In this episode of the Pet Biz Podcast, host Lianne Shinton sits down with Jim Closson, a leading dog trainer and entrepreneur from Idaho. Jim is recognized as one of the most successful income-producing dog training business owners globally. Discover his remarkable journey, learn about his business acumen, and delve into his unique approach to dog training. This episode is packed with insights for anyone looking to elevate their business and training practices.

🔗 Visit Positive Pets Dog Training: https://www.positivepetsboise.com

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Transcript of Podcast:

Lianne Shinton (00:14)

Hi everybody and welcome to the Pet Biz podcast. I'm Leanne Shinton, the host and also the owner of Pet Biz Experts, software CRM for pet professionals like dog trainers. And today I'm interviewing a longtime friend and incredible businessman, Jim Claussen, and he owns Positive Pets Dog Training up in Idaho. And to me, Jim is arguably running one of the most successful income producing dog training businesses in the

world. Today's interview, we're going to dive deep into Jim's story and explore, you know, how he got to where he is. And I even, I didn't tell you Jim, but I did speak with some of your staff. So I have a few little sound bites I'd love, I'd love to just share because I think to hearing from his team.

Jim Closson (00:55)

boy.

Lianne Shinton (01:03)

He has built such an amazing business. His team is amazing and they've been with you for so long and it's a big team. It's just so impressive. I've known Jim since about maybe 2010, I think. Yeah, he's always been like, you you always want to watch what Jim's doing and he's just been such a helpful mentor to me and to Bret Just an inspiration from.

Jim Closson (01:15)

2010, yeah. Yeah, 2010.

Lianne Shinton (01:28)

Like the moment I met him, I knew he was someone that I wanted to learn from and he's always giving back. So his journey has been amazing and I'm so excited to hear about it. So welcome, Jim.

Jim Closson (01:40)

Well, thank you for having me.

Lianne Shinton (01:43)

And let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us about your life before positive pets and your journey?

Jim Closson (01:49)

okay. we're not on a time crunch, are we? I can, I can, I can really go back to, so growing, so growing up, my dad and my grandfather were crazy dog guys. mean, they absolutely loved dogs. So I got that from them. I mean, it was to tell you how crazy they were. My dad, when he gets out of the army, they have a German shepherd and I don't remember how old I was, but I was young, six, you know, about when you start to remember things.

Lianne Shinton (01:53)

No.

Jim Closson (02:16)

And the dog, which normally would have been like on a base, was we now had a German Shepherd in the home. And when the dog was there full time, my family took me in and said, hey, we think he has allergies to these dogs. So they did all their tests and sure enough, the doctor comes in and says, yes, your boy has allergies to the dogs. So I would recommend you get rid of the dogs. My dad looked at me and said, hey, boy, you can go live with grandma and grandpa. We're not getting rid of the dogs.

And the doctor was stunned. And he looked at the doctor and said, I'm not getting rid of my dogs. So fix him. And so I started taking shots to this day. I'm still allergic to dogs, but I built this fond immunity. I still take shots about every six months. and I'm allergic to horse hair and some other stuff. And I, and I ride horses all the time. So it's just one of those things you make adjustments, but that was my dad. He didn't know anything about the psychology of raising kids, but

Lianne Shinton (02:50)

you

horses.

Jim Closson (03:10)

He allowed me to make a lot of mistakes. I've got so many stories of his parenting skills. Things like when one of his German shepherds, he used to tell me, put your hand through the kennels, don't do all this other stuff. Because these were in the 70s and 80s, some man eating dogs. And I got bit a couple of times. So my dad would drag me back out there, grab the dog, and he would tell me to give the commands, and he would correct the dog.

And he, never accepted weakness. He never nurtured weakness. it was always fix it, fix it, fix it. And so I'm one of those people that could not get enough of dogs from the time I was young. My parents, instead of buying me toys would buy me dog books. I still have the very first dog book that my grandfather got me. And it's a national geographic encyclopedia dogs that I think was printed in the fifties and.

As a kid, I would just read about every single breed of dog in that book and where they were from and how they were created and what their job was. And by the time I was in, I remember in sixth grade, you know, you get reading time, I would pull out my dog books. And one of my friends, Ronnie, and we're still friends to this day, 40 something years later, he would cover up the name of the breed and I would have to guess the breed.

when he realized I knew every breed in that book, then it was like, I remember him calling over this girl, Carmen, and saying, hey, I'll bet you a nickel that Jim can guess, or Jimmy is what my name is, can guess every breed in this book. And so that was my first introduction of business, was how to make money with dogs. And it's all I ever wanted to do.

