Lianne Shinton (00:01)

Hey everybody and welcome. I'm Lianne Shinton from Automation Dogs. Welcome to my podcast. I commonly speak with professionals that are here to help other dog trainers like myself and my clients. And I love having Tyler Muto on. Welcome Tyler. Awesome to have you. Tyler's life mission is to help dog trainers. And every time I've had him on my podcast, you know,

Tyler Muto (00:21)

Hey, good to be back.

Lianne Shinton (00:31)

It's he doesn't gatekeep. He is here to help so I'm very excited about this conversation because you know, we're gonna break down some things that we see on the Dog trainer business side how you guys are running your businesses and some of the good things we see some of the things that we see that are maybe mistakes that you could stay ahead of and Yeah, we're gonna get into some good good stuff

With the motto of my favorite motto of the kiss method of keep it simple. Sometimes, you know, we skip over the foundation and the basics, just like with dogs, you know, if you don't have a good foundation, it's not going to go well. So I think last time we talked, you know, you mentioned we talked about reactivity and we talked about the toolbox and how a star trainers have this toolbox of tools.

for training dogs. But then we started to talk about, we actually have a toolbox for running our business too. So that's, I think, a good topic for today.

Tyler Muto (01:37)

Absolutely. Yeah, you know, it was funny. I was I was at dinner last night out of friend's house, ⁓ non dog trainer friend and ⁓ it's always super hard for me when people like want to know more about what I do for a living because it's like, how do I explain this right? And kind of the way I put it was like, I'm like a Swiss Army knife for my clients. But I think kind of to your point, I think if you are a

dog training entrepreneur, whether you're just a solo practitioner, like you're a solopreneur, or if you have a few employees, ⁓ you also have to be a little bit of a Swiss army knife. mean, you can't just be good at dog training. You also have to know a little bit about marketing, a little bit about sales, a little bit about customer service, or possibly even HR, if you have employees and facilities management. Like they're all different things that come up. ⁓

which is why I love doing what I do these days, working with dog trainers, because I've got, had so much experience in the industry, you know, from the institutional level on down that I love being able to share and help. And when I was just, when I was running my center and I was working with the pet dog owners is like, okay, cool. can like teach them a little bit about dog training, but it's still only very surface level. And I have like all this other stuff that I love teaching about that I like never got to talk about when I was doing that primarily. So, ⁓

Yeah, you got to have that toolbox and I'm with you 100%. It's the basic stuff that gets missed because everybody's looking for something fancy that they think is going to be like this magical missing link, whether it's in their training or in their businesses that are going to solve all their problems. you know, you can hire all the SEO experts and, know, somebody to run your Facebook ads and all you can do all that stuff you want to. But if you don't have the fundamental stuff, right, it's really not going to make that much of a difference.

Lianne Shinton (03:28)

And also if you don't know what you're supposed to inspect from your ad guy who's building this funnel, if you don't have an idea of what the word funnel means, you have to learn that as a business. We have to know what SEO means and optimization means, and we have to just watch some videos and chat GPT it and figure it out. And a lot of times it's on the fly, but it is so important. And I think as dog trainers, we lean so much into like

learning about behavior and my gosh this is so exciting to learn about this it's so exciting but this other part can be very exciting too because it enables you to pay your staff and create a lifestyle for yourself and be able to help more people so the business side can be kind of fun too.

Tyler Muto (04:17)

Yeah.

You know, I love that you just mentioned about like learning the lingo, even if you're going to work with somebody. ⁓ it's, it's so, I, know, what made me realize the importance of that more than anything is I had a side business project I was working on that I needed somebody to do some coding for me. And if you know anything about coding, it's like the, it's a very specific language. Things have to be described in a certain way. And so

I would like send an email to my guy. was outsourcing it to somebody overseas, right? Where English isn't even his first language. And I, okay, this is what I need. And he'd give me back something. And I'd be like, this is not at all what I was hoping for. But he's like, no, like this is what you said. That's what I code. And I'm like, my God, you guys are so literal and everything needs to follow a certain logical framework. So I actually went and I downloaded an app to teach me C sharp, which was the coding language we were using.

And then I got the like C sharp for dummies book. And I actually went through some basic lessons on coding and like, and I was like, okay, now I understand. And then I was able to like tell him really accurately and really specifically what I needed. And then that really, it did it bled into my dog training business where I was like, okay, yeah. Like if I'm going to tell my website guy something like, I want to know the lingo, like when he says a widget, like I want to know what the heck that means and what he's talking about.

And you do, you have to, it's the hard part about being a business owner in this industry is you, you don't have to be an absolute expert on so many different things, but you do have to have some base knowledge of a lot of different fields. And if you just have sort of like a normal job, if you're not the business owner, you don't have to do that. Like you, like sometimes I would envy my dog trainer staff that they just got to like show up and like just train dogs.

And that was a very enviable thing for me at some points. Of course, my position came with certain advantages as well. Like I'm not going to pretend that I was not in a very privileged position being the business owner. But there is something nice about that idea. I haven't had a regular job in my like entire adult life. So the idea of just like only having to know one skill set is like, oh my God, I can't even imagine. But it's important. It's important to take the time and do that research and educate yourself and

Lianne Shinton (06:11)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tyler Muto (06:41)

It gets missed in this industry a lot. does.

Lianne Shinton (06:43)

Yeah. And there's a couple of things that I think we should talk about today with the keep it simple model in, in mind. And I think the first one that comes to mind is inspecting what you are putting out there in the world and what that brand looks like and that it's working. I look at people's Google, my business profiles, and it's like, you're closed. What's going on here? You're closed or the, it's just not working or the phone number.

it's not there or the phone number doesn't work, your website, just look at what the client experience, the leads experience and that lack of professionalism, know, they're checking boxes off going, this might not be the right fit for me if they don't have a website or I can't figure out how to reach them from their website.

Tyler Muto (07:14)

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Or like, I think a very simple thing, like along that line is, ⁓ so what, like, okay, this has been out, like, so as a dog trainer, you know how, ⁓ like you'll get like a certain breed and then it's like, you'll just get like 10 of that breed in a row. Like you're like all of a sudden as a, as a dog trainer, like coach, I, the same thing happens. And so lately, ⁓ it's been like website issues. Like I've just had all of these clients that have website issues.

And one of the earliest things I look at and I always ask them is I just say, you know, okay, let's pretend that I'm a customer. I've, I've, I've found you somehow. got to your website somehow. Let's pretend that the homepage looks great to me. Sometimes we have to really pretend there cause it doesn't look great to me, but let's pretend it looks great to me and that I'm like, yes, I want to do this. You know, what's my next step?

Like where I D how ideally would you want me to proceed if I'm ready to engage with you? And it's amazing to me a like how many people actually haven't really thought that through. Like if they hesitate on that question, a flag goes up in my mind because that should be something that you know, like 100 % like for me in my business, it was, want them to fill out my contact form. That was always our thing.

And there was reasons for that. And that's not the right answer for everybody, but we had reasons that that was the right answer for us. ⁓ but I could answer that question instantly, but even if they have the answer, then we want to say, okay, cool. How clear is that to me? If I'm this client, regardless of what page I'm on, do I know that that's the next step? And are you making that step easy for me?

Lianne Shinton (09:24)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (09:24)

I mean, that's

one of the main jobs of your website is to be, it's fits a certain, it's, it's set, it sits in a certain part of that customer journey, right? From them discovering who you are to, you know, money going from their pocket into yours. And your website sits in a certain spot there. And what's the thing that comes after it. And the website's job is to make the highest probability that the people do that next thing.

Lianne Shinton (09:52)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (09:53)

And I've seen so many sites where it's like, okay, you want them to set up a free console, but like, where's the button for it? What's how does that process work? What is it? And if it's not clear, and if it's not easy, you're like, literally, it's like dropping money on the ground. I mean, it's and you know, we were talking about this briefly before we started about, I think sometimes dog trainers don't realize how much this kind of stuff can compound. Like, even if that's just like one customer a month.

Lianne Shinton (10:09)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (10:22)

that maybe would have signed up, but it got a little frustrating or they weren't clear as they went, well, you know what, since I'm not really sure what to do now, let me just take a moment and go to the next thing on Google and just see what they're all about anyway. And maybe they were about, they would have very impulsively set up that call or that consultation or whatever it is. But because there was a moment of friction, it gave them that moment to go, well, maybe I should look at a couple other businesses too. And if that even happens once a month,

And if that person would have signed up for a board and train, I mean, that's for the average dog trainer. That's like a three to $4,000 program, you know? Okay. Times 12. That's $40,000 at the end of the year, just because you didn't think through what you want that step to be $40,000. That's insanity. And people just don't realize how sometimes such small, simple changes

can lead to these massive, massive outcomes at the end of the year. And that's the kind of stuff I love doing with trainers. And I know that you do too, when you're consulting with the businesses that you work with.

