; he was performing with the opportunity he had. He was happy with what he had and was enthusiastically giving life his best shot. That, my friend, is marvelous preparation for a better tomorrow!
I’m constantly talking about how the dog training franchise business is one of the best businesses to
be in when money gets tight. In other words, during good or bad times people always love their pets!
I will share this happy story with you.
No recession for pampered pets
Many owners refuse to cut back on care of furry companions
August 25, 2009
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter/sesposito@suntimes.com
Cookie Coco Chanel’s owner is feeling the sting of the recession — her real estate business has dropped off more than 50 percent.
But for the chocolate-colored Chihuahua, the good life goes on interrupted — a twice-monthly oatmeal-aloe vera bath, doggie cheesecake, a professional blow dry.
» Click to enlarge image
Despite the recession, Americans are expected to spend an estimated $45.4 billion on their pets.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
PHOTO GALLERY
Chicago’s top dogs
“We make little sacrifices to keep our animals in a healthy lifestyle,” explained Cookie’s owner, Dominica Cece, 48, a North Sider who says she spends about $5,000 annually caring for her two dogs and three cats.
Cookie is hardly the only pet oblivious to the worst global downturn since the Great Depression. The American Pet Products Association predicts Americans will spend about $45.4 billion on their pets this year, up $2.2 billion over 2008. Petco and Petsmart, which together have about 2,100 stores nationwide, both say business has been good, although not exceptional, during the recession.
“The fact of the matter is people still love their pets, and just because the economy changes, that doesn’t change,” said Petco spokeswoman Brooke Simon.
Joel Spainhour owns Tucker Pup’s, a West Loop business that offers dog grooming, boarding, day care and training. Last October, business was dreadful — but only temporarily, Spainhour said.
“We just had a huge amount of cancellations for day care and especially for boarding, because so many people canceled their business trips and personal trips,” Spainhour said. But people were, in fact, postponing trips, not canceling them.
“Now, [business] is stronger than it’s ever been,” Spainhour said.
Still, it isn’t all good news for the family pooch. Some pet owners, particularly those who have recently lost a job, are cutting back on pet health care.
“We’re seeing a drop in some of the preventative care, and we’re seeing an increase in some of the diseases that could have been prevented,” said Lenette DiCiaula, a veterinarian at Portage Park Animal Hospital & Dental Clinic.
When money’s tight, DiCiaula said, patients may not be able to afford “the gold standard.” “We try to work with people and try to address the most important issues,” she said.
At Famous Fido and Happy Tails in Andersonville, Cookie was experiencing the platinum standard Monday afternoon. She’d just enjoyed a beef-carrot-and-peas entree, followed by turkey meatballs and a slice of doggie cheesecake. But something was making the tiny dog snarl.
“You’ve got a few little issues you’ve got to work out,” her owner, Cece, cooed.
A few feet away, Benji, a freshly clipped and washed Wheaten terrier, was sniffing the ground.
Benji’s owner, Patricia Rollins, a 67-year-old retired banker who lives on the North Side, said she couldn’t imagine cutting back on her dog’s grooming.
“For one thing, he sleeps with me, so it keeps germs and the dirt off the bed,” Rollins said. “They clean his ears and his butt — and I wouldn’t even know how to start to do that.”
Running a Franchise business, we are always in a position of getting the most potential out of our franchisees and our constantly
in the business of feeding information to make yourself better as a human being, and as a business owner. Here is a great article.
Play to Your Weaknesses
Breaking Through Personal Constraints
Flip Flippen March 27, 2009
Have you ever seen a bungee run? No, there’s no punch line. That’s a real question.
A bungee run is one of those huge inflatable games you see at carnivals or kids’ birthday parties. It’s a game where two players run as fast and as far as they can with bungee cords strapped to their backs. The object is to get as close to the end of the inflatable track as possible before the bungee cord snaps you back to the starting point.
It occurred to me recently that when we talk about success in life—about achieving the goals we set for ourselves—that the road to success is sometimes like a bungee run. When we enter the race, we muster all our strength to get us to the goal, but, inevitably, something snaps us back before we get there. And the snap isn’t always pretty.
The bungee cords—or the things that snap us back from success—are what I refer to as personal constraints. These are behaviors that hold you back and keep you from achieving greater success, performance and fulfillment.
Here’s a little quiz for you. See if you can answer this question in 10 seconds or less:
What is the No. 1 personal constraint that keeps you from being more successful?
If you’re drawing a blank, you’re not alone. I’ve asked this question to audiences all around the world, and I almost always get the same response—silent mind searching. Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of a constraint if you don’t know what it is!
And if you are one of those rare individuals who can answer the question, keep in mind this is not the end of the exercise. You’ve just got a diagnosis. Now you need a prescription.
