Lianne Shinton (00:01)

Welcome everybody. So I'm Lianne Shinton from Automation Dogs. I do a CRM software for dog trainers, but also my podcast. We dive into having conversations with dog trainers to help pet owners in some cases and in other cases to help dog trainers. And today this focus is going to be to help dog trainers. And I have the amazing Sam Given and Brian Dell joining me. Welcome Sam and Brian.

Sam Given (00:29)

Good afternoon.

Triple (00:31)

How you doing?

Lianne Shinton (00:32)

Good, good, thank you. So Sam is from Professional Canine and Brian is from Triple Threat Canine, real badass name. And ⁓ Sam just created and hosted the first ever Professional Canine Development Conference in Ohio that Brian and I attended and it was outstanding. And we all kind of got to talking about leadership. And that is something that I...

Triple (00:41)

yes.

Lianne Shinton (01:00)

hear from dog trainers quite often. They're not sure when to hire, how to hire, and then how to lead a team. And the reason that I wanted Sam and Brian to join us today is because they actually have background in this, not necessarily from running a business and being a dog trainer, but from their military background, which is outstanding. And thank you both for your service, by the way.

Sam Given (01:26)

Thank you.

Triple (01:26)

Thank you.

Lianne Shinton (01:27)

Now, I feel that as like a girl running a business when I was 17, like it was a struggle, you I had to learn it. And a lot of times what I'll do is I will lean into watching someone that is bad ass at this. And so even though you might be a little softer like myself, this is the kind of stuff that I like to listen to and watch and learn from because

I'll start to mirror it and that helps me become more confident and smarter in whatever it is that I'm learning. And again, today we're on leadership. So ⁓ without further ado, maybe Sam, could you introduce yourself and a little bit about your background and then Brian.

Sam Given (02:18)

Sure. So some of you seen me on the podcast before. I'm Sam Given. I am a trainer with professional K9 out of Ohio. My background, I did 38 years in the military before I retired about four years ago. I started out as a United States Marine, transitioned over to the Air National Guard. During the Air National Guard time, I spent about 14 years with the active duty side of the Air Force. In my last 12 to 15 years was actually in all leadership roles.

So I really have a passion for this. And one of my degrees is in organizational leadership. So it's a great background to have when you're talking about new business owners, because we all get focused on our pets. We get focused on our clients, but we forget that we have our whole business side of things that we need to work on. So this has really been a passion for me, not only with dog training, but with just small companies and helping them out.

Triple (03:17)

So yeah, I'm Brian Dell from Triple Threat K9. So I'm also in central Ohio. Me and Sam aren't too far from each other. So that's awesome. Same thing, I'm retired military. So I retired from the United States Air Force in 2020, right around COVID timeframe. I was active duty Air Force. I served as a military police officer, was a K9 handler, eventually a K9 trainer and got promoted to become what's called a kennel master. So from there,

A lot of leadership opportunities I've had myself and my personnel have served across the globe on six out of the seven continents or however many there are nowadays. ⁓ But yeah, so long story short though, I've supervised both the K-9 world, also in our operational side of things as well. So we've had upwards of 225 personnel in our units. This is the largest unit that I was with at the last time in my career there. And again, supervising folks across the board.

So it's been kind of a passion of mine as well. So obviously in the military, we get thrown into it a lot sooner, a lot earlier than most in life. So Sam can attest once you're first put into the military, even a very low rank in the military, you get thrown into that role very quickly. So you have to adapt and learn pretty fast. Fortunately, we get a lot of training along the way. We get a lot of class, a lot of good instruction and a lot of men's worship. So yeah, but I'm looking forward to having this discussion with you guys today. Leadership is something I'm passionate about as well.

I still get calls regularly from guys I supervised 10 plus years ago that still tell me I was one of the best supervisors they ever had or they'll contact me for mentorship. So to this day, even though I'm a civilian now and a lot of my guys are getting close to retirement themselves, but yeah, that's a great topic. So I'm glad you had us on today.

Lianne Shinton (04:56)

Awesome. Now I know Sam, you have kind of some slides that you've already prepared and you've taught on. So I'd like to start with what you would like to share so we can have a conversation about that.

Sam Given (05:13)

Sure, think when we start talking about leadership, first we have to kind of figure out what is leadership, right? And a lot of times things get broken down into I'm a supervisor, I'm a manager. But we have to understand that those two titles, yes, they're leadership, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're a leader. They have a title, they're in charge of something.

but there's a difference in leadership itself. And the way I teach this to corporations and small businesses is supervisors tend to supervise people, the people. They take care of people's needs. They're the people that's overseeing the workforce's HR needs, their time off, their scheduling. They're really taking care of the people. Then you have your managers and it's a leadership role, but managers have a tendency to be more focused on the overall

organizations processes. They're managing programs. They're managing the day-to-day workflows and how those programs integrate with each other. Now they're both considered leadership, but they really don't define what a leader is. And the simplest way that I've ever heard leadership defined is a true leader or someone who is a leader of an organization is a person who can develop

and communicate the organization's vision. So for me, a good leader is someone who can create a vision for where they want the company to go, the organization to go, and then be able to communicate that in a simplified manner that's repeatable and that anyone who works with them or for them or outside their business understands exactly what the vision of that company is and the direction that they're going.

So that's kind of where we have to start that conversation, right? Is what is it we're truly looking for? And I think most small companies, especially in the dog training industry, you have one or two employees. ⁓ Our company has six of us. And we have a pretty defined vision as to what we want to do with our company. And it's directly in our name of professional K9. And you both attended a conference and stuff and we've done podcasts together.

Everything that we do, we try to do it on a very professional level. So for us, our vision is to be innovative. We want to be the trainers that other trainers want to collaborate with. And then we have an innovative nature to what we're doing. So that's a really repeatable vision for our leadership. So each small training group, if it's one person, two people, three, they need to be able to figure out, okay, what's my leadership style?

And then what's my vision for my company going to be? And Brian, you probably see that you have several employees that work for you and you started out as a small ⁓ training group, correct?

Triple (08:12)

Correct. Yeah. So for us, same thing. And I kind of want to touch on a little bit too. So Sam's given you kind of a, like, again, goes with our name professional and K9 has given you a very good professional breakdown there as far as like leadership goes. Something I just wanted to kind of start it off with too is one thing I've seen throughout my career in the military, I've seen a lot, even the civilian sector is there's a huge difference when it comes to when you talk to leadership.

A lot of times people think about leadership and they think like the boss, right? They think the head of the operation, head of the household, head of the business, whatever it is. ⁓ That being said, a lot of times people tend to think, hey, because I'm in a position of power, I'm a great leader or because I am a leader because of my position. So therefore you have to do it. say, you know, follow these instructions, follow the divisions. I've seen a lot in my career in Sam, I'm sure same with you in the military, really good leadership and really bad leadership, right?

Sam Given (09:03)

Oops.

