#153: David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training)

(Disclaimer: AI-generated Transcript)

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:00:00]: Starting a business is one of the most spontaneous and risky things that you could do. Right? I remember literally when I decided to go work for somebody for a little bit. But the fact that I was leaving a, quote unquote, like, stable, normal job to do this weird exotic thing where, frankly, when I quit my job and went into that space, I didn't even really know how much money I was gonna be making or anything like that. That's kind of an uncomfortable weird thing. Right? But you could look back now to hell to 11 years, whatever it's been since The. And, you know, that's the best decision that I ever made was making that decision and pulling that plug.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:35]: Let's discover what people are building in the The Land community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land Northeast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am Your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with David Tirpak, the founder of Miracle K9 Training. Since founding the company In 2019, David has grown Miracle K9 Training to a thriving 15 person organization, a multimillion dollar top line revenue business, In one of the most respected dog training centers in Northeast Ohio. David's dog training story started when he got his very first dog, Vera. As someone who had never had dogs growing up and did not really understand what he was doing with 1, the first logical step seemed like finding a dog trainer to learn everything he could from.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:31]: Per After working with 3 different dog trainers and working under another for over 2 years, he started to realize that there was a huge gap in the dog training world for true behavioral rehabilitation. Shortly after, David started his 1st dog training company, Heights Canine Dog Training, per And proceeded to spend the next 3 years traveling the country to meet other world renowned dog trainers and dedicated himself to creating dog training programs geared towards helping the everyday dog owner to be successful long term with dogs that have more serious behavioral issues. Per In those 3 years, David helped to build Heights Canine into a thriving business with 3 locations across Ohio, gaining national recognition for the work they were doing there. In January of 2019, David left that company to get back to what he loves doing, which is training dogs. That's when he formed Miracle K9 Training, a more specialized dog training facility The was first and foremost a dog training center, which meant more specialized staff, a larger group of trainers, and additional services like daycare, and grooming that have an emphasis on keeping the dogs mentally stimulated and structured during their stay. David has such a genuine passion and enthusiasm for this work, it was a real joy to learn more about his journey, his philosophy on dogs, pursue His growth as an entrepreneur and the impact that he's having here in Northeast Ohio. So please enjoy my conversation with David Turpak After a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:02]: As we share the stories of Entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests On this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much The I have actually personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you're interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to I a dot Lay of the land dot f m. The link will also be in our show notes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:58]: So I was thinking about, where a fun place to start the conversation would be. And, it came to me actually as I was listening to your podcast, which, you know, rewinding all the way back to the time machine to your your first episode. You started it by laying down, 3 quotes Yeah. Purse Which which I of, and I thought it would be a fun place to start because I think they're Land of timeless quotes.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:04:22]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:22]: And, many years later, you know, just with what you built with

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:25]: the podcast, with Miracle K9 Training,

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:28]: the evolution of your career. Would love to start with those and and your reflections on them.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:04:32]: Yeah. Oh, man. Pursue well, first off, you probably never I believe there was, like, maybe a Tony Robbins, a Jim Rohn, and somebody else quote. I truthfully don't remember what they were at this point. You what's funny is that very first episode we did, I was so stressed out going into it initially. I was like, oh my god. I'm starting this podcast. It needs to be so deep and organized and The and that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:04:55]: And the night before, I made this whole freaking, like, breakdown, like, person written out sheet with, like, all the bullet points and all that kind of stuff in it. And then, I lost it somehow between the night before The the next morning when we recorded it, and I deleted the file from my computer so I couldn't reprint it. So I had to just, like, somehow remember how I found those quotes, Google them, and just wing the rest of it. But in a nutshell, I think if I don't if I think if I recall

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:23]: I can play them back for you if you want.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:05:24]: Purse oh, man. The the first one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:29]: If you really wanna do something, you'll find a way. Person. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:05:34]: Damn. That's it's a big one, man. I mean, like, the The in the game of business, you know, whatever, however you wanna frame it. Right? Like, there's just, like, you're gonna get punched so many times. Right? Of you really want it, if you really want to make something happen, you're gonna make it happen. Right? And this stands true to myself, The the trials and tribulations that we've faced over the course of Miracle K9 or the podcast or whatever it may be. And this stands true when I have Land I'm sure you're the same. Right? Like, you're a business minded guy.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:06:06]: Right? I'm sure you have conversations with people sometimes where they're whether asking your opinion on something or venting about something or try to better themselves, and you're just like, I could list out 15 different solutions for your problem right now. And I'm not saying they're gonna be easy, but, like, you could make this work. Right? And, you know, people are either going to take that information and be like, wow, that's accurate, and and I'm gonna go do those things, or they're gonna come up with an excuse for it. Write. And this isn't me shitting on my friends and, you know, being being bad to them or anything like that or or or friends or family members or anything like that. But at the end of the day, If you wanna do something, you're gonna be able to figure out how to make it work. There's always a path to get to that thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:47]: Right. Which which segs perfectly to to the next one, which was, if you talk about it, it's a dream. If you envision it, it's possible.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:06:56]: Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:56]: And if you schedule it, it's real.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:06:59]: The the scheduling thing, I when I read that quote when I was looking up quotes, that one was so important, I felt like, because that's where you get into the, the motivation conversation, right, where, like, a lot of people are always looking for motivation or they're looking for the right time or any of those types of things where that'll that'll get you through things a little bit. You know, obviously, the initial motivation of we're doing this. Right? But the discipline of even if I don't have the motivation, I'm going to keep doing this thing is really what's going to get you all the way there. Right? Whether that's a podcast. Right? Like, we do our podcast every Thursday. Yeah. Every Thursday without fail, in the morning, it is scheduled in my calendar. For filming a podcast, unless I'm out of town or some sort of emergency comes up, and even then, we move it to a different day.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:07:47]: Right? Land the amount of times that I've sat down to do the Northeast, and I do it with a cohost of mine, a buddy who is also, like, my media guy. And we'll sit down, and we'll sit there for, like, an hour and a half. Like, we have no idea what the hell we're gonna talk about right now. Right? And it's, like, not even until we, like, then go because we film it at my house. We go from, like, my living room to outside to, like, upstairs to where the podcast studio is. And then we sit down, Land we still don't know. And then I'm like, we gotta hit record right now, man. And I'll just, like, just, like, jot down, like, 4 little rough topics and, like, boom, we're doing it.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:08:22]: Right? Because it's scheduled. I don't have the motivation for it right now. I don't know what I'm going to talk about, but we gotta get this thing done. Right? It's scheduled into getting done today, and some of those episodes have wound up being the best ones. You know? The funnest, most exciting or interesting or or just, you know, we get off on a tangent on something or whatever it may be. The the scheduling it out is so important. Or it could be your social media presence. Right? Like, so many businesses around here, and I stay I stay pretty up to date with my competition in the area.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:49]: I'm sure. Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:08:50]: And, as any business owner should do is be aware of the competition. Don't obsess over it, but be aware of it. Right? And, you know, there's ones that haven't made a post in 2 weeks. You know? And it's I don't know. I just, you know, if you schedule it out and you make sure, Lay. We gotta put some content up. We gotta keep our name in in people's mouths and in people's ears. Right? You you're gonna go further because of it, and then you're gonna look back two and a half years from now, right, and be like, damn.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:09:14]: Like, I'm a 140 episodes into this podcast. Right? Or I got 20,000 followers on Instagram or whatever. You know? Yeah. So scheduling, you know, rely on of, like motivation, but rely on your scheduling more so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:28]: Yeah. Purse Land I found similarly, you know, every Thursday for the last, you know Yeah. Many years now, The the just the consistency of it gives people who are not yourself something they can rely on too if you've held yourself to that schedule.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:09:43]: That's a great point. I think, you know, especially in the podcasting space, like, I there's people I follow, right, that I'm like, I know that I could go on your page in the morning, person where if it was just up in the air of, like, well, when this person is motivated to make a podcast, they're gonna make 1, and it might be 3 weeks from now. It might be 2 days from now. I lose interest, much more, quickly in those people, I would say.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:13]: Yeah. Alright. Number 3. Alright. This is a really fun way to set it. Every Lay, do something that makes you uncomfortable.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:10:24]: an interesting one. Right? Because, like, the philosophy on it, I don't know Ohio, I don't remember who exactly that quote was from, but I I think, somebody who talks about that a lot is, like, Tim Ferris. Right? Tim Ferris is really big on the like. Use to do The. Like, I I think in one of his books, I read her as Ted Talk. He talked about, like, go to the coffee shop and ask for a 10% discount on your coffee just because. Spray because it's uncomfortable Land it's weird and it's gonna push you out of your comfort zone a little bit. Right? And if you look at, I'm sure, a lot of the most important things that you've done or the coolest things you've done, they've probably been the spontaneous and a little risky things.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:10:58]: Right? Starting a business is one of the most spontaneous and risky things that you could do. Pursue dog training, and I just wanted to go work for somebody for a little bit. But the fact The I was leaving a, quote unquote, like, stable, normal job to do this weird exotic thing where, frankly, when I quit my job and went into that space, I didn't even really know how much money I was gonna be making or anything like that. That's kind of an uncomfortable weird thing. Right? But you could look back now to hell to 11 years, whatever it's been, since then. Land, you know, that's the best decision that I ever made was making that decision and pulling that plug.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:37]: Yep. Taking a step back from all The, a really fun foundation to build on.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:11:40]: This is great, by the way. This is a straw this is probably the strongest start to a podcast I've ever done.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:45]: I love to hear that. Yeah. Tell us Lay little about your story.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:11:49]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So so to not