I went into the Marine Corps to be a dog handler. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the infantry and never got that opportunity. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I just wanted to work dogs. So I'm separated from the Marine Corps on a Friday. I decided to enroll in college, had never taken the SAT. I took the SAT on a Wednesday. Next week, I'm choosing classes. that's another story in itself of what I originally wanted to do in college and what I ended up doing.

And I will tell this. I'm going to keep that story pretty short. I decided because they didn't know I could make money training dogs. I just wanted to train dogs and just compete like in originally with Schutzen because my dad had introduced me to some of his friends who did Schutzen. And so in the 1980s, it was a gentleman who was now passed away, but his name is Gernard Rydell. My dad is from California and this gentleman was a friend of his. And so as a 12 year old, I was learning about Schutzen.

I found out later that Bernard Rydell was one of the gentlemen who brought schism to this country. was a friend of mine. So I was just going to be a hobby reader. So I went to college to study Veterinary Medicine. And in my junior year, I got a grant for my interview. I applied and you apply in your junior year and you go for your interview. And I got my interview and I went with another friend who

who also got an interview at the same time. So we drove together up to Oregon State University. I was going to Southern Oregon State University in Nashville and then I went up to Corvallis and Dean Hutton, who was the Dean of the Veterinary School, during the interview sees that I don't have any student loans. he, and yet that I'm married and he asked me some questions. One of them was, is someone paying for me to go to school? I said, no, I'm paying for myself. He said, how are you doing that?

told him I trained dogs and it allows me to earn enough money to pay for school. And he asked me, your wife work? said, no. He said, wait a minute, you train dogs and you make enough money, your wife doesn't have to work and you pay for school? I said, yes. And then he asked me, if you don't mind me asking how much does a dog train a week? And I told him, and he took my photo and he closed it. He said, young man, if you have the gift to solve people's problems with pets,

you will never go hungry. Before you decide to go to vet school, here's what you have to know. You are going to have to concentrate full time in school. You won't be able to treat your dogs. Your wife will have to work. The second thing is you have to know what it costs to be a vet. Not only are you going to rack up student loans here, but to stock a pharmacy and buy your actuary equipment and all you want to is hold it.

He said, but the last thing I want you to do, and he wrote down several students names. He said, these are students that are graduating this year. Tomorrow, when you go around and see the different sections, you're going to meet some of the students. I want you to ask them what they're going to make coming out of that school. And the next day, sure enough, we got to different areas and I'm looking at the list and as they introduced some of the students, I would say, hey, Dean Hutton wanted me to ask you, you have a guaranteed job coming out of school.

What are you gonna make? And each one of them told me, and one of them was the valedictorian. And he had a guaranteed job at a big small animal practice in Portland, Oregon, I'll never forget it. He was gonna make the most and none of them were doing what I was doing. And I was totally deflated. I realized, man, I'm gonna have to take a pay cut to be a veterinarian. And...

And I'm going to have to have student loans, hundreds of thousands of dollars from student loans, da da da da da. That was, that was winter term, my junior year. And so I was really deflated, but I came home and you don't find out if you get in until like a year later. So the end of winter term, my senior year, I get this letter. My wife opened it up and said, congratulations, know, getting accepted to Oregon State University School of Entrepreneurship. And I looked at

And I knew I didn't want to go. But my parents were jacked. My in -laws were jacked. I have a funny story about my father -in taking me out and celebrating. I knew I didn't want to go because I didn't want to have to take a pay cut. And so at the end of that winter term, I made a decision. I'm not going to go to school. I am just going to full time get into training. And I did. I quit school.

I walked away from a part -time job where I was working at a kennel and a police dog kennel. And I decided I'm jumping in. I burned all the ships. There was no plan B. Failure was not an option. We're going to do this. So before I threw in the towel and everything else, I sat down with my wife and I said, what do you want to do? Do you want to go to school? Do you want to? And she said, I would like to.