Triple (09:06)

⁓ Some people are built for it, right? I definitely think some people are just naturally born good leaders. I think some people struggle with it. ⁓ My big piece when it comes to leadership and just something I wanted to put out there and have some discussion with you guys as well and your thoughts ⁓ is when it comes to leadership, sorry there, my your possible having a having that that relationship with your people is huge, right? So I think building the camaraderie with your team, team building is important to me, especially here at Triple Threat K9.

I want my team to feel like family. I want them to know that I have their back. And the big thing I have stressed in a leadership role is, you know, having that vision like Sam talked about, being able to, hey, this is the vision, this is the way ahead, but at the same time, also having it to where we have, you know, the ability to lead our folks down that path, but also have compassion, empathy, you know, make sure they're being taken care of at the same time and leading from the front. I'm a firm believer in that. I'm not going to do anything.

or ask my people to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. And I find a lot of times I can have people want to follow me and want to follow my vision much easier because they see I'm out there right next to them. I'm in the trenches with them doing the works day in and day out with them. So I think that's a huge piece of leadership too.

Sam Given (10:21)

Yeah, and know, Brian, you just keyed in on a really important function of leadership is a lot of times we get caught up in that who's the boss, who's the manager, who's the supervisor. That's a formal leader. And what I've found over my career is the most influential people in an organization, I should say, is the ⁓ informal leaders. That one or two people in every organization that

every other person looks to to go, is this a good idea or is this a bad idea? What's the boss really want us to do? And those informal leaders make or break an organization. They really do. And that was a great point that you were making on that.

Lianne Shinton (10:52)

Okay.

Triple (11:03)

Absolutely.

Lianne Shinton (11:07)

I'm just sitting back and you you guys are the experts on this. So, you know, if you want to share your next.

Sam Given (11:15)

We were just kind of waiting

to see what you're going throw out there next. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (11:20)

I know from being a business owner, dog training business owner, some things that come to mind are maybe some problems that I've seen with dog trainers, with their businesses or with my own business where maybe a staff member is getting ready to leave. And what should we do? What signs should we look for?

You know, why did that happen?

Sam Given (11:51)

So, know, I'm gonna throw some theory out there and Brian has created practical application to this and I'm a real deep theory guy, but I think what we have to start with is as leaders, as business owners, we have to have an understanding of what's our leadership style. And, you know, I'm a very formalized leadership style like.

I believe in you know, you got the democratic leadership, you got lazy fair leadership, transformational, transactional, servant leader. Most of the time, informal leaders are those charismatic leaders. And in the military, know, basically it's a dictatorship or a bureaucratic leadership style. But I think it's important for us as business owners and as trainers to understand what's our personal philosophy, what's our style.

And I think that evolves over time also. So for me, I'm a very trans ⁓ transformational leader. I want to be that person. It's always looking to innovate, to move forward. What's what, how do we grow? And more importantly, how do I set and develop goals for each one of my employees to achieve what their goal is? Because everybody has their own personal goals. And maybe it's not always with your company. Maybe as they grow, they want to go do something

that you don't offer. And I think as leaders, it's important that we help them get to that goal and then understand that, hey, if you leave me, it's okay. Let's part on good terms. Now on the opposite side of that, sometimes we have employees want to leave because of leadership conflicts. And those leadership conflicts really stem from one, leaders not knowing what their style is. they're

They're telling you that, I'm a very ⁓ transactional leader or I'm a lazy laissez faire leader. But their actions are as a dictator, as a bureaucrat. So their actions and their style don't match each other. And that first line supervisor, first line manager is the person that really determines how happy or unhappy an employee is.

So what I find with smaller companies is most of the time they don't really know what their leadership style is because they've never studied it or they haven't taken personality tests to understand that. And Brian Hittlert in his is, when he was talking about leadership, is understanding that natural born leader. And you hear that a lot, oh, that person's really a natural born leader. What that really means when you break that down, because leadership's about

emotional intelligence. And we can talk a little bit about what emotional intelligence is and how it works, but when someone says that that person's a natural born leader, really what it is, it's that individual has a really good grasp of emotional intelligence and they know how to meet you where you're at. And you'll hear, we talk about this a lot with our clients. We want to meet our clients where they're at and then figure out how do we move forward as a team from there.

⁓ So I think when we get into these minute ⁓ conflicts within a group, we have to look at is our training philosophy what we say it is, or is our actions dictating that it's actually something different? And as a leader, do I understand the emotional intelligence of the person I'm talking to? Because I'm a very dynamic person. I know that I have a very

I hate to say overbearing personality, but my personality can be very direct and kind of push people out sometimes. From an emotional intelligence standpoint, what I have to understand is, that person might be someone who learns on a softer level, that they're more compassionate, they have more empathy, and those are things that I know that are weak spots for me personally in leadership. So I have to...

talk to them in a different manner. I have to address conflict in a different manner because if I do it in a very direct manner like with Brian, because I know his background, I don't need to give him positives and, you these things right. He doesn't want to what he did right. Tell me what I'm doing wrong so we can get this fixed and move on, right? So I think that's kind where we start that conversation with the conflict management is what really you're talking about. And we can delve into it a little bit more. Brian, what do you have to add?

Triple (16:34)

Yeah, absolutely.

Lianne Shinton (16:35)

Hmm.

Triple (16:43)

Yeah,

yeah. So I like how you brought up the personality side of things because that's a huge thing as Sam mentioned. So in the military, we actually take personality trait tests and there's a lot of different ones out there on the internet you're able to do. So for me, every time I've ever taken a test throughout my career, I'm a dominant influencer, right? So two that you may not see together as often, but I have a very dominant A-type personality, again, being military police, being K-9, a lot of the folks in the law enforcement K-9 community.

are in that capacity. The influencer piece is what I find has helped me the most though. So again, I can lead with a heavy hand. I can lead because I'm in a position of authority. I could lead because I'm the boss, right? But what I find is the influencer side of me, I'm able to have the people work for me because they want to work for me. But again, it's because I take care of them. And Sam was mentioning different types of leadership. And I kind of want to touch base on this. I'm gonna look at my screen here a little bit. I have some notes as well. But so he mentioned a few different types of transformational leadership.

These are the three main types I find that I most like and again I'm kind of a blend. If you guys sat in my class with the tracking trailing, right again tracking and trailing to me are one and the same if you do it right. Same thing when it comes to leadership. You don't have to be one or the other in my opinion. You can kind of be both. So for me, transformation leadership is one of my big ones that I definitely feel that I fall within the realm of, right? And again, that's, you know, making sure that as far as a transformational leader, you're ⁓

Lianne Shinton (17:45)

you

Triple (18:09)

Getting that vision pushed out there, making sure folks are motivated and valued within your operation, whether it's your business, military, what have you. A servant leader, again, like I talked about, putting your people first because that's one thing I find a lot, right? So as a boss, as a leader, we feel, well, because I'm the boss and it's my company, you have to work for me very hard, right? And that's not always the case, right? You should be the hardest working employee of your company as the leader and as the boss, right? Set that example, how those people want to follow you.