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:11:52]: get too crazy with it. So, I own a company called Miracle K9 Training. A boarding training daycare facility on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. I've been training dogs now for right around 11 years or so, give or take a a month or 2. And, I never had dogs growing up or anything. Frankly, if you would have asked me when I was a kid if I liked dogs, wanted a dog, was going to have a dog, I probably would have been pretty, unopinionated on it. The only reason why I started getting into dogs in the 1st place was because, when I moved out on my own, a couple friends had dogs, and it seemed cool Land, you know, girls were kinda into dogs and stuff, and I was like, oh, sounds fun. Let's give it a go.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:12:36]: Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:36]: Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:12:37]: So I I got my 1st dog. And up up until that point, because I had so little experience with dogs, you know, my only experience with them was basically friends that had dogs that were poorly behave that would either bark at me or jump over me or just be annoying, frankly. And I knew I didn't want that. So I decided to pursue, learning how to train this dog pretty much right away. Right? So I started kinda getting into that field at the time. Professionally you know, I had a a a regular job, but I was pursuing music. I was in a band. We did touring.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:13:09]: And I really thought that was gonna kinda be my my route, my golden ticket. Right? We were kinda gaining some traction with it. Things were going well. Long story short, that all kind of fall apart a little bit. Pursue, and I had this dog. Right? And I was really enjoying working with her and training with her and and stuff like that. Wasn't super thrilled with the idea of working in a factory my entire life. And, as I started progressing and moving through trainers to try to learn as much as I could about dog training, an opportunity presented itself where I could go work for the company that I was training at, Land, had a, a buddy that I knew from before that was already working there as kind of an in for me and decided to kind of pull the trigger and and move move into that field Land the rest kind of grew from there, you know? Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:54]: Yeah. Did did you feel that you always had this enterprising spirit where, you know, you knew that you would be going off on your own later.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:14:02]: No. Not at all. So I never, never in a 1000000 years, I would say not that it wasn't in me, but I was never self conscious of any sort of entrepreneurialness. I knew I was a rule breaker Lay whole life, which I feel like entrepreneurs and, like, rule breakers kind of go hand in hand. Right? Yep. You know, but but there was never a single thought in my mind of, like, oh, I wanna start my own company. Right? Like, my parents are, you know, middle class people that work for somebody and climbed the ladder in their respective jobs and work a hard day at work and came home and and supported their family and stuff like The, and that's all I really knew. You know? Nobody in my family was entrepreneurs or doing big things or anything like that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:14:43]: So what wound up happening was I was working for this guy, and I was working for him with this buddy that I had known prior to. And The conditions just weren't great. Right? Like, he was kind of an absent owner. He you know, whatever. Just wasn't providing what we wanted. We kinda had to basically learn how to run the company because he wasn't really there very much and stuff. And, you know, it just Land of progressively kept getting worse. And we made the decision that it's like, alright.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:15:08]: Well, we need to figure out some sort of solution for this. And it wasn't even my idea, honestly. In my mind, I was like, well, I'm just gonna leave this place and just go find a job somewhere else. Pursue, but the, the guy that I worked with, he was an entrepreneurial guy. Right? He had had businesses prior to he's very smart from that standpoint. Right? Land he's like, well, let's just start a company. Right? So we, ultimately kind of worked out a little bit of a game plan where it was like, alright. Well, this business right here, the owner, he had a lot of personal stuff going on.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:15:36]: There was no way he was gonna start becoming active with this company again. Sprite. But we had an existing clientele there. Right? We had daycare clients coming in. We had porting clients coming in. We had training packages all paid in full, purchased out for, like, 6 months. Right? The company had no money. Right? So, basically, we worked out a deal that was a win win for everybody.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:15:55]: That was, Lay, well, sign over the lease to this building. We don't want the company from the standpoint of, like, the name or anything. Yep. We want the location because it's very The, you know, boarding and daycare is very geographically located, obviously. And, you know, you could walk away scot free from this. You could take whatever cash and all that you have left. Go do whatever you want with it, and we will render out all of these services that are paid for on our dime. And, you know, you get to walk away from this scot free because if not, he would have had to refund.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:16:24]: I mean, it was like tens and tens of 1,000 of dollars of services, right, which which he wasn't really in a position to do. Or we could just do those services and, start our own thing, and that's what we wound up doing. And that's when we formed my first company, which was Heights Canine, which we formed in January of 2015. Yeah. And that was kind of the start of it. Like I said, I had no thought. Even at that point, I was like, I don't I don't know anything about running a business. I was pretty much leaning into this guy that was my business partner, from the sense of, like, he was able to get, you know, the LLC started.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:16:53]: Right? He was able to get the bank account situated and, you know, talk to lawyers. I'm like, do all that kind of stuff Land focus on that side of of, and I knew I was really good at training dogs. So I was like, alright. Well, I'll train the dogs. You do that, and, we'll kinda see where this goes from here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:10]: From that experience, where is the origin of of MiracleK n n?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:17:16]: Yeah. So that was obviously the best thing that could have happened to me was becoming a business partner with him and him helping kick start me on this journey into entrepreneurship, obviously. And given, like, my obsessive personality, I would say that over the course of those 4 years that we owned that company together, I wanted to learn more about the business side of things, which is what of sparked that drive into it. But, inevitably, you know, as you're moving along, because we got into owning this company out of, like, kind of desperation together with each other, there was never The sit down talk of, like, you know, where do we wanna see this thing go? Right? How do we wanna see this thing grow? What are our, you know, plans? Right? Like, what's our exit strategy if it doesn't work out? You know? Like, there was never any of the, like, important side of the conversation of, like, alright. Well, we own something together. Right? This isn't just like, hey, man. Let's you know, we're buddies now. Let's let's kinda do this thing.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:18:08]: Like this, this could evolve into something that that is really big, which it did. Right? So, as things kinda went along and I learned more about the business side of things, and my skills and training grew and my Land of reputation grew and stuff like that, we hit this point where there was just very clear differences as far as what we wanted out of things. You know and it was pretty apparent from the beginning. There were some very important things that I would say we disagreed on, you know, from the get go as far as operational things and how we wanted to grow and all of that. Land I there there were multiple times over the course of that company that I considered leaving it, but just had cold feet on it. You know? Like, I didn't feel like I was in a position to, like, start my own thing yet. I didn't trust myself that I was gonna be able to, like, make it work and figure it out like we talked about in the first quote.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:53]: Yeah. Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:18:54]: And, you know, as things kind of moved along, I would say the the I don't wanna call it animosity, but the difference is just kinda getting more and more apparent as the company grew, you know, where it was just kinda like, listen, man. Like, we gotta figure something out. Like, neither of us are happy right now. Let's figure out Let's figure out a solution for this.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:10]: Right. Right. Yeah. That resonates because it's not that it ever gets easier as No.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:19:15]: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:15]: It should should be fun.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:19:16]: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So and and it it you know, we there was like I said, I'm I'm sure both of us can say the same. There was just there was too much tension and Stern. You know? And and it wound up being the best for both of us exiting because we worked out a deal where our 1st company, we actually had multiple locations, which we could get into, you know, all sorts of issues with Lay we were just talking out there, right, scaling a company way too quickly without the right foundations and Stern, right, where we we were able to work out a deal where, basically, he kept The of the locations. I up one of the locations, you know, even split everybody's happy. You operate how you want to.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:19:48]: I operate how I want to, you know, miracle kind of started.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:51]: Amazing. Yeah. And maybe this is just me, but I would imagine when when most people think about, you know, dog training as a business category, purse I I would not imagine that the first thing that comes to mind is, like, a multimillion dollar rapidly scaling business, purse The that is, you know, young in its nature, you know. It's really a cool journey that I think you've been on, and I I'd love to understand What the vision for the company was at the beginning. And if, you know, in retrospect, you know, it's where you are now, did did you anticipate that it you would, you know, in this Land of way.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:20:31]: Well, getting back to not having had a lot of, like, entrepreneurial getting into all of this kind of Stern, and given the fact that over my first company, truthfully, I wasn't that involved in the, like, business side of things. Right? Like, the finances, the taxes, like, all of that kind of stuff. Like, I didn't deeply understand a lot of that kind of stuff. I knew it was you know, it's obviously you know, when you look at, like, how much you're charging for certain services, right, you look at how many people are coming in the door. Right? You're making sales calls and stuff like that, like, I know we're making money. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:05]: Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:21:05]: Yeah. But it was hard to really grasp, you know, how quickly things could have grown. You know? I'm trying to get back to the original question, which was like, you know, did I envision it? No. I didn't envision it at all. But looking back at it, I would say, like, any industry really has quite a bit of growth opportunity to it if you look at it. Right? Right. And, you know, yeah, as a sole dog trainer, like, you can make good money, obviously, but, like, you're not really gonna be able to scale it that huge. But the second you start turning things into a business and scaling it and getting multiple people that can do the same thing as you and you can provide more services.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:21:42]: Right? Yeah. Anything has the ability to kinda grow to that level, I would say. Yeah. Was that The question that I answered that? Okay. Yeah. I think I I feel like I forgot it, like, halfway through as I was answering it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:54]: Purse Yeah. And and we'll we'll circle back to that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:21:56]: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:57]: But I wanna ground a little bit of the the growth of Miracle The know, the nature of it, it is that what, you know, what you're doing. Yeah. It's dog training and