Lianne Shinton (11:31)

Yeah, I actually have a little story this morning. I was doom scrolling on Facebook and this video came up and it's the funnel where, you know, I watched the video. like, this is, this is me. He's talking about me click to learn more. So I clicked to learn more. And there was, you know, I think another video and there was a calendar, the form to calendar. And I had to fill out the form three.

times. But I was determined because that video was so good. But at this time, ⁓ I'm losing. ⁓ I'm thinking I get it. I do tech. I know there can be mistakes. So I'm going to persevere and fill out this damn form three times. Finally, I got it booked. I was able to book for today. And I was like, that's powerful. They're they're speaking to my pain. They're able to solve this today for me. I love it.

And I think that is important for dog trainers to be available. However, I then got a message that they had to cancel because they didn't feel good. it was just after the forum situation and then canceling on me, I'm like, whoa, sometimes we just get in our own way and not show up for something. So there was a lot to unpack in that experience that I had today. I rescheduled though, because that

Tyler Muto (12:47)

Mm-hmm.

Lianne Shinton (12:55)

freaking first video was so impactful to me. So good. I'm like, maybe I just got put with this guy and I just got to get up to the next guy. But I'm willing to see this through now. I'm kind of curious.

Tyler Muto (12:57)

video was so good.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you know, actually we had, we had almost the, don't want to go through like a gripe fest of things, but, uh, I have kids, I have two kids. And for anybody that has kids, you can probably relate that finding like camps for the summertime that they actually enjoy and don't complain about is like a nightmare. Um, it's really hard. They're also very expensive. And then here where I live, it's extremely competitive to get in.

And then they always do these dumb things where, so my kids preferred camp, the registration opened at midnight last night. And the thing about these is like, if you are, you've got, you've got like five minutes to get your kids registered and they are full. So my poor wife stayed up till midnight to do this. And the way this camp works is for every day, there's a morning session and an afternoon session. goes week by week. It's like classes. So you pick a morning class and an afternoon class.

They had an error in the way that they set up their classes where the morning ones, instead of saying they went from, you know, 8 a.m. to 1130 a.m., it accidentally said 1130 p.m. And so you could not register for both morning and afternoon on any of the weeks because it would have said that there was an overlap that you could, can't be in two classes at the same time. So there's like literally hundreds of parents.

on the Facebook group at like one in the morning going like, what is going on? I can't get my kids in. It's not accepting my credit card and da da da da da. And then of course they got back today and they were like, Hey, you know, we, we recognize we had this problem where we're fixing it. We're going to reopen registration. Now this is a very, very small operation that, know, these are like, I'm not going to go into it, but regardless, it was just like, just like, you know, double check, right? Like measure twice, cut once, especially when you know, something is this competitive.

And you've got parents that are going to stay up till midnight. And so it's kind of like the experience that you had with that form. It's like, man, you're going to, they probably were paying for, for advertising, right? So like you're pouring money into this advertising and then the form doesn't work. Like that's just craziness, right?

Lianne Shinton (15:14)

Yeah.

It's

just hemorrhaging money because you're paying for that ad. For sure it was a paid ad and you're just leaking money because I'm probably one of the only people who's curious enough at this point to see what just happens next. This is such a shit show. But most people would be, I'm out. This is, I'm out. So making things easy is one of the things you mentioned. Make it easy and test, test and double check.

Tyler Muto (15:35)

Yeah, yeah.

Lianne Shinton (15:49)

what you're putting out there.

Tyler Muto (15:52)

Yeah, I really like, I think especially websites like, and it can be hard, I think, as a business owner, sometimes to look at your own website and see it from like the potential customer perspective. To me, I almost relate it to like, if you're a dog trainer and your own personal dog has a behavior problem, sometimes it's harder to think through what you need to do versus when it's just like a client dog, you're somebody else's dog.

And I know for myself, sometimes with my own personal dogs, would call dog trainer friends of mine and be like, Hey, let me just balance this off of you really quick. And think that's why it is super helpful not to like this. Obviously we're not trying to just like podcast, be like, this is why you should hire us. like, it's why like sometimes having a coach is really valuable because I was on a call with somebody yesterday and, ⁓ it was a potential new client or no, it was a first lesson with a, with first session with a new client and we were doing website stuff and.

I'm like, yeah, so like, there's this thing, there's this thing, there's this thing. And they're like, my God, I never even noticed that. I'm like, yeah, I noticed it the first 15 seconds. I looked at your website, you know, a because I look at tons of dog trainer websites, but also I'm viewing this from an outside perspective. I go, I want to go through the process and like, if I'm a customer, how does this feel? Is it giving me the information that I want? Is it easy for me to sort of navigate through and know where to go from here? ⁓

because if you, if you, there's any little friction points in there, any little speed bumps, again, you're not going to lose everybody, but losing, if you're a, if you're a solo entrepreneur losing even one, one sale a month due to something super preventable like that is tens of thousands of dollars at the end of the year. And if you are a sold, like that's your mortgage payment, you know, like that is

That's a lot of money for somebody. You know, if you run a huge facility, okay, $10,000 maybe isn't that big of a deal when you're doing, you know, a million dollars in revenue a year. But a lot of the dog trainers I work with are startups. You know, they're, we're working on getting them to break that six figure mark. For those folks losing $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 is it's that's massive. mean, that's like game changing money for them.

Lianne Shinton (18:10)

Yeah, absolutely. mean, that's paying to feed your family, paying a car payment, it's paying your staff, it's buying new kennels. So really looking at, hey, maybe that contact form came in or that phone call came in and it's sitting there. And every minute that is ticking by, they're losing trust in you. And

that stays with them. Even if you call them back and you know, they're still going to remember, hmm, can I trust them to do this big board and train where I pay $5,000? Can I give them that much money or should I just play it safe and maybe let's just, yeah.

Tyler Muto (18:52)

can I leave my dog with them if I'm

not gonna hear back from them in two days when I email for an update? You know? Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (18:59)

Yeah. Yeah.

So trust, you want to establish that trust right out of the gate and respond quickly. If you can't, we, I mean, we're in a podcast right now. I can't be responding to somebody. That's where we have automation in place. ⁓ you mentioned earlier too, on the website, it's as they kind of move through and they're like, okay, let's do it. What's the call to action? What is that CTA? What's the call to action that you want them to choose? And

For me, it's to book a strategy session with me. I have a form that you'd fill out on my website, and then it goes into my calendar. The first form, I'm just capturing your name, your email, and your phone number. And then if you don't book within five minutes, I'm gonna be calling you. My automation's firing off. I want you to see that I am here for you, and hey, are there any questions I can answer to help you finish getting booked?

Tyler Muto (19:32)

Mm-hmm.

Lianne Shinton (19:56)

So that's my process. So like you said earlier, when you ask someone, like, what's that look like? What's that process? I know what that's supposed to look like and what happens. It's like choose your own adventure. If you only do this, this happens. So having that process in place is so important.

Tyler Muto (20:15)

Yeah. And you know, mean, I, I come from an era, like I come from the dinosaur era of dog training, right? Like before we had software and before, you know, we were doing all of our scheduling on a Google calendar and things like that. so, you know, there were like, my, we were, we were flying, you know, during the 20 teens, we had so much business coming in and, um, you know, we'd get, we'd come in off the weekend and we'd have all these contact forms and

Lianne Shinton (20:42)

yeah.

Tyler Muto (20:43)

they were hard to get to. And so, you know, even if you're not in a position to, you know, get software to run automations for you, for us, it was as simple as when somebody submitted the form, they got a reply that said, hey, you know, our main focus is always taking care of the dogs that are here and the people whose dogs are here. So please allow 24 to 48 hours for us to respond to this form.

And then those people go like, okay, cool. Like that checks. Like I like the fact that they're prioritizing the existing customers over the sale. And, in this industry that, that, that can work, right? Cause that people, again, they want to trust you with their dog. I do think it's better if you can reply sooner. We implemented other things like as time went on so that we could ⁓ kind of deal with that, that jam up of contacts.

⁓ even again, even before the ability to do automations, there were other steps that we took, but, we found that, you know, yeah, we would, you know, we would lose the occasional person who heard back from another dog trainer sooner. ⁓ but of course that's a problem that we were having because we had so many contacts coming in that it was okay. Cause we are, our demand exceeded our available supply anyhow. ⁓ but if you are in a position, if you're not in that position,

Right? Where you've got still some empty spot on your calendar. You kind of have no excuses. You know, you really need to, we mean, were booking four or five weeks out. So we're like, we're okay. You know, like if we lost a client, like we were at, we were operating at capacity already. ⁓ but for those people that are starting up, you need to be thinking about this stuff a lot, cause you need to pick up every dollar that's on the floor. Like you cannot, you cannot lose customers when you're trying to get your business up and off the ground.

Lianne Shinton (22:31)

And it's such a good feeling to like, you you get a contact form or you get someone booked on your calendar and get them moving along in that process and you're the right fit. And it's just so exciting. It's interesting though, to hear other perspectives. I posted on one of the Facebook dog training groups and just talking about how followup is so important that people don't convert and like,

80 % of people don't convert until after like the sixth to eighth follow up, like crazy stuff like that. And someone posted that they initially thought, Hey, maybe this just isn't a good fit for me. I don't want to work with that person. If I need to follow up with them like six to eight times, you know, in their mind that, you know, was like, are they really going to be able to follow my instructions? The dog, like I hadn't considered it from that perspective. And I was like, that's very interesting. But a few other dog trainers chimed in and they're like,

I've been working this lead for five weeks and I just closed them today and it's the most awesome client blah blah blah. He's like, ⁓ okay. I guess I'll try that.