Me and man, we had a conversation briefly at the end of one of our podcasts we did a couple of weeks ago. And that's how we kind of decided like, Hey, let's have this conversation on leadership. talked about some things, right? And one of the things we talked about is feedback, right? So feedback in the military, have a performance feedback form that we actually utilize. And on that form, it's a form that we hand to our personnel and we say, Hey, know, fill out all these boxes, right? And there's all kinds of different questions like, Hey, how do you feel that you fit into the overall mission or the overall vision of this company? You know,

How do you feel you're performing in these areas? And you can select all the different areas. It's something that I think all companies should do, right? And so they give themselves an honest feedback, right? So I would have them fill the form out and then they hand it back to us, right? As a supervisor. Once they give it back to us, we take time to review it. And then there are sections that we go over together. But we're not talking about just business. We're not talking about just main everyday, hey, work stuff. We're also talking about personal life, talking about professional development.

Right. So we want to know, like for me, I want to know my people's families, right? I want the families involved. I want to be able to have that, that down home feel with them. I don't want to just be like, it's business. And I don't care about your home life. Right. Cause if they have a bad home life going on, there's something going on at home. They're not going to be focused at work to get the job done. Right. So having that communication, communication is huge. Right. You have to talk to your people. You have to know your people, right? You have to be able to communicate. Like Sam said, the vision and the goals, but you also have to be able to communicate with them on a personal level.

and be able to have those in-depth conversations. He talked about professional development, right? Sometimes people want to leave because they want to do more than what you may have to offer. So again, promote that within your business. That's one thing I can't stress enough. not dog training related, but for example, in the military as a flight chief, so I had roughly about 80 people under me at this time.

And I was one of the only flight chiefs in my entire unit that was certifying some of the lowest ranking guys that are normally entry controllers working to main entry control points to a base. I was certifying them as patrolmen and they were seeing the road as police officers, right? Actually out serving on the road and all the other flight chiefs thought I was crazy. They're like, what are you doing? Like these kids are too young. They don't know. They don't have the background or whatever. like, well, you got to get them there. That's why we train. That's what we do. We teach them the ways we show them the way ahead.

And I was the only flight that had all of my A1Cs, which is Airman First Class, which is, they're pretty new still to the military, certified as patrolman. As soon as they got done with their certification as patrolman, next thing up is desk sergeant or dispatcher, right? So then we start right away, they enter training for that people are like, what are you doing, man? They don't do that until they're a staff sergeant or, know, tech sergeant. So I'm like, wrong, right? My guys are going to be trained because one that makes my company or my operation that much smoother. If somebody calls off, next man up, right? If somebody's missing, next man up.

Lianne Shinton (21:15)

Mm.

Triple (21:23)

Right. I'm able to fill those voids. And again, that

makes my people valued. Right. Because all the other people are like, no, you're not ready. You're not there. You're not capable. Right. That's the wrong answer. Right. If they have the drive, they have the passion. Or even if they don't communicate and talk to them and find out why they don't. Right. And find the reason as to why we need to motivate them. How do we motivate you? Right. What do you want to do? Because again, if you don't have that conversation, you're never going to know. So like back to your situation and that you asked about is if somebody's like, I'm leaving your company. Well,

Sam Given (21:27)

Absolutely.

Triple (21:52)

We should have known long before that I was coming based off discussions. Cause if we're having that honest feedback, it doesn't always have to be formal, right? It doesn't have to be, sit down, fill out this form. We're going to talk once a quarter, once every six months annually, whatever it is, right? Just having a simple conversation. Hey, what's up? How you doing today? Good. Good. Hey, how's, how's work and treating you? How's things going here at the shop? You know, what are you thinking about, you know, you want to do here in three months from now? You know, how can we help you grow? How can we help you be happy here at this place of business? I want you to be here. I want you to be happy. And I want you to work for me.

We talked a little bit about a story I was talking about where one of my personnel was asking me questions all the time. I'd be like, hey man, and again, I'm a fun believer in leading a couple of different ways. Like I said, the servant leadership is never peace transformation, also situational. So situational leadership, you have to know the people you're dealing with. So you have to know all the different personalities. So obviously in the military, we get a ton of different personalities, same thing in the civilian sector, ton of different personalities, different backgrounds, et cetera.

So anyways, for me, I've always been a leader that I kind of ask and make people feel like they have a say in things, right? So like for me in the military, if I'm like, hey, I need you to go wash their wash our canine cruisers. If they're like, but why, right? Okay, let me rephrase that go fucking wash the canine cruisers. Right? But a lot of times because I'm like, hey, would you mind doing this for me? They would want to do it for me because they knew I had their back. Right? So again, they don't really have a say at the end of the day, but they kind of feel they do because of the way I'd ask it. Whereas a lot of people when they're leaders, they're like, hey, go wash the cars.

Right now. Hey, would you mind knocking this out for me real quick? Can you help me out? Can you help me get this done? Right. And they'd be like, oh, yes, sir. I got you. Right. Like I'd tell you all the time, my troops sort of jumped off a bridge for me because I treated them fair. I treated them with respect and we had open communication. Right. They knew they could come to me with problems. would help them in any way I could. Right. And that gained their trust and their value. But the guy I was talking about with Lianne, one of my, one of my guys who eventually became my replacement as a CalMaster, he was my senior handler.

Eventually, he was becoming a trainer. Then I trained him up to replace me when the time came. But long story short, he would ask me why after basic stuff. Like, I'd be like, hey, man, I need you to do X, Y, and Z for me, whatever. And he'd be like, why? And I explained to him why. And then it happened again. Why? I explained to him. So about the third or fourth time, I'm like, all right, I'm going have a feedback with this guy. So I brought him into my office. We sat down. did, hey, we're going to do a feedback today. Let's have a discussion. Because I'm getting frustrated because I'm like, why is he constantly questioning what I'm telling him to do? Everybody else in my unit.

Lianne Shinton (24:14)

Yeah.

Triple (24:18)

listens

like Johnny on the spot. They're there to support me. So we sit down, we have this conversation. I hadn't thought the forum that was talking about our performance feedback form just again to get a feedback and also kind of start a paper trail if needed. Because that's something too is documenting issues, right? Like a lot of people don't document things, right? So document the issue. So I'm like, hey, let's have a feedback. We have a discussion. So I said, I mean, one of my big things with you, and there's a spot on there for supervisors to talk about like issues they see with their personnel. So one of my biggest issues is, you know,

Lianne Shinton (24:30)

business.

Triple (24:47)

I'm obviously your boss and I find a lot of times you question me on things that I ask you to do. And he goes, well, Sergeant Dell, it's because I want to learn. And I'm trying to learn why you do things the way you do, because I respect you as a leader. And I'm trying to figure out exactly your thought processes behind it. He's like, I'm not trying to be disrespectful of my any means. So for me as a supervisor, I was taking it as him being an asshole. He's being disrespectful. He's questioning me as to why I'm asking him to do stuff. Again, which wasn't normal. None of my other personnel were like that.