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:22:06]: Sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:06]: And the industry itself Land how it's evolved over time Land Mhmm. What it what it kinda looks like today. Pursue. So if you could just kinda, like, paint a picture of the dog training industry, you know, where where are we at?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:22:18]: Yeah. It's obviously become increasingly popular over the last 5 to 10 years, I would say. You know, dog training's always existed on different scales. Right? But from a business standpoint, I think the Internet is what really blew it up. Right? Like, I know, like, as a kid growing up and even when I first started training my 1st dog that I got, I didn't really grasp, like, what could be accomplished with dog training. Like, to me, dog training was always, you know, you go to PetSmart, and you got a class, send, you pay $100 to go in and do a couple puppy classes, and

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:47]: Right.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:22:47]: That's it. And, you know, as I talk to clients, like, over and over and over again, like, that's their picture of what what it is in a lot of cases as well. It's all of them called it. Like, yeah. I did puppy training when they were younger at PetSmart. Like, I don't know why their behavior is this way and stuff like that. And nothing against PetSmart, but it's like, that's not really training. Right? So what the Internet was able to do was it was able to put people in a position where they would post videos, right, and generate content of real training, right, and good training.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:23:13]: And it's not that people weren't doing it prior to. It's just it wasn't making its rounds and becoming as popular as it is right now. So now I think people just have a different picture in their head of what they can do from a training standpoint with their dog, which is causing them to seek out training help and be willing to pay a bigger price for that service because they've been able to see how much it can greatly impact your life. Like, your, was that your boss out there? Partners. Yeah. Partners. Yeah. Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:23:38]: So what he was just saying before he came in, he's got, an Irish wolfhound, which for people that don't know, it's Cleveland 120 to a 140 pound dog. It's a big ass dog. Right? And when you look at a lot of people, that dog outweighs your average human being in a lot of cases. You know what I mean? His wife, if she goes out to walk that dog, that dog is bigger and stronger than she is. Right? So without really, really good training established, that dog, frankly, even if it's not aggressive, ruin your life. You know what I mean? I was sharing a Stern about a client of mine who had his shoulders, like, literally ripped out of a socket because his dogs, Great Danes, were lunging at people. You know what I mean? Like, the amount of money and stress and headache these dogs can cause people, again, without out even adding aggression or serious behavioral issues onto the table, is extraordinary. Right? So you just ask yourself, like, you know, what's it worth it to you to get those problems fixed Land the fact there are solutions out there that people now can go online and see in the form of testimonials, videos, things like The.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:24:37]: Yeah. That's, it's getting back to, like, how the industry has grown and how we've been able to scale this company. Like, there's a huge market for that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:44]: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to to ask you about, and it's it's probably like a 2 pronged question.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:24:50]: Sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:51]: Is my sense as someone who doesn't have a dog. Yep. But observing it from from my friends who do, is that the the the right way is, The maybe there's not an objective right Lay. It's it's kind of polarizing. Right? And in a lot of ways, purse It it feels to me like parenting. Yeah. You know? And and, and so the the 2 pronged question is, you know, The I mean, the literal, like, elevation of dogs to to to children Mhmm. And and how, like, we as a society have have done that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:23]: Just of your perspective on Yeah. On how we, Lay to dogs.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:25:27]: Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:27]: And and if, you know, if there is a right way.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:25:31]: Mhmm. Land when you say the right way, do you mean how to train the dog? Yeah. Sure. So to answer the 1st question so, you know, if you look at the way society is shifting, right, people are getting married later. Having kids later or not having kids at all. Right? And in a world where, like, the Internet can be such a cruel Lay, sometimes the solitude of coming home if you don't have a significant other Land you don't have a kid because you don't have a significant other. Right? Be able to go home to your dog and have that dog be able to just fill every emotional void that you have is one of the biggest things going on in the dog world right now, which is causing people to get dogs, and also one of the biggest things that's causing our industries to blow up because we're treating dogs like children. Right.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:26:17]: And they're not kids. We could love them as much as we love our kids all day long. Right? Or we could say we love them as much as we love our kids, but they're not children, and they're a completely different species and they Stern in completely different ways. Right? So past that, as dogs are becoming a more important part of our life and filling that human role, what's happening is society is adjusting to meet that from the standpoint of now. I mean, I remember, I think it was 6 years ago or 7 years ago, something like The, maybe a little less, is when they first enacted the law Northeast you could start bringing dogs on the patios again or or bill or whatever the hell it was. Right? And, you know, prior to that, you couldn't take your dog to restaurants. Right? Now you could take your dog on The patios with you. Now hotels are becoming increasingly more dog popular.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:27:01]: Now you have these dog park bars that are popping up. There's 1 in Tremont. They had talks of making 1 in Middleburg Heights for a little bit and stuff. We're creating more and more things that now you could take your dog everywhere with you on top of that dog already filling all of those emotional needs. Right? It's it's a double edged sword because it's good. Because, like, listen, I wanna take my dog places with me. Hell, yeah. Right? Like, I get The to hang out with them and then be my buddy and provide all these great experiences for The and like that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:27:28]: But it's bad because as we're allowing people to do more with their dogs, we're not being mindful and cognitive of the fact that a lot these things we're doing with our dogs are really unnatural for them. Right? So we could look at, like, well, why have behavioral issues gotten so extreme over the last 5 years with dogs? It's because we're putting them in all new situations that they've never been in 5 years ago. If you look at the family dog 15 years ago, the family dog stayed with the family at home. Write. Right. And, you know, if guests came over, you threw them in the yard sometimes. You put them in another room if they were badly behaved. Land, you know, I remember I share The story all the time.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:28:03]: When I was a kid, I was at a buddy's house. We're having a pool party Land his dog's it's hot out. His dog's in the corner. I go over to try to pet it. The dog nails me in the hand real good. Pretty bad bite. And my parents were, why'd you pet the dog? Right? The dog's hot in the corner over there. You know? Why did you pet the dog? Right? And and it was it was my fault.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:28:21]: Right? Or now that same situation plays out. That's a big, big, big deal. Right? So, you know, it's our job as dog trainer is getting to them the methods Land the right way of things. Sometimes, you know, in the dog world, we get hung up on methods Land, like, how do we train the dog? How do we do this? But we forget that 75 to 85% of our job is helping owners to just understand the world we're putting their dog in. You know, we joke that we play like therapists with people sometimes. You know, in a lot of cases, it's not so much that the dog needs help. It's that the human needs help. Right? Land we gotta we gotta help them overcome those things.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:28:56]: But then you get to the the method side of things. Yeah. It is very much like with kids. Like, what's the right way to raise your children? It's like you ask 10 people, you're gonna get 10 different answers. Write, you there's there's, books out there. We have a a friend that just had a kid, and she was showing me these, these child raising books that she had bought. Right? And there were 2 very popular ones that she bought. One of them was I don't remember the names of them, but one of them was, like, the the French nanny or something like that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:29:22]: Write, and the book was basically of the mindset of, like, discipline is everything. Right? Like, with your kids, Bryte, you could raise them to be extremely polite, well balanced, well mannered children by providing a lot of structure and a lot of discipline for them at a young age to help them adapt into society. And then she had the other book, which was, like, the 2nd best selling book, which was the polar opposite. It was, like, the holistic approach to, like, micromanage and guide them through everything and allow them to come to their own decisions and create free thinking and, like, all that kind of stuff. Both of those extremes, their loudest voices are gonna be in the extremes, but the majority of people out there would take things in a much more balanced Lay of looking at individual policies and all that kind of of. Or with dog training, we would look at things more situational. It's like, yes, discipline is very is very important. Being able to provide consequences to your animal is very important or your kid is very important.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:30:27]: But do we need to do it for everything, probably not. There's probably some places that they would benefit from kind of coming to their own conclusions and being a little bit more independent in learning a little bit more naturally and holistically in a friendly and fun manner. You know what I mean? Yeah. But the consequences are still real life, and they have to come sometimes. Right? So that's kind of where we're at as far as the dog world. And there's a ton of, you know, just like with politics, dog training is very, very political. You know, there's a lot of people on both extremes that believe you should never tell your dog no or you should basically only tell your dog no for things, The. I just think people get too hung up in that side of things and not enough in just it depends.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:31:11]: So many variables. Like, what's your life with your dog? Where do you live? What do you need out of them? You know, what can you tolerate where another person might? Right? If you got 7 kids in the house, you're probably gonna need to do things a little different than if you were just a single guy with your dog at home and nobody ever came over the house. You know what I mean? Or If you live on a farm, you could probably give your dog a little bit more freedom than if you live in New York City. Right? Totally. Lay of