Tyler Muto (23:34)

Yeah, for sure. you know, I mean, think there is some truth to that at some points in time. So for instance, ⁓ we have some mutual clients, we have several mutual clients. ⁓ And I was talking to one of them the other day about their contact form on their website. And I made some suggestions and he was like, well, I was talking to Leanne and she really wants me to make sure I don't have too much stuff on there.

because again, we don't want to add too much friction. We'd want, if somebody just wants to book in, like let's let them book in nice and quick and easy. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that totally tracks that completely checks. ⁓ and you want to be mindful about that. and gosh, where was I going this? Well, let me, I'll take it where I think I was going. So, so, you know, again, like depending on where you're at in your business, like we actually had a period where, ⁓ we, we deliberately put that friction there.

So that was one of our ways of dealing with that, where we would get bottlenecked with contacts. And then sometimes the ones that, because of just the time they came in, we don't get to until the second day was actually one of the more ideal customers. And we lost them because it took us two days and they found somebody else. So what we did was we made it a little bit harder so that only kind of the people that were sort of more committed. And also by the time they went through that process, they had already invested. There's that like sunken cost.

theory, right? They'd already invested some time in. So we, ended up reducing the number of leads, but the leads that were left were the higher quality ones, right? So there is some truth to that whole thing of like, man, if I got to work this lead so hard, are they the best clients? Are they the most likely people to follow through and get those good results and whatnot? But that being said, like, again, I'm talking about a period in time where a, my business was at its height.

It was like a zero interest rate climate. Money was basically raining from the sky. If you're a dog trainer, ⁓ very different than today. And I've had clients where, ⁓ I think last year of a young woman I was working with, who she started her business during that more abundant period in economics, right? Where things were just a little bit easier flowing and

She loved being really picky about her clients. She wanted to be very selective about who she worked with. But now it was 2023, let's say, sometime around then. Inflation's gone high, everybody's tightening their belts. It's just a very different environment. And she contacted me because she's like, man, I'm kind of going month to month here with my mortgage and this and that.

And so I'm talking to her and she's like, I'm giving some suggestions. Like, yeah, but I, you know, I really want to be picky about who I work with. was like, you're not in a position right now to be that picky. Like all these things that you set up in place during a completely different economic situation, during a period of abundance, like we're now in a period of scarcity. And yeah, so maybe some of those people that took those five automated followups, you know,

aren't the highest quality.

If you're trying to grow your business, like at a certain point, like money's Mike, if you worked for me and you were like, well, I didn't, I didn't make that sale because they just didn't, they weren't like the highest quality client. like, you're fired. You're fired. Cause right now we're struggling to pay our mortgage right now. And you're being picky about what's it like. No, you're fired. I'm sorry. You know, so, yeah, there's some truth sometimes to that, but

You got to look honestly at yourself in the mirror and like, am I in a position right now that I need to be carrying about whether this is like the absolute ideal client for me or not? Or am I like, I've got kids and a mortgage and mouths to feed and I'm trying to grow a business here and I'll make it work with whatever clients that come to me. ⁓ Obviously there's going to be some lines in the sand, right? ⁓

But something as silly as like making an assumption that if they're if it takes three extra emails or if they're, you know, not willing to fill out a longer form. So, for instance, when I sold my business and the economy was different, I suggested to the guy that bought my business like, you might want to some of the stuff that we had on there like right now, not as appropriate. Like you're going to want to loosen this process up because things are economically things are tighter right now.

Lianne Shinton (27:58)

Yeah.

That is such a powerful message. And I think we sometimes get into that. Not really warming up the lead more trying to pre-qualify people and make sure they're the right fit. Like sometimes it's not about that we're doing well or we're not doing well. It's just like we're triggered and we're like, this is not a good fit for me. They have, ⁓ you know, two sibling puppies and this isn't my jam. I remember.

Tyler Muto (28:17)

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's okay.

As a dog trainer, like I've got a, I've got a colleague that hates separation anxiety cases. She refers them all out. That's fine. A lot of people don't want to do serious aggression. Like that's fine. ⁓ but like, especially with something where like, like your software can automate all of those, nurturing emails and follow-up emails. It's like, that's a, I don't know. It's like, it just seems like a silly thing to like, let some clients slip through your fingers because you make an assumption that if it takes a few extra emails.

that they may not be ideal of a person. They may not follow through with their homework. It's like, I don't know. That just seems like, again, a lot of money being left on the table.

Lianne Shinton (29:12)

Yeah, it's like you have to do a mindset shift. And I've been there myself where I got on the phone with somebody and she sounded like really older and had these two German Shepherd puppies and they were brothers. And just so many things are like checking all the boxes of like, this is gonna be bad, older and can't really work the E-collar, two German Shepherd puppies, her skin's gonna be bleeding. Like I'm just super triggered, but I persevered.

booked her for a sales call, warmed her up, her for a sales call and sold her. I mean, this ended up being one of the most amazing clients. She just had kind of a smoker's voice. The dogs were so sissy wonderful. They flirty helped like raise these dogs. She had three dogs ended up going over and helping because she ended up one day getting sick and I had to pick up the dogs like just an amazing client. And I could have let all that go because

she sounded older and had two sibling German Shepherd puppies and I was a bit triggered.

Tyler Muto (30:14)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. We do have to check ourselves sometimes. Yeah. And again, like, you got to just recognize like, do I right now? Do I have the privilege of being this picky? You know,

Lianne Shinton (30:17)

Got to check ourselves sometimes.

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (30:31)

Sometimes you don't. It's just reality.

Lianne Shinton (30:34)

Yeah. And even at the time, like we were doing well, but like to let that amazing clients slip through, would have been like life changing for me. You know, it was, it was very impactful client for me. So, and they, know, one that really sticks with you, but that's where yeah, automation and AI can be really helpful. If someone messages and says, you know, I just, I want my dog to be a bit more skittish. He's too friendly. I'm afraid someone might steal him.

Tyler Muto (30:45)

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (31:01)

That might take me 15 minutes to reply to because I'm now going down this rabbit hole of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, But you know, the AI is like, I get it. You want to be a little bit more reserved, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, this is an adorable conversation. I love it. And the AI isn't biased.

Tyler Muto (31:21)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can. Yeah. I think we talked about this a little bit, not on the podcast, but just between you and I about just some of the dog trainer hesitancy around AI. A lot of people are, I don't know if scared is the right term, but there's this hesitancy to like lean into it. I lean into it hard. I mean, and I want my employee, you know, my assistant who helps me out. I want her leaning into it because

I mean, there's a reason that it's like this game changing kind of thing in our economy right now. And again, it can really help you like we talked about how as a solopreneur, you have to wear all these different hats. And so like how to reply in a certain type of tone to a certain type of client email, that's a skill set. And it may not be a skill set that you're an absolute expert as a dog trainer, but using something like AI can really help to bridge that gap for you. And, and you know,

It can can help you ultimately learn where you don't have to lean on it as much. But even if you do, like I think that's perfectly OK. It's like having an extra set of hands around.

Lianne Shinton (32:31)

Yes, yes. And this is a common question I get asked because I lean into AI a lot. ⁓ I started with ChatGPT, just the free version, and it feels and looks very ChatGPT. So then I started in Claude, and I feel like, yeah, that feels a little bit more like Leanne wrote it. But I'll tell you, I get writer's block. Like, it's always been like,

Tyler Muto (32:48)

Yeah, I use cloud nowadays, yeah.

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (32:58)

you know, a default for me when I see a blank canvas, a blank piece of paper, I can talk, but I cannot write and chat GPT or Claude, they've given me that freedom to take what's in my head and transcribe it in a way. Like it's still me.

Tyler Muto (33:14)

Yeah, you could just brain dump

into it and it can spit you out something. ⁓ Yeah, that was my first use of chat GPT ever was I had to write. were we were just launching the consider the dog podcast and I was tasked with ⁓ writing the newsletter about it, announcing it. And I remember being in this coffee shop near my house and just sitting there and like. Just I had no idea how to start.

Lianne Shinton (33:18)

Brilliant.