But this guy's a very analytical guy, right? ⁓ For me, I'm very much a shoot from the hip, get shit done, make shit happen kind of guy, right? Like if you need some stuff done, I'm gonna get it done, we're gonna do it, right? But it may not be the way that everybody wants it done, but it's gonna get done, all right? Whereas he's very analytical, he's like, I gotta think through the processes, I gotta understand your thought process, your thinking and why you do it. So again, that was a lack of communication on my part, because I should have asked that question, like, hey, why are you questioning me right now, right?

But after I saw it was a trend, said, you know what, let me do a feedback session. Let me sit down and let me have a conversation with this guy. Right. I never jumped his ass for it. Right. We just sat down and had a conversation. And because we had that conversation, I was able to avoid conflict there as well. Cause we could have very easily got into an argument. could have jumped his ass into the military stamp pose and anybody that knows about the military, I could have ripped his ass apart for it. Right. But instead I decided to just have the conversation. He explained his side, why he's like that. And I was like, man, that's phenomenal. Like you're motivated. You want to learn. Let's learn.

Lianne Shinton (25:44)

Mm-hmm.

Triple (26:14)

Right. So then I started training him up and this is when he was still the senior handler. And then eventually on my head, you're now the trainer. Hey, now you're the kennel master. You're taking my spot. Right. Your name is now put in the hat to relieve me. Right. When is my time to roll out? So again, ⁓ like I said, you got to know your people. You got to get on that deeper level. You got to have that communication. You got to have an open door policy, right? Just cause you're the boss doesn't mean you know everything either. Right. Like you may have somebody that's your lowest ranking person or your lowest person in your business that have

Lianne Shinton (26:40)

Thank

.

Triple (26:44)

phenomenal ideas, right? But if they're too scared to come have that conversation with you,

your company may be missing out on some critical information. ⁓

Sam Given (26:52)

You know, Brian,

Brian, know, and a couple of things I want to touch on. One, I think some of our younger trainers that might be just them and they don't have employees yet. They have to understand that their leadership is also leading their clients because they need to help their clients develop a goal and a vision for what they want their dog to be. Right. That's still part of that leadership picture. leadership doesn't apply to just employees. It applies to the people you're working with.

Triple (26:56)

you

Sam Given (27:21)

The other thing he hit on, his story was great for this because we talk about, don't know if you've, some of your people that's listening probably have heard, you know, the color ⁓ test. And it tells you if you're a blue, a gold, a green, or an orange color, and each color reflects a personality trait. Brian tends to be in the orange category. And I'll read you a couple of these, this is why I say he leans towards being orange.

Someone's into orange personality trait is flexible, easygoing. They like exploring new possibilities. They're open to change. They have many interests and they're able to do many things and express multiple ⁓ ideas. The employee you had working for him would have fallen more like in that green category where they're mentally tough as wrong, but they're logical, rational. ⁓

self-controlled, but they want to overanalyze information. now we have an orange and a green trying to talk to each other, right? So here's how they each perceived each other.

Lianne Shinton (28:22)

Hmm.

Sam Given (28:35)

the person who was asking question perceived Brian on a thing of ⁓ he's giving me multiple tasks, I feel scattered. He's not giving me the full picture of the information. So I can't analyze what I need is what he's thinking. On Brian's side of this being an orange talking to green, he's fallen into this guy's kind of arrogant. ⁓ He's

over analyzing everything I tell him. I don't need him to ask questions right now. I just need him to go get this done because we're on a time crunch. So you have an orange and a green talking to each other. And that's how that emotional intelligence works is had either one of understood where the other one was in their personality traits, that communication gap gets closer and closer. So when I'm talking to somebody that I know that is in a green personality space,

I know they're very confident, they're mentally tough, they're logical, they're rational, ⁓ they're good at analytics. So I can talk to them on that level. I also know that when I'm talking to them, because I'm a gold, I have to make sure that I'm not being too rigid, if I'm inflexible or over-opinionated, because that's how they perceive my personality traits. And this is stuff that applies to our businesses with just our clients.

There's been times that clients, I know every dog trainer out there has run into a client where they go, my God, why did you call me? You already know everything there is and you're not listening. Everybody's had that client. Well, it's not necessarily that that's what they are. It's just how we perceive them based on where we're at in our emotional intelligence and how our emotions work versus their personality. So the more we understand that from a leadership standpoint,

the more effective we can be as communicators. And I think that's important, Liam, for those smaller businesses that don't have lot of employees, but they're really the leader of their clients. Because clients don't know where they want to go. We have to create for them. Because here's where you're at, and here's where I think we can get you to.

Lianne Shinton (30:43)

Mm-hmm.

Triple (30:50)

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.

Lianne Shinton (30:52)

I think that something actionable that I'm taking away right now is asking for feedback from your staff if you have staff, having them fill out a form once a day, once a week. You could start to back off maybe over time, but people have different perspectives.

Sam Given (31:02)

Absolutely.

Triple (31:09)

Yeah.

Sam Given (31:12)

So.

Triple (31:12)

Yeah, I would say like when it comes to that, like I also think I have found in the military, especially like, again, Sam can attest, there's a ton of red tape and there's a ton of additional things, right? So me personally, I want to say overload your people with feedback forms and all of that stuff, but just simply having conversation too, right? Now, if you're not good at conversating or you're just kind of new to the leadership side, or like maybe you got your first employee, or maybe it's your first time having to have a tough conversation, yeah, slip on the form maybe, because that sometimes takes it

takes the edge off, right? Like ⁓ I don't shy away from confrontation. I don't care to have a discussion. Like it's easy for me. find it very natural, but a lot of people struggle with that. So I would say like, your feedback forms are great if you're not good at that, right? Cause you can have them fill out a bunch of stuff, have the opportunity to read it, then set up a time to sit down with them, have that discussion when you're prepared and you have your data or you have your talking points or whatever it is that you need.

Lianne Shinton (31:57)

Yeah.

Triple (32:08)

But I'd also say on the flip side, like if you're like here, fill out the form once a week or fill out a form every day or fill it out, like I would just be careful in that realm too coming from my standpoint just because then they're gonna be like, man, this boss is a micromanager. They're up my ass constantly. Like, why are they making me fill this stuff out? This additional stuff is taken away from what we're trying to do, which is train high quality dogs and produce very good results for our clients. So for me, like I said, I kinda like to do like maybe a quarterly.

maybe every six months, right? And sometimes not even at all, except for annually, you know, depending on who my people are. But again, I'm having that conversation daily, right? Like there's not a day that goes by that I'm not talking to my staff at some point, right? And I'm talking not just business again, I'm personal stuff, I'm talking business, I'm talking professional development. Hey, what do you want to do, right? Now we offer a lot of stuff here at Triple Threak, and so like my staff get to dabble in a lot of different things, right? So we offer a lot of things that a lot of them are interested in. So it's nice.

But again, there's something that's like, man, I'm gonna go to this or I'm gonna check this out or I'm gonna do that, great. But again, we need to know those things. We need to know what their goals are. And again, that feedback is, again, like I said, I can't attest to having that feedback enough. But again, it doesn't always have to be formal. And it doesn't have to be constant. Just have conversation as feedback in itself. When you have a discussion, they're discussing back, dude, that's feedback. Informal, but it's still feedback.