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Jeffrey Stern [00:32:59]: You had mentioned the the Internet as Land of this catalyst for the the proliferation of the whole dog training industry, a lot of content out The.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:33:07]: Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:08]: Which if it's like the case, it is in any other industry. There's also a lot of terrible advice out there. Pursue How and, again, this will be a multipronged thing, because I I'd love to hear, you know, your approach to to content. I know it's been kind of like a core driver for the whole business. Pursue But how have you instituted, like, what is what is the bar for being a dog trainer at Miracle K9? How do you bring people up on what your your take on the best practices are Land and your approach to to actually Yeah. You know, Land of soup to nuts. What does it look like, you know, when a a dog comes in And where I guess rather the owner comes in and is is is is asking you, you know, to to take them through this process. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:50]: And the the just the approach.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:33:51]: Sure. So so there's of multiple questions in there. So the first one is like, you know, how do you know, what what is the qualifications for a miracle K9 dog trainer or something along those lines, obviously. So I, generally speaking, prefer to bring in my dog trainers pretty green. Right? And that's not because I'm like, my way is the only way, and, you know, you have to learn only my system of things or anything like that. Put, you know, like, we were just kind of alluding to dog training is a little bit of an art. Right? And sometimes you could run into this boat of the more experience that you have, if it's only been guided in one particular direction, the harder of a time you're gonna have being open minded to adjustments you might need to make and things like that. Right? So, obviously, your your your foundations of your training, your of, like, how animals learn, your understanding of, you know, your teaching mechanisms Land all The kind of Stern.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:34:49]: Like, that's all pretty cut and dry. You have to understand those things. But the application of those things is really the important side of things. Right? Yeah. And that's where if you only have, you know, 10 years of experience in The application of things, sometimes you could be met quite a bit more pushback unintentionally when you try to get them to shift into, like, a different direction with stuff. Right? So I would say the majority of my trainers that I have or have had were pretty green, or had a little bit of dog training knowledge. And we're about to kind of shape and mold them into, you know, how we generally approach and look at dog training. But The the same time, you know, one of my trainers that I have right now was the exception to that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:35:28]: Right? She had almost 10 years of experience at a different company, and she's a kick ass trainer. And she was very good at what she did. Land, she was able to come into the company and adjust really, really well Land, you know, kind of, she's she's, you know, one of our best assets that we have right now. Right? So it Land of just depends. You know, but I I think that, you know, you could you could definitely run into a boat of of too much experience posing a problem when it comes to trying to represent, like, the work that we're trying to do, you know, or any individual company is trying to do. Yeah. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:02]: so so working our way towards the the growth of the business. Yeah. Because that is is something I'd really love to understand, kind of the evolution and and how change if you were to just, like, consider, you know, social media, word-of-mouth, pursue Land, you know, overall, just building trust Yes. As as a brand. Right? How what did that look like in the early days? When did you know you were on to something person that that would unlock this this kind of growth.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:36:30]: It's a good question. So the way that I look at currently kind of how our business model operates, pursue social media is important. Right? It definitely generates new clientele. Right? But the social media is for some of the trust building side of things. Because generally, how things work is early on in the in in the business, right, we built a really great reputation for ourselves. Write. That's gotta be your focus initially. Right? A lot of people get hung up on social media.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:36:57]: I need to do ads. I need to bring in leads. This, that. If you do good work and you do really good work, people will talk about it. And especially if you're a local business, like, you're not doing, like, sales with people, like, all across the country and stuff like that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:09]: Which which you are. What's that? Local business.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:37:12]: We are a local business. We do do stuff outside of the US or not the US. We do stuff outside of the state. Like, we do have clients that come from out of state fairly regularly. I do do virtual consults with people around the world and stuff like that. But, predominantly, pursue. We're Lay local business. You know what I mean? We're working with dogs in the The Cleveland area.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:37:28]: Yep. That's the majority of our clientele that we have. But if you do good work, people will start talking about you. And as people continue talking about you and you build a good name, it's gonna grow. Know what I mean? You're gonna get clientele in there, and you gotta be able to nurture that. But here's how it works. Right? As we continue to grow, word-of-mouth starts happening. Investments, big emotional investment.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:37:56]: Again, getting back to, like, people don't know that much about, like, what can training really accomplish? Maybe it was the anomaly that it worked with my neighbor's dog. Whatever. Right? They follow us on social Cleveland then they because we're consistent with things, we pump out content every single day that they could watch. That content is in the form of, educational videos, teaching people things about their dog, teaching people things about their behavioral issues they're could be entertainment. Right? We post some stuff that's solely for the sake of entertainment. Right? Keep you watching. Right? And then we post, call it testimonial type content, right, the Stern that draws in people to commit to the program, which is like before and after videos of dogs, testimonials that clients send us, things like that. Right? And I would say a very large chunk of the people that sign up for training with us, they say, I heard about you through a friend or maybe social media.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:38:47]: Maybe they saw an ad or something like The, and then I followed you for, like, 4 months. Right? And I kept going back and forth on, should I do it? Should I not do it? Should I do it? Should I not do it? But we built enough trust through the consistency of what we were putting out there where they finally pulled the trigger eventually. Right? So that's kind of how that funnel, I would say, works. I would say early on, I recognized that social media was really important about The time that I started getting into this. Some of the big name trainers at the time were first getting started on, like, you know, Facebook. They're making Facebook videos. They're making YouTube videos, stuff like that, and they were really blown up. And I was like, wow.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:39:22]: Like, these people have great names for themselves. Like, I'm following these people, obviously. I'm trying to learn from these people, they have all these people commenting on their stuff all the time. Like, maybe I should try to do that. Right? And I remember the first time that I really, really realized that this was kind of a game changer was we had this dog. Dog's name was Moose. Shout out, Moose. He's from Shaker Heights, actually.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:39:42]: Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:42]: Moose is listening.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:39:43]: Yeah. Pursue Moose Moose passed away recently, unfortunately. Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:39:46]: But, you know, it's a it's