Tyler Muto (33:42)

And I was like, you know, let me try this AI thing and go into Chetchiputti. it's just like, Hey, I need to write an announcement about this. Here's the kind of stuff it needs to say. I want it to be about this long blah, blah, blah. And to spit out this thing. And I was like, Oh my God, like all I gotta do is change like a few sentences that I don't like and I'm done. And what would have taken me easily 90 minutes.

to even write the first draft, let alone edit it and all that kind of stuff. I was like done in 15 minutes and I was like, wow, this is incredible. And just a couple of things too about like AI with writing. So first of all, I think there's this like taboo feeling where people are like, well if AI wrote it, it's like not you. it's not, you know, I've used AI to help write even blog posts for me, but if you saw the prompts,

and the back and forth between me and whether it was chat GPT or Claude, ⁓ before we even start with, before I even have it put together a draft, you would go like, okay, like it's, this is one a hundred percent like Tyler's thoughts, ideas, arguments, so on and so forth. But again, it's just like, I don't have to like craft every single sentence and edit and all that kind of stuff, but I'll sometimes have, I'll sit there for an hour, like,

Okay, these are my thought process about this blog. This is what I wanted to say. I wanted to have this kind of tone. Like I get really, really, really detailed. And so I'm not just going like, write me a blog about like the five best tips for potty training your dog. And I want it to be like really good for SEO. And then it spits me out some really generic type thing. ⁓ But the other thing a lot of people don't know is you can, you can train your AI. ⁓ And I always recommend people do this. I don't want to go on like a total AI tangent, but ⁓

When I first started using it more, like leaning into it more to help me with like whether it's writing emails or whatever, I act like just like first off, you can just ask it like, I was just like, Hey, can you learn to write like me? And it was like, sure. And I was like, how, how, do we do that? And so what it had me do was just upload some samples of my writing.

And then it analyzed my writing, kind of told me what it noticed. And if I wanted to add anything to that, and there was a few different styles that it noticed. And it like, I noticed you have these kind of two different voices that you use based on context. was like, cool. Can we like save both of those in your memory? And it was like, cool. We'll call this one your like thought leader voice. And we'll call this one your like business coaching, like pragmatic voice. ⁓ and so then like later on, I could be like, okay, I'm trying to write this blog point post. want it to be in my thought leader voice.

These are the arguments I'm trying to run through. And, you know, again, like I still might spend an hour putting my thoughts into it. And then it spits me on a giraffe and I go, here's what I like. Here's what I don't like. ⁓ But, it still is you. Like it's still unique. It's still your thoughts and you can make it where it doesn't have that. I was, was reading a ⁓ Facebook post today from a dog trainer.

It was a weird post. wasn't even about dog training. I don't know what the guy was trying to do, but it was this long thing, the very philosophical thing. And then the post like signed off, like the person's name. And I just wanted to put in the comments, like your name, parentheses, chat GPT. Like it was so obviously chat GPT, right? Like, but it doesn't have, even before I switched to Claude, I had my chat GPT dialed in to where like, you could not tell that it was chat GPT writing.

Lianne Shinton (37:09)

Right.

Nice.

Tyler Muto (37:23)

but again, it was all of my thoughts and arguments and ideas. And, but I, and I, and I've, you know, I'm a decent writer, so I uploaded my own writing in and it can learn that kind of stuff. And so, a, I don't think you're cheating. If you use it, if you use it well, I'll put it that way. ⁓ and B you can really take the time. Like as dog, I actually, I was, I was having a conversation with bill church. I'm sure you know, bill perhaps, ⁓

Lianne Shinton (37:51)

All

Tyler Muto (37:52)

He likes AI a lot too. And I was like, do you think that as a dog trainer, you're actually better at training your AI agent? Because what I've noticed is like as a dog trainer, like we're really, we're, we, our minds are programmed to go, Hey, that's a reinforceable moment for instance. Right? So even my Claude agent, right? Like when it does something I like, I make sure to give it that feedback. I make sure to like click reward my Claude.

You know what I mean? And so I think as dog trainers, I actually think dog trainers are really, really well suited to use AI. Well, if you think of it in that way of like, I have to train this thing to behave the way I want it to behave. And it really is like reinforcements and corrections. Like, no, don't do that. Like, like chat GPT is notorious for putting in the most cliche, like sentence openers. Right. And I did it like

I would tell it not to and it do it again. like, I told you don't do that. Like I told you I don't like that. Like get that in your memory, right? And then eventually it stops, you know, or it would give me some feedback. Like the other day I was doing something and I had a project set up in Claude where it's ⁓ designed to be almost like a ⁓ coach for me for some things that I'm working on.

And I told it that I don't want it to be sycophantic because you know, like chat, GBT, especially can be very sycophantic. Like just always tells you how wonderful you are with everything you do. I was like, do not be sycophantic. I want you to be very real with me. And if I'm doing something that you think is, or if I, if you see something that's not right, like I want you to mention it. And so I put something in and it did, it kind of like, checked me on something. And then I made sure that I acknowledged that I said, Hey, thank you. I really like that. You just did that.

Lianne Shinton (39:25)

Don't blow smoke up my ass, yeah.

Mm.

Tyler Muto (39:46)

You know what I mean? ⁓ and, and so, yeah, I think I get why people are hesitant to use it, but in this particular climate, and when you are, again, you're a solo entrepreneur, you have to do so much different stuff. If you aren't using it and your competition is, you are at a massive disadvantage, like a really massive disadvantage.

Lianne Shinton (39:47)

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll share one thing that taught me so much in from the AI was we implemented conversational AI and I'm watching it interact with real people and working for like our clients that are using our automation docs platform and using the AI because it's optional and I can see it interacting and every message it ends with a question. Whereas.

Tyler Muto (40:39)

Mm-hmm.

Lianne Shinton (40:40)

My messages in the past were always like, if someone asked me about my dog training, what's your pricing? well, you know, like every dog is unique. Every, you know, backstory and they that they have is unique. We know their future is unique. You know, we have, we have to jump on a call. ⁓ but now I'm leaning into asking a question, like, tell me your dog's name. What's your dog's name? Like, just like have a conversation and ask questions. And that

I'm watching the AI and I'm like, it is better than me. It's asking like, what's your pup's name and age? What breed is he? Okay. And what would you like to work on? It's not just going, what kind of challenges are you having? It's, it's always asking questions, but it's doing it in a very conversational way. And I guess I always felt like if they ask this, I have to answer specifically that question, but the AI is actually leading them and.

Tyler Muto (41:13)

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (41:39)

Yeah, exactly.

Tyler Muto (41:39)

Yeah, it's almost Socratic in a way. All right. And I guess that's what

I meant when I was like, you know, you can often if you pay like if you use AI, like maybe you're not the best writer. So you use AI to like help with your writing a little bit. But if you pay attention to what it's doing and you can start to model yourself, you go, wow, like I'm actually becoming a better writer because of this. ⁓ And it can be so useful for those client interactions. Actually, one of our mutual customers that we have, I'm not going to.

Lianne Shinton (41:56)

You learn.

Tyler Muto (42:08)

mentioned names, but he'll know who he is if he's listening to this. ⁓ We were on a call the other day because he had a situation with a client that he just wanted me to help talk through where the client came across as being not so happy with the program. And ⁓ the trainer was has moved to a new area. It's a small town. was kind of sensitive to like, man, like everybody talks to each other here. Like I don't want

this person to like have a bad taste in their mouth. I don't want a negative review. I'm trying to like rebuild my brand in this new location. And he was ready to give like essentially a full refund to this person just to like make sure like stave off the potential like negative, you know, review type thing. And I was looking at the situation and reading it from an outside perspective. And I was like, I don't think you're there. Like, I don't think that's what you need to do. Here's what I think you should suggest. And I was like, I want you to write an email to them.

you know, kind of suggesting this, this solution or this outcome, ⁓ you know, mentioned these things. And I was like, and then I want you to put it into chat GPT and just ask chat GPT to make sure that it has this certain type of tone to it. And that our goal is to create this kind of outcome. And so it was his own email, his own writing, but he put it into chat GPT to just check the tone and everything else. and sent it to the client and the client was

thrilled with kind of our suggestion and it like saved this trainer like, like over a thousand dollars. Like it was a, it was a, know, he was ready to give the refund and, and, you know, cause sometimes when it's hard, like tone in writing can be really hard, but that's one of the things that AI is really, really good at. Even before chat GPT, I was using services like, ⁓ there was one called Hemingway and then there was one called Grammarly where it was like, you know,

Lianne Shinton (43:58)

yeah.

Tyler Muto (44:00)

it wouldn't write for you, you, was like an editing thing. So you could, you could write in it and then you could be like, it would tell you if you were being redundant, it would tell you if, if your tone was off, like you would say, like what kind of tone you're trying to go for. And it would like give you that kind of feedback on it. ⁓ and it wasn't really AI. was just like a souped up grammar check basically. ⁓ so even using AI in that kind of way. And then you go, wow, look how it achieved that tone.

And then it gets you better at responding to clients. And you'll even find even verbally when you're talking to clients, you'll respond to them better in that way. ⁓ And so especially when it comes to those, like those follow up emails for like, okay, the client submitted the contact form. I want this follow up email to go to them. You know, AI probably knows more about sales and marketing than you do. So even if you want to put up a draft, but then go into AI and be like, okay, here's my draft. Here's the purpose of it. I want this to be like,

Lianne Shinton (44:48)

for sure.

Tyler Muto (44:56)

I don't want it to be overly salesy, but I definitely want it to like increase the probabilities that this person like follows through. And you know, it's going to, it has combed through the internet. has combed through harvest business schools, blog of like how to break good sales email, right? Like, and it's probably going to, it's probably going to make it better than you could because you're a dog trainer. You're not a writing expert. You're not a sales expert. You're not a marketing expert, but now you essentially have that person on your staff.