Lianne Shinton (33:26)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Given (33:29)

I think what's really important. I'm sorry, ahead, Lee.

Lianne Shinton (33:30)

I like what you said. I was just going to say Sam, like

what you said that you're a leader for your clients. And I think that clients would love to fill out a feedback form, but us, we feel like sad inside if we don't get the perfect score, but they love it. So I think that sending out a feedback form to your clients could be a great thing to do for your clients and to help you become a better leader.

Triple (33:59)

Yeah,

so I kind of do something like that here, triple threat. So we have a form whenever I'm making contact with clients. And again, I do it sometimes informally, right? Via conversation. But I ask a lot of questions, right? I'm like, hey, what are you, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do with this dog? What's your end goal? What's the end game here? Right. And so again, it's all feedback, right? They're giving us that. So you're talking kind of post training feedback, which also is phenomenal, right? And that's a great thing to do also.

But I try to get that feedback from the start. Like Sam talked about, we are the leader in this dance, right? We are the person that's taken that dog from point A to point B. And we're not just dog trainers, we're human trainers as well. Like me and you talked to me in our last podcast, I train dogs maybe two, 3 % of the time. I'm training humans 97 to 98 % of the time, right? So, and at end of the day, that's really the big piece is making sure that we're getting them to their goals. But at the same time, we're getting their dogs to their goals as well, because we all have that clear communication together.

And that's beautiful thing.

Sam Given (34:59)

Yeah, you know, we're along those lines, especially from a leadership standpoint. I think Lee Ann, really, you kind of nailed this down is that feedback is uncomfortable. Okay. And there's no way for it not to be uncomfortable. But, and you heard me say it to conference when we were asking for people to fill out the feedback form for the conference. Don't tell me the stuff that did right. Tell me what we did wrong.

Lianne Shinton (35:20)

You did.

Sam Given (35:27)

Tell me everything that I'm doing correctly and giving me all floofy, ⁓ best thing I've ever seen, great, it means nothing because I can't build on those. What I need is what didn't go quite right. Where can we improve? So when we talk about feedback from our company standpoint and from me from a leadership standpoint, the feedback I'm really looking for is what can we grow and what can we build off of? And that starts in two aspects of leadership. First,

setting documented goals for your clients. So when you meet with your clients, one of the first things you should be doing with clients from a leadership standpoint is asking their goals. Okay, I have a 12 week old puppy. Well, is your goal to complete CGC, advanced CGC or urban CGC? Do you want a therapy dog? What is your goal?

And then we specifically build the program based on those goals. So now we can have identifying ⁓ timelines and marks that we can look at and go, okay, are we on track to achieve this goal? For your employees, it's exactly the same. If I want my employees to go out and bring in three clients a month, why I need to tell them that, hey, here's what we're looking for as a company standard. I'd like for you to be out marketing the company, marketing yourself.

and bringing in X number of new clients monthly. And we set that as a goal and then we give them feedback on what they can do to achieve those goals. And we work towards them. So I think that's really important. And you're right, getting the feedback is uncomfortable. But we have to get the feedback and we have to set those goals. If we don't set the goals, we can't hold people accountable. And that's as a good leader.

And when I say a good leader, I really mean exceptional leaders understand that we have to have uncomfortable conversations and we have to hold people accountable. And we have to maintain a standard, right? Because what happens a lot of times is, especially bigger companies, when you have 20, 30, 40 employees, every single one will have that one or two employees that aren't meeting standards. But

Triple (37:32)

Yes.

Sam Given (37:49)

They have a boss or a leader that's afraid to call them out on it and push them harder. What happens is that causes dissent in the other 98 % that are just outstanding employees. It's like, well, you get to come in 15 minutes late or they're leaving a little bit early or they're coming in from lunch 15 minutes late. Well, why am I here 15 minutes early saying 15 minutes late and shortening my lunch to get all my stuff done? Because obviously the boss doesn't care because they're not addressing with this individual. So

When we talk about leadership, especially in these small businesses, when you only have one, two, three employees, it is vital that you create a standard and hold people accountable to that standard. Because what happens if you don't, instead of having one employee that's not meeting the standards that get upset and leave, you're gonna run off your top people and they're gonna go somewhere else where everybody's holding that standard.

And that happens a lot.

Lianne Shinton (38:50)

Mm-hmm.

Triple (38:51)

Yeah, I agree 100 % with what Sam said. Their ⁓ accountability is huge. It's so huge. And again, a lot of people struggle with doing it. So something I find too when it comes to leadership, whether it be in the business world, military world, what have you, is a lot of people when it comes to the accountability side and being a leader, again, some people just don't want that responsibility. They can't handle that responsibility. So that's something that I think a lot of new trainers need to take into account before even trying to grow or start

getting bigger is like, Hey, am I built for this? Can I have those tough discussions? Like we talked to Liam before in the other podcast we did. ⁓ my, my one big thing I learned from a chief master sergeant early in my career in the military is he said, call an ugly baby ugly. And I kind of looked confused at him. said, what do you mean by that? he was like, we'll think about it when a baby's brand brand new and they're born. He's like, normally their faces all smashed, they're red. They got a little cone head, maybe whatever. They're not cute. They're ugly.

He said, so call it what it is. He's like, call an ugly baby ugly. I just kind of laughed about it. You know, I was like, that's a good way to put it, but he's basically saying call it you see it. Right. So again, you got to have those discussions in that conversation. Like Sam said, you'll definitely, I've seen it firsthand throughout my career. You'll have the high achievers that start falling off because they're like, why am I putting the extra effort? This guy over here is not doing nearly as much as I am. He's getting paid just the same as me. And then if that person's still getting accolades or, you know, accommodations or different things, then it's like.

man, like this clown's doing it? Well, why am I doing it, right? So it'll definitely degrade your morale across the board and morale is important too. So also note that like you need to also identify your top performers right and mark those behaviors as well, right? Just like we'd mark a good behavior on a dog, we need to reward certain things with our staff and ensure that they feel valued and they know they're my number one, they're my go-to, right?

And I'm going to put one of my right hand ladies on blast here in this video and it's not putting her on blast in a negative light, but she tells me all the time, right? As we know in dog training, people come into companies, they gain a little bit of skills, then they're like, I'm going to go start my own company now. I'm going to go do my own thing. I'm going to start my own business and off they go, right? She's told me numerous times, right? She's like, I have no business being a boss and I don't want to be a boss, right? She tells me probably at least once a week, I'll make a comment or I'll talk to a client or I'll say something.

Right. we deal with all kinds of things across the board. So like selling police dogs, for example, and dealing with departments and stuff should like it. And that's why you're the boss. Right. And that's why you're doing this, because she's like, I want no part of that. Right. She's very content working for me or a triple threat, which I love because again, she handles so much business for me and she's she's a phenomenal employee. And it's Emmy Hayes. She's at the conference. You guys got an opportunity to meet her. But, you know, she's she's been phenomenal. Right.