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:39:47]: a it's a you know, we we worked The this Stern for a long time. You know? But this this was, The was 8 years ago, probably, something like that that we did his training, and he stayed at you know, we can get into, obviously, the business model of the company, obviously. He was a he stayed as a client with us. He boarded with us anytime they'd go out of town, did daycare with us, stuff like that. Right? But anyways, we did training with him, and he wasn't the worst dog by any means, but he was probably one of the more challenging dogs we had in in a while. We got some really good footage of him when he started his training. Pretty poorly behaved. Right? Sure.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:40:16]: And we got some really unbelievable footage of him post training. Right? And I just whipped up a little before and after video. And at the time, I posted it to Facebook, and the video kind of blew up. And when I said blew up, like, it wasn't going roll, like, all over the world, but, like, locally, it was getting shared around a lot. Right? And I remember that next week, phone was going off the hook. People call Land I was like, Lay. You know, what's up with your training? I'm interested in working with you. Stuff like that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:40:43]: And that's when I really realized, wow, this is The is something big. You know? I need to I need to keep doing this. And I did that for a long time. I I tried to get more and more consistent with posting, in I think it was 2017. Yeah. In 2017, I made myself a challenge at the beginning of the year that I was going to post 3 times a day, every single day.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:06]: Oh, wow.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:41:06]: Right? Which, listen, if you're I have a lot of empathy for people that are business owners The are also content creators as well. Because if you're operating a company, right, and you're making content, that's a lot of work. Making content is like a full time job, especially if you wanna be as consistent as you need to be about it. Right? So so whatever. So I stuck to it, and I posted 3 times a day every single day. I missed a handful of days here and The. But for the majority of the time, I was I was able to get that done. Land the growth we saw in the company over the course of that year Land, more specifically, the growth I saw for, like, my personal brands exploded.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:41:46]: Right? And The, I would say, is was right around the time when I was really getting serious if I need to exit this company that I was, with my business partner with because I realized how much bigger this could be than what it currently was. This could be a lot bigger than just some small local company. You know? So, that happened. And then, you know, through all that, I that's when I wound up realizing this is way too much work for me. I can't keep doing this. And, that's when I started getting into hiring media people, which that would that was the the talk about taking risks. Right? You know, like, when you're a small business, the idea of putting aside a full time salary for somebody generate media for you, it's very, very, very hard to Lay, like, an ROI on that. Yeah.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:42:32]: You know what I mean? Actually, it's impossible to calculate an ROI on it. You just have to kinda trust that it's the right decision. You know? Land, did that for a while. And, you know, as as things grew Land I realized again how much that kept building on itself, we're actually at a point where we have we have 3 media people that work for us. 2 of them are full time. 1 of them is kind of like a part time guy. The is the one I do my podcast with. Amazing.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:42:52]: Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:53]: So with all that, could you take us through just what what the company looks like today in the business model Lay you were alluding to.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:43:00]: So we are predominantly a training company. That's the one thing I always tell everybody. Right? So training is our bread and butter. Right? We work predominantly with behavioral modification. So dogs that are coming in Northeast because they're a puppy Land needle obedience training, we do that. We help people with that. But more importantly, people that are really struggling with their dog and their issues. Right? So, people will hire us for a service.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:43:23]: We offer either board and train services for people where the dog will stay with us for a little bit. We do the training. We send the dog home. We help the dog reintegrate back into the house, we offer 1 on 1 classes for people. And, our philosophy on training is we don't do a Lay carte. Right? So we offer 2 training programs that you could choose from. 1 is the behavioral modification board and train. 1 is the behavioral modification 1 on 1 course.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:43:46]: You're either doing full training or you're not doing any training. Right? So we wanna get you to fully commit as a customer to us. Right? Once you've done your training with us or in our system, right, in our family per se, you're eligible to use any of our additional services, which is boarding and daycare then at that point. Right? The boarding and the daycare is a very, very, very underlooked art, and I think a lot of training companies need to take a look at adding to their services if they're not doing it. And though it's a little bit of of, hassle initially, because you have all these dogs in your care. Right? You need to hire a lot more staff in order to do that than you would if you were just offering training. What happens is you keep people in the system where you're always their go to for everything. So you get the lifetime customers.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:44:32]: I was telling you about Moose. Right? Moose was a lifetime time customer with us. And because of that, they will never go anywhere else for anything they need. Where on the contrary, a couple Lay around here, some of our big competitors The do great work. Not saying that they're bad by any means, but they don't offer those services. They just do their training. Right? And what winds up happening is The do their training. Then a year later, they need to find a boarding kennel.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:44:54]: Right? They look around Land, naturally, they're going to want to find somebody specialized that's in training that can maintain the hard work that they put into things, they find out that we train in a very similar fashion. They start bringing the dog to us. And because of that, when they start running into issues, we're the go to then for them. Right? So we then generate that training clientele out of them because it's easier. It's convenience. They're already bringing the dog to us. Right? And tack on to that because we're so consistent with everything else. Sprite, the the trust has then been established also between us and them then at that point.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:31]: Yep. Right? Yeah. It it's it's almost like Vertical integration for the the life cycle of of dogs, if you will.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:45:39]: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Then you get into you know, they board us The whole time. Right? Like, dog pass us away, they get another one. We're kind of the go to for that. Land we want to draw people.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:45:47]: Land this is something I remember my business partner made really clear to me initially because early on in the company when we started our 1st company, I was looking at numbers. And I was like, well, we're making way more off of training than we are off of boarding or daycare, any of those types of things. But he got me to look at the bigger picture of, well, let's break this down. Right? Let's say The client who purchased, let's just say, our expensive program, a $42100 program with us, right, starts boarding with us twice a year and does day care once every 3 months with their dog and does that for 5 years. Like, do the math on that. I was like, Oh, shit. You're right. That's, like, $10,000.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:46:26]: Right? That's, like, $12,000. Right? So, ultimately, your percent that you're making off of the client starts getting skewed much more heavily in the other direction. And as the years go on and you get more and more people into your company, right, that number will greatly start to outweigh the other one. You know? And it's more seasonal. Right? Like, you look at boarding, like, obviously, like your holiday. Like, we're in our busy boarding season right now, summer and holiday season. Right? January, February, March comes around, it's going to slow down quite a bit Land training is going to greatly, outshoot that. Right? But, you know, in the long run, like, they're very, very important services to offer.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:47:02]: And I think that's a big part of our model that helps people coming to us. And a lot of reason why people choose us over other training companies because they know they're gonna need the boarding and daycare later. So they like the idea that they could get it all with us. Well, I'll do the training with you because I'm gonna board with you anyways.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:15]: Right. Right. You you mentioned the the bigger picture. Yeah. I'd I'd love if you could paint that that for us. You know, what what is what is the future of Miracle K9? Where are you trying to take this? And with that, you know, what what does success look like, you know, if you could look back in retrospect from that point in time?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:47:35]: Questions. I like it. Let me think about this for a minute. Okay. So the one thing that I think we've always been very good at is adaptability. Right? So you or or your partner mentioned, like, COVID, for example. Right? Like, COVID, brought a boom of business into the dog industry. And a lot of people equated that to people are getting dogs, COVID puppies, you know, stuff like that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:47:59]: In actuality, what I think it was was that people were working from home Land they couldn't escape their dog's poor behavior that they already had. Pray. Most of the dogs we got in were not puppies that people were getting from COVID. We did get some of those. Right? We did keep people rescuing dogs because they had more time for it. But, predominantly, it was people like, damn. Like, I'm home trying to do this Zoom call, and my dog is just going bananas in the other room. And I can't focus.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:48:20]: Right? And before, they were able to just go to work and forget about it and then come home and then give the dog attention where it's not a problem. Right? So so when I say we were really adaptable, what I mean by that is we were able to we were very quick to scale and descale based on the demand that we had. Right? Because, you know, in that huge boom we had, like, end of 2020 and 2021. Right? If we were staffed to handle that amount of, business prior to that, we would have went out of business. We couldn't afford that much The much staffing, obviously. Right? But we were able to grow really rapidly. And I think that our kind of system we have as far as kind of getting trainers onboarded, being able to have people that are great trainers, but maybe a little bit newer of of, provide the same level of service to these clients, that they would expect if, like, myself was doing the training. You know what I mean? We were able to grow, and we were able to take advantage of that boom.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:49:20]: Right? And then when things kind of started dipping down again, we were able to kind of just repurpose people and move them in different directions where we needed more support and, kind of descaled down to match that a little bit. Land, kind of descale down to match that a little bit and then grow other areas of the company, whether it was boarding or daycare. Right? So, that was really good. I think what we're looking for right now is we wanna continue to to get more and more, like, boutique with things. I think as we're moving towards more over the last couple of, COVID, right, past there being a lot of demand for it, one thing that's really picked up a lot is, like, online dog training. Right? People that are doing virtual stuff with people. And and though we take advantage of a little bit of that, I think that you can't discredit The. There are just some cases where you need the in person help.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:50:05]: And as we hit a point where people really need the help and most of the other trainers are moving towards trying to offer this, like, virtual kind of support for people, the in person help is gonna become much, much more in demand and much, much more profitable than at that point. Pursue. So I think, at this point, we're looking to kind of figure out a way to to make our services a little bit more boutique and shrink things back down a little bit, to to to help in that area. The makes sense.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:37]: Sure. Yeah. Building on The. Yep. The, you know, the the second The the flip side of that coin maybe is, what what does success look like, and and what is that impact that you hope to have looking back.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:50:51]: Success is being able to help as many people as we can. Right? I don't ever want to feel like we're selling out at the risk of our clientele because getting back to you look at the very first most important thing when you first start your company, it's providing really excellent results that people are gonna talk about. Land as you grow, it gets harder and harder to manage that, obviously. But if you could keep that your Land of Northeast Star and focus on it, it's gonna put you in a position to always do the right thing. Right? As you grow and you work with more clients, you run into issues. Right? Obviously, you're gonna run into unsatisfied clients sometimes. Right? And if that's your Northeast, you're gonna handle those things properly in a way where everybody is gonna leave not feeling, like, shafted on anything. You know what I mean? So I would say that is the most important thing.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:51:45]: Land no matter what that looks like, no matter how we scale or grow, the reason why we get so passionate about this industry is because we could see firsthand how impactful it can be on people's lives, you know? Yeah. Land, I mean, you just go through. Like, if if you you're listening to this and are just curious, like, if you don't have a dog, like, go on our Google page. We have, like, I think we I think we're probably the only dog trainer in the Cleveland area that has a perfect 5 star rating with, like, 225 reviews or something like The, where you could just read them and listen to the the relief and the pain people were feeling prior to starting the training and how much better their relationship is with their dog, because of it. Especially when you look at society shifting to dogs are, like, the most important thing to some people. That's massive. Write. Imagine if you have a kid Land you have a terrible relationship with your kid because you just don't understand them.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:52:40]: You don't understand how to communicate with them. Somehow The got fixed, and then you had a great relationship with them. That's how people are feeling about their docs.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:49]: Right? Highly compelling.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:52:51]: Yeah. It's massive. Right? So that's it. Right? Like, if we could just continue doing that, like, that's why I'm doing this. Write. And, yeah, like, money is great. Right? Like, creating business is great. I like, you know, when you look at it from the entrepreneurial side of things, right, like, I like of, opportunities for people.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:53:09]: Right? Like, I love this idea that there's 15 people that work for us, that they depend on me. You know what I mean? Like, for their livelihood. Like, that's pretty cool as well. Stressful sometimes. Right? But it's it's a cool feeling knowing that I'm helping those people as well, alright, in in a completely different fashion. Right? So I would say that's it. Right? Like, the the Northeast Stern, the goal is is The, just keep doing the best work that you can and, you know, focus on that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:35]: Yeah. I love it.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:53:36]: Yeah. It's