Lianne Shinton (45:25)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (45:25)

for either free or like 20 bucks a month. I mean, it's insane, you know?

Lianne Shinton (45:32)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. ⁓ There's another area that might be a good takeaway for folks. Two things I can think of, I guess the first one I love to talk about storybrand.ai, which is Donald Miller's New York Times bestseller. And he writes in a way that

when you're writing to your lead with that prospect, you're writing in a way that makes them the hero and you're their guide. And so I went on to storybrand.ai and they had like a seven day free trial. filled out the form to tell them about me because I wanted it to create my bio in a way that it's not just a resume of like, well, Leanne won the Mondio thing and did the dock diving thing and did some stuff. It needs to be written in a way that

makes the client feel like I will make them the hero. will be their guide. And so I filled out this form and then it wrote my bio and I was like, that is amazing. Better than Chat GPT probably would have done it because it was using the Storybrands brain. And that is one takeaway that hopefully folks can use. And it's like a seven day free trial and just go in and look at your bio on your website and tune it up.

Tyler Muto (46:38)

Yeah, yeah.

Lianne Shinton (46:49)

make them feel special, like you are going to help them.

Tyler Muto (46:53)

I'm actually going to write that down story brand.ai because you know.

Lianne Shinton (46:55)

Storybrand.ai and

that being said too, a lot of dog trainers just back to the keep it simple and the fundamentals. They don't want to put their name on their website. They just want to be left alone. just, they're in chaos. I get it. But you want to make a connection with people. So definitely have yourself on the website, have your name in the messaging.

Tyler Muto (47:19)

absolutely. Well, because I think with dog training, from a sales standpoint, you know, it's, it's not like we're selling a car or a washing machine or something else, right? Like, we're asking people to trust us with one of their most beloved possessions, family members, ultimately, right? Best friend. And

If I'm a customer and I go to two dog trainer's websites and on one of them, I know the person's name. I see their face. Maybe they even have a video on their website and I can even just see how they move, how they interact with the dog, all those kinds of things. And the other person, I don't have any of that info.

Consciously or not. I am much more likely to reach out to the person that I can I have that familiarity with now Like I sort of know what I'm getting. You know what I mean? So yeah, I mean not even having your name on the website is sort of like the extreme version but you know ⁓ Like I love having like I love when people have some video on their website

And doesn't have to be one of these like you're standing in front of a camera talking about your welcome to my business. I mean, you can do that, but you might not even be talking in the video. It might just be you with some dogs. You'd be surprised at the difference that makes in how the customer feels before they even reach out to you, that they feel like they know you a little bit more than the other person that was anonymous. And if they're going to trust somebody with their dog, they don't want the anonymous person. They want the person.

they've seen, you know?

Lianne Shinton (49:04)

Yeah. And you mentioned the word face and it made me think of something I've been watching recently about sugar cereals in the store and you go down the aisle and the stuff with the face on it, it's lower. So the kids see it and they, guess they feel safe and they love it and they want to buy something with a face on it. And so now I go through the grocery store aisles and I'm looking, ⁓ that is a face on it. Probably has a lot of sugar, but, but there's science to it.

Tyler Muto (49:19)

Hmm.

Lianne Shinton (49:34)

yourself on your website, put your name, put some pictures, put a video, though I definitely feel there's places where stock photos might be better ⁓ because you want it to look professional, yeah.

Tyler Muto (49:44)

Yeah, yeah,

like, but, ⁓ yeah, I think, I think definitely don't go like all anonymous. Yeah. So, I mean, what are free? Like, I'm sure that like me, like I mentioned how, like lately it's just been like websites, like everybody's coming to me, their websites, a mess. ⁓ not everybody actually, ⁓ two people yesterday that.

Lianne Shinton (49:55)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (50:11)

I love when I can look at somebody's business before, like they sent me the, like, you know, they set up like a free call with me before we do coaching. Right. And I have them give me their, their website so I can look at it and their social media and nine times out of 10, I'm pretty accurate. I can tell before I speak to that person, if they're going to be the kind of person that's like, you know what business is going good. I'm just trying to get to that next level. Or if they're going to be that person that's like, I'm struggling.

I can usually tell that just based on their website alone, if not their social media. And I'm pretty darn accurate. So had two women yesterday that was, it was awesome because both of them, I looked at their websites the night before and I was like, these ladies are doing just fine. These ladies are just looking to have a sharper edge. You know what I mean? And I was right. Like both of them were doing great. Like had their heads on their shoulders. ⁓ I'm just curious for you, like,

What are some of the things that you see that trainers are missing that are just like almost like painfully simple fixes if they actually just knew where to

Lianne Shinton (51:15)

Definitely with, like we've talked about, having yourself, having your bio, using your name, some of the things we've already touched on. But one thing that stands out to me is they're not inspecting their data. They don't, if I ask, you know, well, how many leads are you getting? Like what's your conversion rate?

that data just, they're winging it and it's all in their head. And that's really hard. That is really hard. You and I, Tyler, we've both sold businesses and to sell something that's just in my head, it's not possible. It needs to be something that I can hand off and it's turnkey. So we have to get it out of our head. And these numbers and this data is so important because

You know, we have to know that stuff. We have to know the dry times. Like, okay, well, it's ⁓ April. Everybody's getting ready to tighten their belts because they don't know if they're going to be getting a return. So people are tightening their belts. maybe they're getting a return and now we're going to see, you know, a bunch of sales, like a tax time. So ⁓ we just, we have to look back at the past data in order to make plans for the future and say, I need to run ads during this time, or I need to get something going.

I need to work some events because I know that there's this ebb and flow of business and we've got to have all of that data.

Tyler Muto (52:48)

I love that so much. I I'm a big data guy myself. ⁓ and one of the quotes that I use all the time and it's, it's funny cause it actually comes from, ⁓ I used to have a gym membership at LA fitness. was like big gym franchise and always over the speakers in between music, they would advertise their like personal coaching. And one of the lines they would use in that advertisement was what gets measured gets improved.

Lianne Shinton (53:18)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (53:20)

That is such a true statement. It's such a true statement. And I think, you know, aside from like just having that data so that you can make, can make better decisions. Like you mentioned, like I knew just like you said, our slow period here in Buffalo was, ⁓ from basically Thanksgiving, cause it's holiday season until tax comes in, you know, until April, not only because people are spending a lot of money around the holidays. We didn't board over the holidays in my business. wasn't a kennel.

So it's not like we had that influx of business. ⁓ then like you mentioned, people are going, well, let me wait and see what my tax return is going to be. Plus it's Buffalo and it's really cold in the winter. And so we would always proactively do things like run discounted programs and advertise them during those times of year. ⁓ Or have different offerings that were like lower.

Lianne Shinton (54:01)

Yep.

Tyler Muto (54:15)

price to entry offerings for those times of year, stuff like that. And we do it in advance. We wouldn't wait till our calendar was empty. We would know there's a probability of it, a high probability. And so we would front run it and try to book ourselves up and get solved the problem before it starts. But I also find it's kind of like, you know, I always say, like, if you wanted to lose weight, probably one of the single most effective things you can do is just start counting your calories. Like

Don't even worry about setting a goal or trying to cut your count. Like if you start keeping track, it's a, there's something psychological that happens when you start seeing those numbers where you start wanting to try to improve them. Like psychologically you start, you'll start going like, do I really now I know how many calories are in this donut? Do I really want this donut? You know, ⁓ same thing happens with going to the gym. Like you start keeping track of your reps and your weight and you're just like,

Okay, well, last week I did 10 reps. Maybe this week I can do 11. Like it's just something psychological that happens there. And I think it's no different if we're like, if you're going to do something, for instance, where you're like, Hey, okay, this will probably speak to your software too. Right. So one of the data points I like to look at with my clients is the conversions of people that go to their website. What's the ratio of those people that end up becoming leads.

Right. So not paying customers yet, but just like they went to the website and they took that next step. Like I was mentioning in the beginning of the podcast. Well, first off, if I don't have an idea of that, and then, you know, maybe somebody's working with me and I'm like, Hey, you need to have that call of action more clear. You need to be clear about what your call of action is. Well, how do you know if it worked or not?

Like you kind of want to know like, if I'm paying this person to provide guidance for me, and this is supposed to improve, like if I don't have a measuring stick, how do I know if I'm trying to improve my marketing and somebody says, Hey, do you should be doing this on social media? Well, if you have no idea what your normal flow of unique visitors to your website is, how do you know if that change on your social media made a difference? But the other thing I think that's important for dog trainers about that is that psychological piece, because a lot of us,

Don't always feel super motivated when it comes to marketing or when it comes to sales. Like it's the kind of thing that we would like drag our feet on. But just like the counting calories thing, like if you start being aware of your web, if you're trying to do like your social media and then you start actually keeping track of those website views, like it's just something psychological that just makes you like push a little harder. And then especially when you see it start to work, it's reinforcing. If you don't, if you're not tracking it, you don't

Lianne Shinton (56:53)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (57:01)

I mean, that's why on social media, they all, can track your engagement, like your likes and your shares and all that. You can do it there, but you kind of want to know if all that social media engagement's actually turning into more people coming to your website, or if that change on your website is actually turning to a higher percentage of people filling out that contact form or setting up that discovery call or whatever it is. And so, yeah, I think it is.

such a simple thing, like just being aware of some of those numbers. I think I love that you mentioned that because it's often like when I meet with people, you know, to get them going with coaching to go, okay, well, what can I do between now and our first session together? I'm like, start, start at least loosely keeping track. I don't even care if it's like a super formal, exact precision of your data, but start having at least some general awareness of some of these key data points, because that's going to make a huge difference for us.