Sam Given (41:31)

Absolutely.

Triple (41:35)

But again, she is so dedicated to the company and she is so bought into our vision here Triple Threat. But she knows like, you are my right hand woman in this. You helped me a ton, right? You're a go getter, you're a hard charger, so I identify the good stuff as well as anything negative, right? So she also knows just as fast, so can have a discussion with her and be like, I need you to do this or hey, I didn't like this or hey, we need to fix this. And again, it's important to be able to have that flexibility as a leader too. Flexibility, communication, feedback, all some really strong stuff.

Lianne Shinton (42:04)

Could you, someone share on if an employee is late? I feel like we should address it and have that conversation very quickly because they're probably gonna do something great and then it's like, can't not do them now. So I'd like to hear maybe Sam, you could share of something actionable that I could do if I have someone that's doing something wrong, like say they're continuously.

late and we don't want to have bad morale within the team.

Sam Given (42:38)

So this is one of those things, and Brian hit on this when he was describing his vision of leadership, is having those informal conversations. And just on a daily basis. an example of this is what you're talking about can go two ways. One, I have a really highly motivated employee and all of a sudden they go from being highly motivated on time early to three, four days in a row late or their work slipping.

that's an indicator to me that there's something else going on in their life because we've had all these conversations, they have a track record of being really good, right? Because we've developed that relationship, I can go, wow, there's something in their personal life that's not quite right because we're developing bad behavior. And that's an opportunity where I would call them in one-on-one and sit down with them and say, and not even address any of the tardiness.

work performance or anything. I would start off with that, hey, just wanted to touch base with you, just notice some things weren't quite as good as they've been in the past. What's going on in your life? How's things at home? And just open up a dialogue. And you may find out that, maybe they're going through a divorce. They just had a car wreck. ⁓ They had a close family member that had a death or somebody who's sick in their family, or they got some bad news that health-wise they haven't shared with you yet.

all those things will take a good employee and cause their performance to start lacking. So that's scenario one, right? Now you also have an employee that maybe was just average to begin with, and all of sudden they're falling behind a little bit. They're not hitting their goals, they're coming in late. Maybe this is a different conversation because maybe I've already told them, hey, I really need you to be here on time. So there's a few things that...

we have to look at with an employee like that is first, I'm gonna throw a formula out there, I'm gonna go through some of these in a minute for everybody, this is the key where there's a concept that's called 10, 80, 10. 10 % of your employees will be low performers, 80 % of your employees will be standard, average, they're right there on the standards where you want them.

and you have 10 % of your employees that fall into that highly motivated exceptional range. As leaders, we wanna focus on the 80%. So maybe this person was in the 80 % and they started to slide back into that low 10%. Well, we've already had this conversation because typically we've mentioned it before is, why were you late last week? Or, hey, I got an email from clients saying you were 10 minutes late.

what's going on, because we've talked about this before and last week you told me, know, oh, it's traffic. I got a late start. I couldn't get the dogs back in the house, whatever, right? Whatever excuse that they have. That conversation with that employee is different. It's like, okay, first one, we talked about this. We didn't document anything, but hey, this is gonna be more of a formal counseling. I'm gonna send you an email before you acknowledge, but I need you to understand that.

When we say one o'clock, one o'clock means one o'clock, if there's continuing circumstances, you need to reach out to myself and to your client to let them know what's going on ahead of time, not after the fact. Now we're starting that paperwork trail, not necessarily to get rid of them, but to show performance. Because if we start developing, depending on your business model, if you're using 1099 Contractor as your employees, or if they're actually part of the company,

you may need that documentation for unemployment, workers comp, that whole realm. What happens with that type of employee, Lianne, is typically ⁓ they fall into this concept, it's called BCD, ⁓ which is blame, complain, and defend yourself. And we've all had those individuals we've worked with, that, the traffic was horrible. My wife had her car parked behind me, I couldn't get out.

you're blaming somebody else's for your performance. Then you have the person that's complaining about something. you just don't understand how busy I was. You keep me too busy. I had three dogs that day. Or they tried to defend their actions. Well, you don't understand. It wasn't my fault. ⁓ I was just so busy and the client knew and they're trying to defend whatever that action is.

Again, that conversation with that individual then is, okay, you're not taking accountability of your actions, so now we're going to take accountability for you. So that conversation is that point and direct, this is the second time we've talked about this, you need to be on time and we're going to document this counseling session so that you have documentation that you can refer back to to say, hey, here's my expectations. that answer the question you're asking?

at a long-winded.

Lianne Shinton (47:55)

Yes, definitely. That was excellent advice. One thing just to shift a little bit, because I really want to make sure we touch on this, because you have both mentioned the word vision, clear vision. Sam, you mentioned it multiple times, Brian as well. So I think that it's important for a dog training entrepreneur to have a clear vision statement, maybe. Maybe you could

Sam share on that.

Sam Given (48:28)

So not necessarily a vision statement. So when we talk about leadership, and we've probably all been through this at some point, you had CRM, know, resource management, had TQM, time quality management, that's morphed into Six Sigma, your green and black belts, whatever the other new one is.

And all these concepts on vision statements, mission statements and stuff have kind of blurred the line. When I talk about vision, the vision I'm talking about is being able for a leader to look at somebody that is on their team and say, hey, here's our vision. We want to be the most innovative canine training company in the state of Ohio. And we want to be collaborative with our peers.

We don't want to come, I want to say, be intimidated by others. We want to help everybody grow their business equally because Brian and I are literally just miles from each other, but we're not really in competition with each other. Even though we do a lot of the same stuff, we're not in competition with each other. I have clients that I will send to him. He has clients he'll send to me. That's okay. It's helping us both. But that vision is

We want to be the most innovative dog company in the state of Ohio. And we want to be collaborative. It's simple. It sticks in your mind and it's repetitive. So a good vision for your company, it has to be simple, repeatable, and easy to remember. I mean, that's kind of, for me, that is your leadership vision. Right?

Triple (50:15)

Yeah, I agree with Sam on that. So again, I'm going to go back to feedback and communication, right? So I will say some people get caught up if they're like super analytical sometimes about like or super visionary. ⁓ Like Sam even said, you got to keep it simple, right? Because I'm sure Sam could come up with something crazy extravagant that sounds super flashy and super fancy. But again, your lowest level people aren't necessarily going to buy into that. They're not necessarily going to care. They don't necessarily want to hear all that.

And that's where the feedback and communication comes back in, right? ⁓ Now, yeah, ideally have an admission statement or a vision statement or something like that. It adds more impact. Like, hey, this is what we're about. This is who we are. Like, I strive for myself on being a veteran-owned business, right? ⁓ And I have a certain standard as far as how we're going to operate, how we're going to look. Like, you guys saw us at the conference. Like, we're branded out with TDK9 stuff, right? We have all these things.