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:37]: awesome. What, in more reflection, have been the the biggest mistakes that that you made along the way.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:53:45]: Yeah. This one I thought

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:53:47]: a lot about because I saw this one on your thing. And this is always one of questions I feel like people ask, and it's like, God, like, you know, what do I say for it or this or that. Right? So I'll answer it a couple of different ways. Right? So from a personal standpoint, I would say the biggest mistakes that I made was putting my emotions in things too much. Right? The is a direct representation of where you're at personally in your life. If you're really happy, if you're really sad, if you're going through a rough time, stuff like that, and how the company is gonna operate. Right? You as the leader, as the forefront person, The energy is gonna seep into everybody else. Right? So from a personal standpoint, being mindful of that Land making sure that if you are going through a rough time, focusing on yourself first, getting yourself into a better spot, or if you're not able to do that rapidly, kinda check yourself before you do any sort of interactions with the company to get yourself into, like, kinda like put the happy face on and, and and keep the energy kind of going.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:54:47]: Right? From a operations standpoint, The same idea but with people. Right? Look at your Stern. And he was he was talking about he only wants the the hell yes people. Or one of the companies that he works with only wants the hell yes people. Now I'm not saying everybody needs to be like, hell yes all the time. Right? But, you cannot discredit how, you know, some of your best employees you might have from a, operational standpoint of the work they do and stuff like that. You might have The greatest train on the world, if their attitude isn't there and they don't get along with people very well or things like that, it's gonna ruin your company. Right? So be very aware of that and get that in check right away.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:55:26]: Write, culture is so important for keeping people aligned on the same vision. Right? Past that from an operational standpoint, you know, focusing on the business side of things and understanding it really well initially is so important. In my 1st company, I don't think either of us really understood the business side of things as good as we needed The, that showed itself in issues when it came to, like, end of the year. Like, we all did some taxes Land, oh, shit, we don't have that. We need to set up payment plan or contracts that you have in place Land the reason why you have certain things in your contracts and all of The. Right? Just making sure you're being mindful of all those things and trying to cover your bases as best as you can, whether that means you're finding a mentor in your field that's made all of those mistakes. Like, I do a lot of coaching with younger trainers around the country. And, it's funny.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:56:14]: Like, all of the issues that they come Land present to me, I was like, Yep. Did that. Right? Like, been there. Right? Here's how you handle that. Here's how I grew from it. You know, you Land really, really expediate some of the learning curve, you know, by doing that, obviously. Land and past that, I don't even know if this is necessarily a massive mistake that I made, but something I became increasingly more aware of as I moved through business was Sure. Understanding that the people that work for you, they are they're they're people.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:56:46]: You know what I mean? Like Oh, yeah. And and sometimes you can get a little too like, I have a very binary brain. Like, it's either this way or this way, and there's no gray area behind it and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? But, like, factor in, like, emotions and, like, personal lives, like, all that kind of Stern. Like, there's just there's an infinite amount of variables to things, and and you just need to be aware of that. Write and and and, you know, do your best to always just have the right intentions and hear people out and and stuff like that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:13]: Yeah. Very cool. I'm always curious in in this reflection, thread how the the aspects of your your former life have influence the work you're doing today. And, you know, I I always kinda think as, you know, the the the touring artist as an entrepreneurial undertaking. Purse But I'm curious if if, you know, any of the transferable lessons or experiences from from that walk of