Lianne Shinton (57:57)

Yeah.

And even on a simple scale, like, you know, how many phone calls, how many forms, how many text messages of new leads did you get today? And just start there and just get a pen and paper and just write down how many you got. How many did you book today for that phone call or that discovery call evaluation, whatever that process is, and then start to assess how many do I want to see in that stage in the pipeline?

If I see three there, do I start getting nervous? Do I need to see consistently seven on the books that I know I'm going to be in front of this week or this month, whatever that is?

Tyler Muto (58:35)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. you know, like, obviously, I think, like, full disclosure, I'm an affiliate with Leanne's software. But like I told Leanne, I'd be recommending the software, whether I was an affiliate or not, I just think it's a really good product. And I know you guys can really help with some of that, that data point collection, you know, and just being aware of those things. ⁓ But so yeah, like, like knowing, okay,

I got this many consults, phone calls versus, I did this many in-person things. Another thing that happens a lot, I was on a, so this was one of those, I don't really know what my next step should be. So was talking to somebody and I took their credit, they're like brand new, right? Brand new opening their own business. And so my question was, like I said, at the beginning of this podcast, if I go to your website and I like what I see, what's my next step? And they were like, well, sometimes,

I'm just, I'm just going to get on the phone with people and like that's gonna be that. But sometimes it's, want to, you know, I actually go and I do an in-person consult and I'm not really sure which is better and the thing is like, okay, she's brand new. So like, of course she's not sure which is better, but if she's, if as she's figuring that out, she's collecting data, then you're not just making a sort of gut.

Like my gut tells me that I do better when I'm in person or my gut tells me that I do better when I try to do the sale over the phone or, you know, maybe on the phone, my sales are slightly less, but I can get more clients in in the same amount of time because I'm not traveling. So I'm overall making more money. You can make data informed decisions about these things. And that's like super important. Like there's, there's, you don't have to guess and

Some of this stuff is not, it's just not that complicated to just keep kind of a general log, a general spreadsheet of some of these things. And you don't have to go after everything all at once. ⁓ I'm a big fan of saying like, okay, this is the question I'm trying to answer right now. Right. I'm trying to answer the question of whether I'm better off doing sales over the phone or doing them in person, or if it makes a difference, if I do it on zoom or over the phone or

Again, if this social media strategy is working, that's the question I'm trying to solve. So I'm just going to focus on right now the data points related to that question so that I don't feel overwhelmed. Because again, as a solopreneur, it's like, my God, like there's a thousand data points that I could be trying to keep track of. And that's insanely overwhelming. And now because I feel overwhelmed, I'm going to do none of it. Right. Well,

Lianne Shinton (1:01:24)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:01:27)

pick one. Now again, with a good software, it can be in the background collecting all that data. You don't have to look at it all. You can, I'm going to only look at this right now because I'm solving this problem, but it's still collecting the other stuff. So that when I want to know the answer to that, I don't have to wait until I can collect enough data. The data is already there, but even if you don't have software and you're just going to do it on your own on a spreadsheet, then all the more reason to just focus on like one problem at a time.

and get some traction there, be able to answer that problem in a definitive way, in a data informed way, rather than just guessing for yourself.

Lianne Shinton (1:02:00)

Another way that folks can take action right away if they don't have that data is go into chat GPT and just ask statistically if I just put all my programs on the website versus if I just offer a discovery call as the call to action, you know, what's what's statistically do businesses find convert? If I have this happening, if I go to the home and do an evaluation, I'm in person statistically. Do I have a better?

conversion rate maybe than a phone and hey, but then I have to drive to the home and that takes me an hour and then an hour home plus an hour at the home. Now that's three hours. I could have done three phone consultations statistically, you know, and just ask the AI, say, I don't have the data AI. Can you tell me maybe from a dog training business or a service based business, it may have more data and be able to provide you like, Hey, here's a comparison chart.

Tyler Muto (1:02:43)

Yeah, help me do the math on this, right?

Lianne Shinton (1:02:58)

and then maybe you have a starting point.

Tyler Muto (1:03:02)

Yeah, absolutely. And then even if you're doing it yourself too, like again, this is, think one of the areas where I think AI is super powerful. ⁓ One of the first areas that I used, I guess what could be called AI, but this was before chat GPT was like public was ⁓ again, for a side project of mine, non-dog related project, I needed to build some spreadsheets in Excel. ⁓ And I wanted it.

to be able to like do some simple calculations for me. was going to be inputting a bunch of data and I wanted to know some statistics about things. Well, Excel is like my nemesis. Like I freaking hate Excel, right? But I found this website and it was, it was called like, you know, Excel something.com and it was $6 a month for the membership. And you could just write in plain language.

Okay, I need any items from column D that have this in them to be multiplied by the number that's found in column C and the output to go in. And then it would just spit you out the equation and you just paste it into Excel. And I was able to build these like spreadsheets that I would have never been able to do on my own. Right. And now one of the coolest things I love about like AI right now is

like Microsoft's integration of Copilot into their existing software. like, you could just literally write in it. Like I don't need that subscription anymore because Copilot is in Excel and I can just go into the Copilot little tab on Excel and be like, Hey, this is what I need a spreadsheet to do this. Can you just design it for me? ⁓ PowerPoint is another one. I'm working on a online course right now about websites because I've got like websites on the mind so much. And ⁓ it's, it's largely PowerPoint based.

And I hate designing the slides for PowerPoint to make them look good. So I don't need AI to give me the content and what it's going to say. That's mine. Like that's, got that in my head, but it takes me forever to make those slides look good. And then, so I opened up PowerPoint. I didn't even expect this. I just started putting in my, my text. And then all of sudden this little window pops up from co-pilot and it's like, here's some design ideas. And you just click the one that you like the way it looks.

and all your text is there and the colors and it's cool and it's got pictures that are related to the text. And I'm like, holy moly. What would have taken me hours upon hours upon hours. This thing just did for me in a snap. So again, with like some of this data stuff, it can feel really daunting, but this is another area where I think AI can like be kind of like take some of that heavy lift off your shoulders, whether it's like, Hey, help me understand.

What are the pros and cons of doing these evaluations over the phone versus me going to the client's house? And it's really interesting how it can like lay that out for you and bring up things you might've not thought of, help you understand blind spots. ⁓ A really good prompt for AI too, when you're working through some of these decisions is to ask it to steel man your idea and steel manning the idea is it's going to try to find the weak spots, right? So like in the coding world, like

Lianne Shinton (1:06:13)

Kill man.

⁓

Tyler Muto (1:06:22)

your job, if you're coding something, you want to try to break your code, right? Because if you can figure out if it's breakable, like that's kind of the key thing. And so that's what steel manning your idea is. You can be like, hey, I'm thinking about running this new program for my business and charging this much forward and da da da da. I want you to steel man this for me. And it's going to start like poking and finding the holes and be like, well, what happens if this, what happens if that, what happens if this? And it's going to come up with all these things that you may not have thought of. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (1:06:32)

Hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:06:50)

one of my other favorite prompts that's kind of related to what you were saying about asking it to like, kind of help you understand the statistics or the pros and cons. And I got this from like Reddit back in the day. So I was never a Reddit user, but I had a friend that was, and he showed me like, there's this, it's like really common now, but it was like, explain it like I'm five was the Reddit thread. Right. And you say, okay, I want to understand astrophysics, explain it to me like I'm five years old.

So it's just like a really simplified version. ⁓ So as a lot of people know, like my side thing is like economics and I'm big in the finance markets and stuff like that. you know, sometimes I just brain fart on ideas and I was reading something about interest rates the other day and about quantitative easing and these technical terms. And I'm like, ⁓ God, I forgot the relation between this. And I just go onto my cloud. I'm like, okay, explain this to me. Like I'm five years old, cause I don't want to read like a massive essay. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (1:07:45)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:07:48)

And that's a really powerful prompt for your AI. those two, explain it to me like I'm five and also steel man this argument for us, know, steel man this idea for me are really, really powerful ways to use this tool to help through some of these decisions. You know, Hey, I'm thinking of switching from in-home consultations to over the phone. I want you to steel man that for me. And it's going to start to find all the weak spots in it for you. And then you can really make a judgment as to whether that's the right choice for you or not. You know,

Lianne Shinton (1:08:16)

Yeah,

yeah, that's excellent. And those, that's a great prompts for life too. Like, hey, maybe I shouldn't be watching so much TV, Steal the Man Up for me or Doomscrolling.