But again, when it comes to the feedback and the communication piece, again, like if I onboard somebody, if I hire somebody, we're gonna sit down day one and have a conversation. Now I'm not gonna be like, hey, this is our vision statement and this is how I wanna do things and yada yada yada, because some people again, may be off put by that. Like, oh wow, this guy's out there. This is just dog training, So I just have a conversation with them. Hey, this is how our company operates. I'm not necessarily gonna use the word visions.

a statement or mission statement or something like that, but I'm still going to put it out there to them. But again, in a simpler context, a simpler format, just having that conversation. Okay, this is where a company is about. Look, I'm a veteran owned, you small business. This is how I got my start. I kind of tell them about the company, how we got to where we are today. We have that discussion. Well, this is how we're moving forward. This is how we operate. This is how we function. Any questions on any of that? No? Cool, great. If they have questions, we're going sit and talk about that. I'm going make sure they understand how we do business here at TTK9. And again, the feedback.

That's part of the feedback forms as well. If you want, I can send you something on that too. But the feedback forms, and if anybody else is interested, they can reach out to me too, my email, is just triplethreadk9.gmail.com. But the feedback form itself, there's questions on there to ask them, hey, do you understand the vision of Triple Thread? Do you understand how we operate? We do business here. Do you understand? There's different questions on there that, again, they have to answer yes or no to.

Right and again that goes back to documentation also right? So when people have that documentation I have that. So let's say you're down the road. I'm having issues with the Napoleon and they're having issues in certain areas. I can go back and go hey you said right here that you understand it. You said right here that you know what's going on and you understand why we do things the way we do right? But again I can have a very informal conversation but it's still very formal in nature right? And again that's the ability to communicate. Like I said not everybody has that right? Because again if you don't like the conflict you don't like the face to face.

conversation. That's where feedback forms sometimes can come into play. But again, I like to do a do an initial right? No different than when I was in the military, soon as I got a brand new personnel assigned to me, right? We're sitting down, we're having that discussion. Here's the feedback. Here's my way ahead. Here's how I am as a leader. This is what I expect of you. This is what my company expects of you. And this is the way we're moving forward, you know, and do you understand all this, right? So I lay it all out to them very bluntly, very straightforward. But at the same time, like I said, I try not to get

For myself, I try not to get to like, my mission statement is this, my vision statement is this, right? I try to keep it a more simplistic approach, right? So the lowest level dog trainer, right? Because again, if I got a 19 year old kid, 18 year old kid, 20 year old kid, right? And I say kid, but you know, younger individual come to me, right? I start slapping stuff around like that. They're going to be like, man, that's crazy. What's this dude talking about? I just want to train dogs, right? So I try to, I try to again, pay attention to my audience, know the room, right?

Situational awareness situational leadership. got to know who I have sitting in front of me and just like Sam touched on earlier Some people you could be be very blunt black and white and call an ugly baby ugly All right other people maybe not so much All right, and you gotta you gotta kind of play that and same thing when you're talking about vision, right? Some people I could send tell them the mission statement. They're like, oh hell Yeah, they're gonna buy into it because it sounds awesome. All right, they're like that's a gangster I love it. All right, whereas other people may be like I just want to dogs, bro. So again, I think

The more you do it, the more you lead people, we're going to find how you can adapt. You've to be flexible, adapt, and overcome all things. But communication and feedback, again, if you've noticed, I've said there's a lot of stuff in my foot here. You've got to be able to have that conversation with everybody in many different capacities.

Sam Given (54:47)

So, when you're talking about developing your vision, your leadership vision, ⁓ Theodore Hesball, who is the president of the University of Notre Dame, he was very adamant about your vision. When you create your vision, it's got to be a vision you can articulate clearly, forcefully, and on every occasion. So, when people start to talk about their leadership vision as to where they want their company to go,

it has to be able to meet those three criteria's. You know, can you articulate it clearly? Can you do it forcefully? And can you talk about it on every occasion? And we do that with our company is we always talk about the professionalism, our vision to innovate, our vision to be a leader in the industry. The other thing that this is from Barry Posner is there's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing. And

that's part of that company vision, the leadership vision. You have to be able to explain to someone goes, why are you doing this? You need to have a very clear agenda and goal as to why you're doing it. Because if not, people are like, well, you're making me do this, but you can't even tell me why. So as leaders, we really need to be able to look at that and clearly,

explain those two things. ⁓ When we talk about the fundamentals of your leadership vision, what we talk about is ⁓ organizational directions and purpose. What's the purpose and direction of your goal or I'm sorry, your company or your organization? ⁓ It should aim to inspire people, ⁓ directly reflects the ⁓ unique strengths of your organization, your culture, your values, your beliefs.

And then inspire enthusiasm and belief, commitment and ⁓ excitement of members is really what you're trying to do with that vision. And when we tell people we want to be innovative and we want to be leaders, people buy into that immediately because they really think, I want to be part of a company that wants to be innovative, that we're not just following. So I think that's important. And then the last thing I'll leave you with on this vision statement.

And this is really important to me, and this is from Benjamin Franklin, probably one of the best quotes I've heard in a long time. Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn. So when we're talking to our employees or we're a new trainer and we're working with clients, maybe we have another trainer working with us, telling them isn't important. Teaching them is great, but they're a struggle.

Involve them in the process. Let them learn on their own. It's kind of like free shaping when we're training a canine If I can take that dog and I can free shape them That dog is learning that behavior on their own and it is repetitive and it is deep memory muscle muscle memory versus They're just remembering the word so Think about you know your vision and your structure of your company

involve your employees, involve your trainers, involve your clients in the process, because then they're really going to truly learn versus just that repetitive memory. And then the last one is leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. So I'll use our personal story for us.

is we talk about being professional and innovating and trying to be a leader in industry. That's where the concept of the Pet Trainer training seminar came from. As being the first one to do it, the first one is to try. We're being innovative. We're translating our vision into reality. We took that vision and made it come true. And I think that's where our...

young business owners need to really think about what's my vision and what steps do have to do to make that vision come true.

Lianne Shinton (59:10)

Awesome. So we are at an hour and I feel like we have to have a part two because I have questions. One big takeaway for me was the colors. I think diving deeper on the colors would be fun and you know that self-reflection that maybe people need and I think

Triple (59:19)

Thank

Lianne Shinton (59:35)

One conversation I'd like to have to put on hold for now, but maybe on part two is if you have staff that are burned out and you're trying to motivate them and you're trying, know, were they ever on fire to begin with? Is it better to start with new staff? you know, those are things that some of the trainers that I speak with, you know, they deal with. So ⁓ maybe I can come up with some other questions that the

people have and we can talk about it next time.

Triple (1:00:07)

I was going say maybe if you put out a little something on your socials events, say, what's some questions that you guys have? Let's have that discussion. Because you put it out like, hey, what's some stuff you're experiencing within your company? And then we'd be able to sit down, have that discussion, and talk through it for sure.

Lianne Shinton (1:00:14)

Yeah.