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:57:43]: life. I think the thing that's tough is that, like, I'm still so young. Right? So if you look at, like so I started my 1st dog training company when I was, like, 20 of something like that. You know? I was, like, right around The, 2021. Right? So when I was playing in music, I was, like, 18, you know, seventeen, stuff like that. And, damn, we were so young. And and, yes, I do think there's something to be said about, like, I did have, like, kind of the mind of, like, this is this group of people. Right? And we're all collectively trying to strive towards this goal.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:58:17]: And there was no appointed, like, manager or, like, you're in charge of keeping us all on track and stuff like that. And I think I always Land of fell into that role

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:58:25]: a little bit. So so so

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:58:28]: I think that I think I think that, you know, you definitely can learn how, like, people need to be guided a little bit sometimes. Right? But I joke all the time. Like, if I were to go back in time now with all the knowledge I had and be in that band, right, after watching, like, all these other local bands and what they currently do and all the stakes we made and the traction we were able to gain not knowing anything about anything at the time, man, I feel like I'm pretty confident we could've we could've blew that up quite a bit more than we did right now. You know what I mean? Like, so I think it's more the other way around. Like, taking the lessons I learned from this and applying to that, like, You realize that everything you're doing like, if you're trying to make a name for yourself, whether it's music, whether it's business, whether it's whatever, you're a freaking plumber or something like The. Like, you know, you if you're if you're you're focused on your vision with it Land you come up with your path to get there and and the steps along the way, you know, you can make some big things happen for sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:20]: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It you have your product and your distribution.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:59:24]: Yeah. Right? Yeah. And it's like music is like The song is the product. Right? And it's like, how do we distribute this? Right? Like, how do we grow this? How do we market this? Right? That's another the marketing side of of. Like, just like people got to realize how important that is right now. You know? I cannot Stern it enough. Like I've said multiple times already of, like, you know, being aware of, like, my competition and stuff like that Stern on a local level. And, you know, if you're not making a name for yourself and putting yourself out there and generating content for people, like, in this day Land age where everything is on the Internet, you you're you're missing out, man.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [00:59:59]: Like, even when I'm looking to hire people for work, right, unrelated to my company. Like, I need to hire a freaking groomer for my hat or I need to, like, hire a mechanic or, need to learn how to do a, b, c, or d. It's like, you know, if I go on your website or social media channel or this or that, and there's just like nothing there, like, my expectations are just like so low already. I feel like.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:21]: Yeah. And it matters a lot.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:00:22]: Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:23]: I am curious how you know, with it as a as a big strength, of your organization, pursue. How you say Northeast just, you know, TikTok or, you know, like, when you've built this, you know, brand asset, you know, on YouTube, for example, like, How do you think about just all the different channels of of distribution?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:00:43]: Well, I, we've always kinda subscribed to, like, the Gary Vaynerchuk model of things, which is, like, if you could get 1 person that, like, films a lot of long form content and then get somebody to just clip it up and post it. And then, you know, you want to be noticed around all these platforms. Land it's like you can get super hung up sometimes in creating, like, what's the trending thing on TikTok, what's the trending thing on Instagram? What's the trending thing on YouTube? And though that's, I'm sure, very important and I'm sure if we did that with every single platform, we would have a much bigger following than we currently do, you know, you look at some of those guys. Like, Gary Vaynerchuk has a team of, like, 25 people that do that. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:18]: Yeah. You know

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:01:19]: what I mean? So, we have 3 people, which is a Lay, and it's more than most people do. And we've been able to come up with a model where basically the structure of things is we have my podcast guy, who I film my podcast with every week, and he edits the video and puts it on YouTube. Right? I have another girl that's a long form content creator that basically follows us around at the facility twice a week, and she films basically 2 pieces of long form content per week. And then I have 1 other girl that then takes those 3 things and clips them down and then cross post them amongst all platforms. And that's worked out pretty well for us so far. Like I said, I'm sure there's areas we could take much more advantage of things, and, you know, spend more time on, you know, making things specific for TikTok. Like, there are certain things like the platforms do where it's like if you edit the content within the platform, they push that content more. Right? So a lot of these guys that blow up on TikTok, Lay lot of the reason why the algorithm catches them past them making good content is the fact that they're doing everything just through TikTok.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:02:18]: They film the video on TikTok. The edit it on TikTok. They post it on TikTok. Right? They use all of the features TikTok has on all of those types of things. Right? And it's funny because if you look at a lot of those guys, like in the dog training space, there's a couple big names on TikTok, for example, that have, like, 2, 3, 4,000,000 followers. If you look at them on all their other platforms, they might have 10,000 followers. Right? And they're cross posting the same content, but it's not picking up the same on those platforms because it's not created in that platform. Right? So we've always taken the more broad paint stroke approach.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:02:47]: Land I don't know if it's necessarily right or wrong. Like, I'd love to have 4,000,000 followers on TikTok. Right? But but we've taken the broad paint stroke approach of, like, I'd rather have a moderate amount of followers on all of these platforms and have a presence on all of them then just specialize in, like, 1 singular The. You know? Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:03:07]: That makes sense.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:03:07]: So that's how we've looked at media, at least The the last couple years. And we have regular meetings, like, I would say once a quarter. We sit down and we look at, like, are there new platforms around? Like, we never used to post content. We used to do Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. Right? The big four. Right? And, you know, with Elon Musk recently buying Twitter and turning it into x and then, like, rumble's gotten really big lately Land platforms like that. In our last meeting, we were like, Let's start posting on those platforms also. Just Stern, you know, see what happens.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:03:38]: So we added those into the mix, and we're kinda just seeing how it goes over the next 6 months. And if they start becoming prevalent or popular, then, you know, we could put a little more attention into them.