Tyler Muto (1:08:27)

Yeah, or I'm thinking of leasing

my next car instead of buying it, you know, explain to me like I'm five, the pros like when it makes more sense to lease and when it makes more sense to buy. And then I'm going to lease because of this reason, steel man it for me, you know, and ⁓ especially for like business ideas or making those like strategic decisions. I think that's important. ⁓ Which kind of segues, I think, into I'm going to I'm to I'm going to

Lianne Shinton (1:08:30)

Yeah, finances.

Tyler Muto (1:08:53)

take the reins for a moment here, because it just made me think of something that comes up a lot for me. ⁓ Where, ⁓ you know, so one of other things I think comes up a lot is people don't think about like the big picture strategy with some of these things, right? So for instance, along with that idea of like, okay, what is that call to action? What's that next step that you want the customer to make?

There are lot of options there, right? Like there's no single right answer. So for some people it's like, want you to schedule a phone call. For other people it's, want you to fill out this contact form so that I can reach out to you and schedule something in person. Like there's a lot of different ways you can go about this. What I think a lot of people don't realize, and this is another just, I think, simple takeaway, is that a lot of these decisions are not isolated decisions.

Right? So for instance, something like ⁓ a really common one would be that people ask me this all the time. Should I put my prices on my website or should I not put my prices on my website? Well, there's no right or wrong answer there, but how successful either one of those decisions is going to be is also going to be impacted by other strategic decisions that you make. And so that's, think something that is, ⁓ you know, as we're talking about these, like, you know,

some of these other choices that come up, think we really need to recognize that they're not isolated choices. know, ⁓ like for instance, if you're going to put prices on your website, you kind of need to make sure that when somebody, by the time somebody gets there and sees that price, they understand the value of what that price represents. Whereas if you, for instance, don't put prices on your website,

That's a strategic decision that also plays very nicely with doing some kind of a free evaluation, right? charging for evaluations and not putting prices on your website is not always like a great strategic combination. You can charge for evaluations, but you know, it's like these things, interact with each other. And so if you're gonna, you know, do a free eval, you can get away with.

you know, not putting those prices on your website, but also maybe you don't have to like butter those people up on the website as much, right? Because part of your evaluation process is going to be demonstrating the value of your programs and what you have to offer and understanding how it's going to impact that person's life in such a way that by the time you get to price, they go, yeah, that makes sense. But I've seen people where the content of their website and even their marketing that's out there is a little bit more minimal.

And then they get to price that there's the prices right there. And it's like, you know, I think a lot of two things that I think dog trainers underestimate is how naive the average potential client is on two things. One, what is actual actually possible with good dog training? Because a lot of clients have no idea. They have no idea that you could get a dog to stay on its dog bed for even 15 minutes under distraction. Like that's would be, that seems like a miracle.

to the average person. ⁓ And then also kind of along with that, a lot of them have no idea how much good dog training costs. Like most of these things, they might have some sense, like they've walked through a PetSmart and they've seen, group classes are 200 bucks and that looks kind of chaotic and the dogs don't really listen that much. It's not a knock on PetSmart. It's just, it's a hard environment to teach a group class in, right? ⁓ So, you know, if somebody gets to that, they get to your services page and they don't really understand

like how amazing training is. And then it's like, your minimum program is $500 or a thousand dollars. That's like sticker shock to people. They're going to immediately be like, let me see what some of the other results on Google are looking like. Cause I have, I don't have a frame of reference. Is this normal? Like, I don't know. It's going to, that's going to instantly prompt that person to want to compare with somebody else because they're going to be shocked by that. Right. So it's not an isolated decision of

putting that price on your website. It's like, if I'm going to put that price there, I have to support that decision with other strategic things about what is the rest of that website is going to look like. What is my marketing strategy? What, how much do people know about me before they even come to the website? Because what nobody does for the people that do like a consultation, which is like generally like a sales call, right? But what nobody does is like start that consultation and in the first five minutes say what their prices are. Never. Nobody.

You don't even people that know nothing about sales. Intuitively, we know that that's not right. ⁓ And in a lot of ways, a really good website is like a text digital version of a really good consultation. It kind of needs to do the same things. Identify the client's problems. You gotta, you know, stir the pot a little bit, aggravate that problem a little bit, right? Like, you know, hey, do you struggle with X, Y, Z?

Lianne Shinton (1:13:55)

Mm.

Tyler Muto (1:14:08)

We know how much that sucks. know how embarrassing it is, right? And then show how our program solve that problem, make those programs seem really great, eventually get to the recommendations, so on and so forth, and the details of what goes into that. ⁓ And so, you again, you can ask AI to help you with this. Hey, if I'm gonna put prices on my website, what other strategies might go well with that? You can, of course, also talk to somebody like me or somebody like, you know, but...

We have to look at these things as a whole. have to look at putting prices on my website or not by itself is not a strategy. It's a piece of a strategy. Doing a free consultation or charging for that consultation by itself is not a strategy. It's a piece of a strategy. And we have to look at that. And I see successful businesses on all ends of this spectrum.

but the ones that are successful are successful because the whole thing is cohesive.

It all works together.

Lianne Shinton (1:15:14)

Amazing, very powerful information.

The other thing too, that's making me think I've used ChatGPT for is you can do a competitor analysis ⁓ so that you can find out, hey, what dog trainers in my area, say I live in Henderson, Nevada, what dog trainers in Henderson, Nevada, what's their call to action on their website? And ChatGPT can just give you a full lineup. Well, this one offers...

Tyler Muto (1:15:29)

Hmm.

Lianne Shinton (1:15:45)

this, this one does this, that's all their starting points listed so you can start to see what your competitors are doing. But I like what you're saying that there's a strategy to it. Are they missing it? Are they just charging for the eval? But then there's they're missing like the whole recipe.

Tyler Muto (1:16:02)

Yeah, what else is that person doing? Exactly. You know, I love that idea of looking at your competitors. One of the things that I tell people like a lot, especially people that are working on their websites and trying to get better search engine results. It's like, well, just Google your area and click on the websites of the people that are in the top one and two spot. What do they got going on? I mean, obviously there's gonna be things behind the scenes that you don't see, but some of it's really, really obvious, like the very obvious, like ways that their site is optimized to make sure it shows up on Google.

Lianne Shinton (1:16:04)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:16:31)

⁓

you know, so much of this, this stuff is available at your fingertips. You just kind of have to know where to look. I think that's, that's part of like, you know, I always tell people, you know, when I'm working with trainers as a coach, especially when people are starting like the newer dog trainers, it's really daunting. ⁓ you can look at like, you know, okay, to get my business up off the ground or to get it from just fledgling right now to being like a sustainable business.

I can see all of these things I have to do or all of these different decisions that I have to make. And again, that can paralyze you. You can end up doing nothing at all.

One of, I think, the advantages that comes with, you know, when I can work with somebody is because I've done this so many times over and over and over again for people is I can kind of cut through that mess and be like, yeah, but this is what you should do first. These other things, the shelve them for right now. Just stop thinking about it. Write them down somewhere so your brain's not concerned about forgetting them because that's a thing, right? Like get it out of your head and onto paper.

Because otherwise that's when you stay up all night. Something was running through over and over and over again. I'm a huge fan of keeping a notepad or having the notes on your phone, but like next to your bed. And if you find yourself thinking about something over and over and over over again, write it down. You'll be amazed at how quickly your brain stops cycling through that thing. But it's like, I tell a lot of my like, you know, startup clients, I'm like, we're going to just do like a brain dump of all these different decisions. We're going to

Lianne Shinton (1:17:54)

Mm-hmm.

true.

Tyler Muto (1:18:19)

start to a will start to like mind map them out like okay this decision I can't even think about because it's dependent on this other one anyway. So like let's organize it so we can see the things that are like that's a that's like three tiers down the line like why are you even thinking about that right now it might be irrelevant by the time you make these other decisions. ⁓ But also just like this is where to look now like I had a I had a potential client yesterday. ⁓ We had our discovery call and she signed up and she's like okay cool like.

you know, how do we, how do I know, like, how do we decide where we're going to focus? I'm not really sure what we need to work on. And I was like, cool. I've got ideas because this is what I do. And I was like, here's what needs to happen. Her, was, she was a dog walker who's starting to do training. She was training for a different company and like had her walking business on the side. And now she's just going be training for herself. ⁓ and I'm like, you know, okay, cool. Step one, we got to know what that call to action is going to be for your training clients.

Step two, we've got to dial in your training programs. Step three, we've got to talk about like how we're going to describe those programs on your website so that we can get the website up and running. Like in that order, those are the top three things that we need to do right now. Yeah, there's a thousand other things, but those don't matter until we get these things up and running. And she's like, Oh, wow. That was so clear. I know exactly what I have to do now. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know totally. Cause I've done this before, you know?

Lianne Shinton (1:19:44)

That's the fun stuff. You know, when you really get excited about what you're building and this new business and like how this is going to flow and my programs are going to be this. That's the fun stuff. So it's, it's fun to go back and work with you and revisit it. You know, that's the fun stuff before you get into all the chaos of running a business.