Maybe you’ve never thought about your constraints because you think that maximizing potential is all about what you’ve got—your talents, strengths and skills. And that’s true to a certain extent. I highly recommend that you identify your strengths and fi nd ways to utilize them.
But what if you’re already playing to your strengths and still missing the mark? Or, what if you’re playing to your strengths and hitting the mark, but believe you are capable of much more?
Then it’s time to take a look at what’s holding you back—to identify and address your personal constraints.
In my book The Flip Side, I identify some of the most common personal constraints and associate them with “characters” to help describe these behaviors. The following are just a few of the 10 characters:
Icebergs—Constrained by too little nurturing, empathy and emotion
Bulldozers—Constrained by an off-the-charts need for control
Volcanoes—Constrained by volatility
Turtles—Constrained by an inability to handle change
Critics—Constrained by excessive negativity
Do you see yourself in any of these characters? I sure did! In fact, I should have finished writing The Flip Side years ago. Ironically, my book about personal constraints was held back by my own personal constraints. Bummer!
We all have things that hold us back and keep us from realizing our full potential. If you think you don’t, then right off the bat I’d say one of your personal constraints might be denial.
The real question is not if you have personal constraints, but rather what are those constraints and how do they affect you. Once you answer those questions, then you can focus on confronting your constraints head-on and getting them out of your life.
The Constraint-Breaking Process
First, you must identify your constraint. If you think you might be a “bulldozer”—someone who is overly dominant and always has to be in control, take the bulldozer constraint quiz. Check any of the following “symptoms” that occur:
* I often finish other people’s sentences.
* When I disagree with others, it’s OK to interrupt and correct them.
* Being strong-willed allows me to accomplish more than others.
* When others are talking, I am already thinking of what to say next and looking for an opportunity to win them to my way of thinking.
* I can be pushy and maybe even hardheaded, but I’m usually right.
* If I’m in charge, I don’t like people stepping on my toes—people should stick to their own roles.
* People have said I’m stubborn, but I just have strong opinions.
* Weaker people shouldn’t be in charge of things.
If you checked several of the symptoms, then you clearly show some bulldozer tendencies. So, what do you do with that information?
Well, you develop your own personalized TrAction Plan™ (TrAction is pronounced the usual way, but we capitalize the A to emphasize the need for action)—a customized plan to help you break your personal constraint.
If you’re a bulldozer, here are some things we recommend you include in your TrAction Plan:
* Periodically start taking a step back during group interactions and let others speak. Watch the group dynamic closely and work on getting others more involved.
* “Check in” more during conversations by asking things like,
* Am I answering your question?” and “Is this helpful information?”
* Get some brutally honest feedback about how you are perceived by others. For example, ask someone to rate you on a scale of 1 to 10 on your stubbornness or your listening skills.
It’s amazing to see what happens when someone breaks a constraint. I’ve spent years researching characteristics of successful people and helping high performers maximize their potential. What I’ve learned is that when you break a constraint, you don’t see a gradual increase in performance. You literally see a leap in performance— as if immediately propelled to the next level.
Personally Constrained Leaders
So far, I’ve focused solely on how personal constraints limit your own success. But we don’t live in a vacuum. Personal constraints can also kill the success of people around you, especially if you are in a leadership position. I summarize this concept in one of my Laws of Personal Constraint for leaders:
No organization can rise above the constraints of its leadership.
Whether you’re the leader of a family, a business, a classroom, an athletic team or even a country, your constraints impact those you lead.
Since I teach this concept, I would love to tell you that I have always dealt with my own constraints. But I haven’t.
I didn’t really get serious about dealing with my own constraints until I had children. I remember one time getting really frustrated with my oldest son about an incident in which he got angry. In the midst of that frustration, I realized that I was getting angry about his anger! I was literally passing on my constraint to my son. I realized, then, how my personal constraints were impacting my family. That was the day I decided to make some changes.
You see, your personal constraints really aren’t personal. They aren’t just about you. They are also about the people you care about.
So I want to challenge you over the next few days to put some serious thought into the things that limit or constrain you. If you need some help, consider asking your spouse or someone who’s close to you—someone who cares about your best interest, who can be both honest and sensitive.
Or, you can pick up a copy of The Flip Side, which offers strategies for identifying personal constraints and for breaking those constraints.
Because those with the least constraints… win!
Flip Flippen, author of The Flip Side, is the head of The Flippen Group, a corporate and educator-training company.
With all the fantastic women dog trainers that we have been coming out with in our franchise. I found this great article on Women and franchising. A lot more opportunity today.