Jeffrey Stern [01:03:49]: What do you wish more people understood about dogs that that they don't?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:03:56]: That they're not humans is obviously very, very important. Right? You become self aware that your dog is not a child Land all of those things you're telling yourself about what you should do with your dog because that's how you would treat a child is just false and just throw it out the window, you're going to be much better off. Right? Thing number 2 is that this is a good one. Just because you had 1 or 2 dogs before that were really well behaved does not mean that you're a phenomenal dog trainer. And I say this not to shame those people or be like, whatever. But I think one of the the biggest things that we hear from people is I've had 2 dogs, 3 dogs before. Land I trained them all myself, and this one just doesn't get it. Right? And because they've convinced their self that they are very good at training dogs, The they are not self aware of the things they might be doing incorrect with their new dog.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:04:52]: Right? Where in actuality, sometimes you just get easy dogs, really well tempered dogs. Most behavioral issues we experience are not because the owners did something bad to the dogs or the dogs had a bad past or anything like that. It's because it's because we just didn't understand them. Right? And their genetics are just a little bit off sometimes, and they just need something different. Right? So I think that's very important to be aware that all dogs are a little bit different. Sometimes there's easy dogs out there, and, you know, it'll cause you to seek out professional help faster, I think, and help you get past your issues faster. And then the last thing I would say is be okay with be okay with your not your dog not being perfect all the time. Right? I think sometimes in the the the the dog training space, as we start seeing results with dogs, people create this picture in their head of what their dog should be.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:05:53]: Right? And in a lot of cases, we could get pretty close to The, but sometimes there's variables outside of our control that, you know, if we just accept this quirky behavior that the dog does, right, assuming it's not anything that's super serious or dangerous or anything like The. If we could just accept that, a lot of times, it becomes not a problem. You know what I mean. We we sometimes create these pictures in our head of what it should look like when it doesn't have to look like that. You could live a great life with your dog, without them being, you know, this, like, show dog a perfectly trained creature. You know? So there's a lot of things, but I would say those are those are 3 good ones. Accept your dog a little bit, understand who the the the moral of all 3 of those is try to get to the root of who is your dog Land accept their flaws as you strive towards better.

Jeffrey Stern [01:06:45]: Oh, that's good.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:06:46]: I feel

Jeffrey Stern [01:06:46]: I feel like the the the wisdom there, you know, Applies maybe beyond dogs as well.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:06:50]: A lot of it does. Lot of it does, man. You know, that's why I said, like, you know, dog training, like, our job is, like, we're we're Land basically human, you know, therapist with people. Right? And, like, I talked about how in business, like, if you're struggling personally, your company is gonna struggle. Of you're struggling personally, your dog's going to struggle sometimes. You know? You put a lot of, a lot of emotions that dogs don't necessarily understand on them through some of your own personal issues you're experiencing sometimes.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:17]: What is it meant to build this company in Cleveland?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:07:21]: In Cleveland specifically.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:22]: Yep. And the role that, you know, maybe you found

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:07:25]: The

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:25]: community has Lay.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:07:26]: No. This is this is a good one. Right? So before I left my 1st company, in 2018, I was strongly, strongly, strongly considering moving to cargo and starting it there instead. Right? And I went to Chicago once a month for almost the entire year of 2018, Land I trained dogs and I started developing a little bit of a clientele out there. And one thing I realized as I was looking at all these different and as I started getting more connected with other business owners and dog trainers and stuff around the country, is that the community Lay that, like, small town feel that Cleveland kinda has, right, of, like, all the business owners kinda know each other a little bit, and all the bars and restaurant owners, They're all kind of buddies and this and that. It doesn't really exist that much in a lot of those other places. And this isn't all like, oh, go Cleveland. It's the best place ever, even though I I love it.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:08:21]: Right? But, like, there really is a very interesting thing in Cleveland where it's, like, it's it's it's got all the perks of a big city, I feel like, but it's got that kinda small city vibe to it still as far as that's concerned. You know? And I don't know. I mean, there's still competition. Right? There's still, you know, it's Stern business. Right? We're still trying to all outdo everybody else to some extent. Right? But, you know, especially in this field. Doc training is a really cool field because I could work with people of every single walk of life. Right? Like, the amount of different business owners I've met or people that are doing really interesting, unique things and stuff and the people I've been able to connect with.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:08:58]: It's been really, really, really cool. And, just Stern to to kind of feel like, you know, you Land make connections with other like minded folk, you know, that I feel like would probably be a lot more difficult to do elsewhere. Land, Now that I think about it, I think a lot of it has to do with, if you look at your bigger cities, New York, Chicago, stuff like that, most of the people there are people The, like Kate went there. You know what I mean? They're not born and raised there, so they went there. So they don't have that kind of connection, you know, like like they would somewhere like here where I feel like of the people in Cleveland that are business owners, probably, I would I would assume are predominantly from Cleveland. You know what I mean? Yep. So I think that's probably a lot of it. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:41]: I think we've, you know, we've covered a Lay of ground here. Pursue I appreciate you going into all different directions. Is there anything that that we haven't talked about as part of your journey, as part of Miracle K9 evolution The, you feel is particularly important to

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:10:00]: I guess the last point that I would Lay, I got a call. So, like, I know what sparked this conversation was, like, the 30 under 30 thing. Right? And when I got that, I got a call from somebody at some, I don't know, Cleveland, like, incubator kind of thing or whatever. Land she just wanted Lay quote of, like, you know, what does it mean to you that you got this and this and that? Land getting back to I never had entrepreneurial thoughts or anything, like, as a kid. And frankly, like, I was terrible at school. Right? I didn't do very well. That was like a huge contention point amongst my family and I. And just the fact that, like, it it is crazy looking back at, like, what we've been able to create.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:10:41]: And as somebody who barely passed high school, didn't go to college. Right? But, like, I always it wasn't because I was lazy. I just couldn't focus on The. You know? But, like, I was putting all this effort into the things I actually cared about. And I do think it's it's so cliche because everybody says it, but it's like highlighting, like, just because you weren't good in school, you know, just because you might not get good grades and all that kind of Stern. As long as you can work hard and have a goal and focus on that goal and be ready to kinda eat some shit to get to that goal, you could do a Lay, you know and you could make a really awesome life for yourself. And I think that would be that would be the piece of advice or last thing I would kinda put out.

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:26]: Yep. I love it. Well, I'll I'll ask you then our our traditional closing question, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:11:36]: What is what?

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:37]: A hidden gem.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:11:38]: Oh, Jesus Christ. I wasn't prepared for that one. Let me think about this for a minute. I'll give you I'll give you one just because I was there recently, and it comes with The, the the, you're talking just like a business?

Jeffrey Stern [01:11:49]: Anything could be anything. Yeah. Restaurants, nature, places, people.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:11:55]: Okay. Yeah. So so, The, we can't discredit the accessibility of everywhere from Cleveland. So, like, whether you need to, like, fly to, like, a different state or something like that or whatever, our airport is so easy to navigate and it's not super big and you can get anywhere from it is really awesome. Write, accessibility from a driving standpoint, the fact that Cleveland has all of the things you could want from, again, big city, small town, lakefront, national park, great hiking. You know what I mean? Like, that's one thing that I think sets Cleveland apart from a lot of other places. The just a shout out like a business, I would Lay. The most one of the most underrated restaurants, I think, in all of Cleveland is the schnitzel house in Parma.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:12:39]: Mhmm. You ever had it?

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:40]: I have it.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:12:40]: Oh my god. Well, it's

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:12:42]: it's like Octoberfest season, which is why I bring that one up, and I was just Stern, like, 2 weeks ago. The schnitzel house in Cleveland, they also just opened schnitz ale brewery there. It is it's 10 out of 10 if you like, like German food.

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:52]: Oh, phenomenal.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:12:53]: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:12:54]: Awesome. Well, David, I just want to thank you for coming on the podcast. Yeah. Sharing your story. If, if people had anything that they wanted to follow-up with you about.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:13:05]: Yeah. What would be

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:06]: the best way for them to do so?

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:13:07]: Yeah. So, we're miracle K9 training on everything. It's Miracle and then the letter k and the number 9, Instagram is, like, our predominant platform, I would say, as far as, like, communication and stuff like that. We'll get back to you anywhere, but that's the one that I would say we're the most active of, across all of them. Additionally, I do I do host the Dave of the Dog Trainer podcast. We're a 134 or 35 episodes in at this point. That comes out every week on Spotify. You could listen to that.

David Tirpak (Miracle K9 Training) [01:13:35]: And, And yeah, if you're a dog owner looking for help with your dog, we'd love to help you out. Miracle K9 Training everywhere. You could read all our services and rates and stuff on our website. If you're looking to just learn about dog training but maybe not sign up for anything, the podcast is a great resource. Our YouTube channel has a ton of really, really, really, really great content you Land look into.

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:52]: Amazing. Thank you. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:13:56]: That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So If you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm Land find us on Twitter at of, The e If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please percribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.