Tyler Muto (1:19:46)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, one other thing I want to say before we run out of time here is again, I'm like an economics guy, right?

There are some decisions that you're going to make in your business that are like really weighty and other ones that are not. And I think sometimes folks have a hard time distinguishing this. ⁓ Like as an example, when people are just starting out, they're like, I want to, you what do I charge for this program? And I've had people drag their feet on getting that program up and on their website and getting their website launched for so long because they're rattling around what to charge.

It's like, that's what I call a paint color decision. Right? So like, just redid my bathroom in my house, not me personally, but I paid somebody to do it. But, um, you know, at one point we had to pick out the paint color. My wife and I are like, I don't know. kind of like this one. I don't know if I'm going to love it, but like also like, you know, we've got bigger fish to fry here. And at a certain point we're just like, if we don't like it, we'll just repaint like no big deal. Other decisions are like picking out the tile.

If the tile goes in and you don't like it, that's kind of a big deal. Right? Like it's not coming out anytime soon. I find a lot of people are treating paint color decisions as if they're tile decisions. You know, pricing is one of those things. You know, your advantage as a small business, as a, especially if you're a single person business, is you are incredibly nimble. So I have clients that own multimillion dollar businesses with dozens of employees.

Lianne Shinton (1:21:18)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:21:44)

If they want to change their pricing, it's a huge headache. Like it's a massive headache. It's got to, every got it. Notice has to get out to these different employees. We've got to change it here and there in this other place. Like it's this whole thing, right? For a lot of my clients, like they've got like a WordPress website. It's like, want to change your prices tomorrow. You just log onto your dashboard and type a few clicks on the keyboard and you're done. You know, like this is not a big thing.

It's like, you know, you are not the restaurant that can't change your prices every week because tomato prices went up or down because then you'd have to reprint all your menus. You're the gas station. You just flip a couple of things on your marquee and prices at the gas pump change daily or weekly. Like you can do that as a dog trainer. People get stuck on God, should my private lesson program be five lessons or six lessons? I don't know. Pick one. Run it for a few months. If you don't like it.

Maybe you go five and you're like, man, I always feel like the client could use that extra session. Cool. Well, now make it six. Or maybe you go six and you go, man, I always feel like by the time I get to the last session, I don't even know what to do because everything's good. Cool. So like bring it down to five. Like this is not a huge decision. And what happens is our brains, like there's always uncertainty around any of these choices. Do I do free consults? Do I pay for the consults? Do I put prices on my website? Do I not put prices?

There's a, we don't know what the outcome of that's going to be necessarily. We might be able to have some stats and some probabilities, but there's always going to be that little sense of uncertainty. Our brains process that they pro like emotionally, we often process uncertainty the same way that our brains process risk.

but they're not the same. And we really need to always pause and like recognize this is what I'm feeling right now due to the uncertain outcome. Or is there some actual risk here that I'm not comfortable with or that I'm not aware of? know, again, AI can help understanding risks. Like I was looking into doing some real estate investing earlier this year and I was like, I went into my AI like, hey, what are my blind spots here? What do I not know? What are the real risks I need to be thinking about here? You know? ⁓

But a lot of times it's something like the paint color. It's like, what's the real risk here? Or like the wall sconces we were putting in. It's like, what's the, we were like, at a certain point we stopped and I was like, there's no risk here. Like it's a $200 light. If I don't like it, I'll buy a new one next year and I'll install it. Like it's not a big deal. The tile had some real risk with it. But my, was feeling emotionally about those decisions in exactly the same way.

Lianne Shinton (1:24:13)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:24:24)

My brain wasn't processing them differently because it was one just had uncertainty. The other had risk. So I'm, I'm, love thinking about risk. Part of what I do every day is risk management. When I was dealing with aggressive dogs, I was always thinking about how do I contain and manage risk and know what the risks are and mitigate those risks as much as possible. And I think that's super important, but at a certain point you have to say, okay, I've looked at the risks.

I understand what they are. I've minimized anything that can be minimized. I either accept this risk or I don't accept the risk. And if I accept it and I'm still feeling weird, it's probably just because it's just an uncertain outcome. And I need to identify that. And I think there's a lot of these little decisions that people make and they either make the wrong decision because they're feeling this kind of fear as if there's real risk when there's not, or they just get paralyzed by some of these things. Some of these questions, right? Like,

Lianne Shinton (1:25:06)

Uncertainty, yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:25:23)

Prices on the site, no prices. Paid evals, free evals. Phone call sale, in-person sale. It's like, this is paint. This is paint on the wall, man. Just do it. Just do it. ⁓ Yeah. Or my favorite is I'll get a client that's literally booked three months in advance. And I'm like, you should raise your prices. And they feel all kinds of scared about that. And I'm like, dude, you could be a month into raising your prices.

Lianne Shinton (1:25:35)

Yeah.

to start.

Tyler Muto (1:25:52)

realize that it's slowing things down more than you would like and go back and you're still booked two months in advance. Like you have literally zero risk on the table. Like what, but the upside of it is for the same amount of work you're now making 20 % more at the end of the year. Like what is holding you back right now? You know? And so that's an important, I think that's like a really important simple, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit more of like a loftier idea.

I don't know if that falls into your like, keep it simple, stupid, like preface to this podcast, but yeah.

Lianne Shinton (1:26:25)

It kind of does because it's

just start. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just do something. Because if you keep delaying, a month goes by. I mean, that's 30 days of your whole year that's gone by that you could have been building this thing. So it doesn't have to be perfect. Just start.

Tyler Muto (1:26:44)

Mm-hmm.

Just start.

Lianne Shinton (1:26:50)

Awesome. Well, I know you have a hard stop in a couple of minutes here. ⁓ that sounds fun. ⁓ Yeah. So I'll let you get to it. Consider the dog. Could you just share what that is and the URL so folks can check that out?

Tyler Muto (1:26:53)

I do, I've got my son's karate class to go to. Yeah.

Yeah.

Consider the dog.com is the URL. That's my platform ⁓ where we produce and distribute educational content on dog behavior. So it's online courses in a nutshell. ⁓ And then we are now starting to get into, so our, our demographic is like 50 % dog owners and 50 % dog trainers. And so we're now starting to

also build out some course material that's more also like specifically for the trainer and so we're actually gonna have a separate tier of membership. ⁓ And actually the course that I'm currently working on is all about websites unsurprisingly because that's been something that's been coming up a lot over this past couple years for people so that people can really effectively build websites on their own or provide that guidance to their web designer to make sure it's going to be effective because some people don't know that your web designer.

Like they're not going to write the content for you. They don't know what needs to be on a dog training website. Like you kind of have to tell them those things. So yeah, consider the dog.com. It's a membership based site. It's incredibly inexpensive for the amount of content that we have there. Not even for the amount of content. It's like just flat out inexpensive. The monthly membership is $20 and there's no like commitment. You can literally just do one month, binge watch a whole bunch of stuff and cancel if you want to. Like we're okay with that. ⁓ It's a great site. It's myself.

And we have about a dozen instructors at this point. And kind of my whole philosophy is, you know, I'm not always right. My style isn't always the best for everybody out there. I think people should be able to get a taste of different instructors and different training styles and different methods and see what's a good fit for them. And we want to be a hub where people can just come to one place. They don't have to make a commitment to one particular trainer and buy their online course and hope that it's a good fit.

⁓ They can come to us and for one fee, they can be exposed to a lot of different ideas, a lot of different styles, find what works for them, ⁓ ask questions in our private Facebook group, get on our live streams and ask questions and get feedback directly right away. ⁓ So ⁓ it's a really cool platform.

Lianne Shinton (1:29:17)

I like that. And then the Facebook group, like a safe place for people to ask questions. Wonderful.

Tyler Muto (1:29:22)

Yeah. Yeah.

And it really is. know that's not common in the dog training world, but I'm proud to say that I have two moderators in the group that I think have forgotten that they are moderators because we literally never have to moderate stuff. Like it's just a really, really great place. A lot of kindness and a lot of just helpful attitudes in there.

Lianne Shinton (1:29:25)

Yeah.

Aww.

Very nice. Yeah, I love hearing that. Love seeing that. So awesome. So consider the dog and also TylerMutto.com, right?

Tyler Muto (1:29:50)

Yep. That's for my professional coaching and consulting. So trainers that are looking to just either, you know, sharpen their edge or kind of shortcut the launch of their business or just avoid stepping in a pile of poo and making the mistakes that many of us had to make when we were kind of figuring this out on their own. ⁓ that's my, that's the bulk of what I do these days is helping professional dog trainers with everything from best practices when it comes to training and behavior to best practices when it comes to

marketing, sales, employee management, expanding their facilities and everything else.

Lianne Shinton (1:30:26)

Outstanding, Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tyler. I will let you get to your kiddos karate and thank you listeners. Again, it's Tyler Muto at TylerMuto.com and ConsiderTheDog.com. And I'm Leanne Shinton from Automation Dogs. Thanks for listening.

Tyler Muto (1:30:45)

Thanks for having me back.