More and More Women Find Success in Franchising
By Carrie Brenner
There has never been a better time for women in franchising, and it’s more than a trend. “The opportunities are just going to get greater for women,” says Dina Dwyer-Owens, chairwoman of the International Franchise Association and chairwoman and CEO of The Dwyer Group, a franchise holding company founded by her father. “There are so many more opportunities in franchising today than there were 30 years ago when I began,” explains Dwyer-Owens,
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who estimates that franchising currently covers about 80 industries, which practically guarantees that all women will be able to find a franchise concept they feel compatible with. More choices also mean the option to work from home and greater flexibility in hours.
Mary Rogers founded Computertots, a children’s technology franchise, in the early 1980s for just that reason — she’d started a family and wanted to have a flexible schedule. Rogers has since moved on, co-founding Abrakadoodle with Rosemarie Hartnett in 2002. Abrakadoodle franchisees run their businesses from home, offering art programs to children at schools, museums, community centers, and other public places.
Rogers and Hartnett agree that certain factors make franchising ideal for women, who tend to have natural networking, collaborating, and multitasking skills. Home-based franchises have low overhead, which makes it easier for women who don’t have a lot of capital to get financing and become business owners. Like Dwyer-Owens, Rogers and Hartnett are very involved in the IFA, which has a lot of resources for women franchisees. Some of these include MinorityFran, the Women’s Franchise Committee, and the Women’s Franchise Discussion Forum. Hartnett says that over the years not only has women’s participation in women’s franchising events increased, but so has the number of men offering their support at events.
Part of the reason women have been drawn to franchising, says Dwyer-Owens, is the training and support. “Women are collaborators,” she says, “so having a support team to rely on is really beneficial.” Plus, franchising is a quick-start vehicle, so women making the leap to owning their own business — whether from the corporate world or from home — can do so without years of planning.
As for that old-fashioned glass ceiling, as far as Dwyer-Owens is concerned, it’s mostly a state of mind. Growing up, Dwyer-Owens had two sisters and three brothers, and her father had equal expectations for all his children, boys and girls alike. “I’ve never let myself have that mind-set,” says Dwyer-Owens. But she concedes that she has spoken with women who’ve come up against barriers. “Take action!” urges Dwyer-Owens, who emphasizes that women need to boost their confidence levels and, if they are in an environment where restrictions are put on women, they need to go to a different place. According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, as of 2008, 40 percent of all privately held firms in the U.S. were women-owned, proof that backward attitudes about women and business are becoming more and more a thing of the past.
According to the latest statistics from the IFA, approximately 25 percent of franchisees are women. “There’s really no glass ceiling in franchising,” says Rogers, who notes that there’s been a lot of progress in the last decade, with an increasing openness to women in leadership roles. However, she still sees an underrepresentation of women in management roles, something she hopes will be eliminated in the future. “The layoffs that have happened in the current economy provide an opportunity for women to step into franchising.”
Dwyer-Owens says that there’s really no magic market for women deciding which franchise to become a part of. “We’re all different. They just need to look for the business they’re most interested in and have a passion for, whether it’s plumbing or facials.” As is the case for all potential franchisees, women should complete their due diligence before entering into any agreement. And, of course, once they’re there, they need to network, network, network.
Franchising dates back to at least the 1850s; Isaac Singer, who made improvements to an existing model of a sewing machine, wanted to increase the distribution of his sewing machines. His effort, though unsuccessful in the long run, was among the first Franchising efforts in the U.S. A slightly later, yet much more successful, example of Franchising was John S. Pemberton’s Franchising of Coca-Cola. Early American examples include the telegraph system, which was operated by various railroad companies but controlled by Western Union, and exclusive agreements between automobile manufacturers and operators of local dealerships.
Modern Franchising came to prominence with the rise of franchise-based food service establishments. This trend started as early as 1919 with quick service restaurants such as A&W Root Beer. In 1935, Howard Deering Johnson teamed up with Reginald Sprague to establish the first modern restaurant franchise. The idea was to let independent operators use the same name, food, supplies, logo and even building design in exchange for a fee.
The growth in franchises picked up steam in the 1930s when such chains as Howard Johnson’s started Franchising motels. The 1950s saw a boom of franchise chains in conjunction with the development of America’s Interstate Highway System. Fast food restaurants, diners and motel chains exploded. In regards to contemporary franchise chains, McDonalds is arguably the most successful worldwide with more restaurant units than any other franchise network.
Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio
“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.
It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written. My odometer rolled over
to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:”
1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and
parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their
journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God
never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is
up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no
for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie.
Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ”In five years,
will this matter?”.
26. Always choose life.
27. Forgive everyone everything.
28. What other people think of you is none of your business.
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, i t will change.
31. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
32. Believe in miracles.
33. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did
or didn’t do.
34. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
35. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
36. Your children get only one childhood.
37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
38. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d
grab ours back.
40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
41. The best is yet to come.
42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
43. Yield.
44. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.
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