Sam Given (1:00:22)

There's one last concept I want to leave for everybody. Actually, I'm going to leave you with two things and I'm going to go through these really slow so people can write them down if they want. Is we get overwhelmed with trying, overwhelmed with negative outcomes. And it doesn't matter if it's a negative outcome with our training program, with a client or employees, right? There's a concept that was put out there by Urban Meyer. It's from his book Above the Line.

and I've used it for years and it really helps me as a leader compose myself before I do anything. And it's the concept of E plus R equals O. And what that means is the event plus a response equals the outcome. And the reality of it is as an individual, as a leader, I can only influence one of those directly.

and that's my response. The only thing I have control over is my personal response as a leader. But if I can take that event and my response can dictate the outcome based on if it's going to end up being negative or positive. If you have an event with an employee and it's something, you know, they're late, whatever.

If we can have a measured response to that, we can turn that into a positive outcome. But if we go in there and we're just blasting away, then it's gonna be a negative outcome. So as leaders, measure your response, because that's the only thing that you truly have control over. You don't have control over events, but you do have control over how you respond to things. The other one is what we call or. ⁓

Accountability, I'm Yeah. Accountability, respect, and opportunities. So opportunity, accountability, respect. And if we, as leaders, look at do we have opportunities to grow? Do we have opportunities to develop? Do we have opportunities to bring someone else new one? We need to capitalize on that. Accountability, we have to make sure

that we're holding our individual clients, we're holding our trainers accountable for their actions. And this is important for our new trainers. How many times do they give a client homework? Or it's like, okay, we're working this week on sits, so I want you to practice next week on your sits and stays. But we don't formalize that process. And then the dog's not doing what we want to do. Well, who's accountable for that? Is it the owner that's?

not following through with the homework or is there a trainer that didn't write down specifically what we wanted them to do? So we have to take accountability of the things that we can control. And then the respect piece of that is respecting our clients, respecting our employees where they're at, what's going on in their lives. And this goes back to what Brian was talking about with knowing your people is if you really truly understand your people and you have open conversations with them routinely.

you can develop that respect with them where if there's something going wrong, they're going to come to you. Or if there's something happening that you need to address with you, they're not going to take it as a negative. And those two concepts are extremely important to leadership. And I tell people all the time is if you can just do these little tiny basic things, you will grow as a leader rapidly because leadership is not, I don't want to say it's not exponential.

Lianne Shinton (1:03:51)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Given (1:04:18)

Leadership is a roller coaster. You're going to have somewhere you're less you're on fire as leader and then three days later You're like man. I'm at the bottom of the valley. I got to climb out of this hole But if you can take these concepts and you can build on them slowly every single day Then you don't have those deep valleys. You're not coming down the roller coaster. quite as fast or far

Lianne Shinton (1:04:40)

out.

Triple (1:04:45)

Yeah, big thing is a big thing. A leader is a leader. For sure. One thing I learned in my career too.

set up a retirement ceremony for a very well-known K-9 individual in the military. during his speech, he said something that kind of resonated with me. said, you know, he's like, wear two names on my chest. One says United States Air Force. The other was his last name, guy named Brett Sanders. And what Brett said after that kind of resonated with me. He said, you know, at end of the day, 10 years from now, nobody's going to remember shit I did in the military. Nobody's going to give a shit about what program I ran or how I did it or what I did. He's like, what they're going to remember is how I treated people.

how I took care of my people and how I led from the front. He's like, that's the only thing people are gonna remember about me. They're not gonna remember what program I ran, how good things were. Nobody cares. The Air Force doesn't care the second you're done, So same thing on our company. Down the road, when it's time for everybody to retire, hang it up, right? Like, what do you wanna be remembered for? Do you wanna be remembered as that boss that led with that heavy hand or you wanna be known as the guy that's so careless, people built something great, right? And everybody wanted to truly be part of it.

And as you know, I always talk about the TTK9 pack, right? That's not just our clients. That's not just our dogs. That's not just our staff. That's everybody as a whole. All right. So our TTK9 pack, right? I got to take care of everybody being the leader of my company ⁓ from start to finish. Right. So that's my clients. That's my family. That's my employees. That's all the dogs under our care. That's my personal pack. Right. Everybody as a whole, my employees, families. All right. So I take that role very seriously in the leadership.

capacity and like I said, I can't stress that enough. Know your people, take care of your people. That's my biggest takeaway.

Lianne Shinton (1:06:27)

Wow, both very powerful. The things you've shared. think the big takeaways from all of that is, know, take care of yourself, take care of your staff, take care of the dogs, take care of your clients. So with that, yep. Yep. Well said. Awesome. Is there anything that anyone else would like to share before we wrap up?

Triple (1:06:44)

You do all that and they'll take care of you.

Sam Given (1:06:56)

I think we're good.

Lianne Shinton (1:06:58)

Moving into part two, I think.

Triple (1:07:01)

Yeah, for sure. You always know them down. Yeah, yeah, it's a never evolving nonstop process for sure.

Sam Given (1:07:02)

Leadership is ongoing.

Lianne Shinton (1:07:02)

Okay.

Yes. Yeah. ⁓

Sam Given (1:07:09)

And then if, ⁓ I'm sorry, Lianne, if anybody's interested, if anybody wants to reach out to me direct to get any of the slide information or anything, I'm more than happy to share with them. It's samprofessionalk9 at Gmail, very simple. And then obviously you can go on our website, you can find us at www.professional-k9.

⁓ And then our social medias are professional letter K9 for both Instagram and Facebook. So reach out to us if you want any of this information in slide form, more than happy to give it out.

Triple (1:07:48)

And yeah, from my end, I was freestyling most of this over here. So I had a couple of notes over here as far as some of my leadership traits that I know I personally mirror. But same thing, yeah. As far as the feedback forums go and stuff like that, everybody's interested, it's tripplethreatk9.gmail.com. Website's tripplethreatk-9, so letter K-9.com. All of our social medias are at tripplethreatk9.

Lianne Shinton (1:08:13)

Thank you. Thank you both. I think like for automation docs, we actually have a master class for all of our clients, where we have like a monthly get together webinar. And I would love if both of you would join to have maybe a leadership master class for my clients. We can share the slides too, because I think you've got some great visuals there too. That would be incredible.

Triple (1:08:32)

Absolutely.

Sam Given (1:08:34)

Sure.

Triple (1:08:35)

Shout out to

Leigh Ann and her staff. just got on Automation Dogs. I'm a client with them now as well. So looking forward to having the program and getting it working and rolling for us. I just had my onboard first call yesterday.

Sam Given (1:08:49)

Nice.

Lianne Shinton (1:08:49)

Awesome,

thank you, Brian. Well, thank you, Sam, and thank you, Brian, and thank you to our listeners. If you enjoyed the conversation and you wanna hear more, be sure to like, subscribe, follow so that you'll see the part two when it comes out, because I think we're gonna go ahead and get that scheduled for sure. Awesome, well, thanks everybody.

Triple (1:08:51)

Yeah,

Sam Given (1:09:14)

Thanks again.

Triple (1:09:15)

Thank you.