Be a stay at home mom and take care of the kids. had one daughter at the time and and Britta was, she was pregnant with Britta. She said, I'd like to be able to not have to work. I said, okay. And I knew I calculated how much it was going to take. knew what I had to do. And I said, okay, I'm jumping in both feet. No parachute. We're going for it. And you know, it may sound like it was two kids that were just.

scared to death that were just trying to survive, you know, because she did everything at home and I was working 80, 100 hour weeks. And it really was, but it was man, if you could have seen it in color, it was an awesome time to grow because something I learned was nobody is going to work as hard for me and my family as me. And I will make sure that nobody outworks me ever.

And that's how it took off. It started from a two -bedroom apartment in Ashland, Oregon, to being able to retire at the age of 46 with a large stream of income coming in. So I've been completely retired now for eight years.

Lianne Shinton (11:17)

That's outstanding. It's so wonderful that you listened. You paid attention to, you know, and followed the direction that you did. Very entrepreneurial and making such a huge decision to, not doing vet school, I'm doing this for your family too. And that's one of the things you're an amazing business person, but you're also always giving back and you treat people like their family.

Jim Closson (11:46)

I try, I try my very best to, that's a cultural thing and a genetic thing, I think. So, and I know you've known this, we've talked about it before. It's probably some of the viewers don't know this. I actually live on the Shoshone -Bannock Indian Reservation in Southeastern Idaho near Yellowstone National Park.

And

My grandmother is Native American and you have to take care of your people. You have to take care of your tribe, all of them around you. And from the time I was young, my dad shaped me to be a protector and a defender. And it's funny, my dad who's white and all his brothers married

Women of Native American descent. My uncle, his wife is 100%. I think she's chalked off from Oklahoma. My mom's from Oklahoma, was born in Oklahoma, but from a different different band. And my uncle, Bruce married a youth. Anyway, all those brothers married Native American or Native American descent women. It's a cultural thing. You take care of people.

You teach, you show, educate, you help them. And I was a kid growing up. mean, if you could talk to kids I was high school with, I, I am aggressive by nature. I am like that. My, my personality, if that were a dog would be a red healer loves his family and accepts everybody else. But by God, someone gets out of hand or does something wrong. I was never the kid that said, let's take it outside.

My friends from high school will tell you, Jim would start a fight right in front of the teacher. If someone did something wrong or if someone hurt a girl or picked on a special needs kid, there was no waiting till after school. We went right then. And plenty of times I got my butt drug up to the principal's office. But I never got in a lot of trouble because it was always defending someone who was weaker or someone who couldn't do whatever.

or someone picking on someone who has special needs. And I would just throw down right then without question, do you want to pick on someone? Let's go, let's go right now. And my whole life had been that way. And my dad was like that. My dad told me your job is to defend people who can't defend themselves. And go ahead, I'm sorry.

Lianne Shinton (14:25)

Okay. I, I got to play one of these sound bites. I did speak to your staff. I did a little behind the scenes research and I learned a lot about you. So let me just get one of these sound bites here.

Jim Closson (14:31)

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (15:36)

Beautiful.

Jim Closson (15:38)

Let me tell you about that client. That's true story. She was diagnosed with something I can't remember what it was. And she came to, trained mobility assistance dog for her. And she came, I think a couple of times a week between group classes and private lessons, just a really sweet gal. And she had like a 13 or 14 year old daughter at the time. I mean, her daughter's older now.

several years ago and she can make it through a set of symptoms. And I asked them and I said, well, is she sick? Because she was going to the hospital. said, her bandage in her band blew up. She doesn't know how she's going to get in here. And I think we have, well, 10 or 12 business vehicles. We had a 1999 or maybe it was a 2000 Chrysler maybe that.

that was in good shape when we took care of it. And it was one that hardly anybody drove. I said, why don't you give her that van, give her the title to that van. And we know mechanically that thing's in great shape. We just had it all tuned up. So give it to her. And he said, okay. So I said, don't tell her it came from me. Just give it to her. Give her the title and everything to make sure she didn't get the training.

But that lady has now gone on to establish a pet agency to get dogs into movies, petography, calendar, you see for dogs. We trained her daughter how to train dogs and they have they've had I think they're working on their. I don't know, 14th or 15th movie now with dogs and.

probably their 40th or 50th commercial. mean, national commercials like Lexus commercials. She's in LA right now filming a show. And with the van, after she got the van and she said, who do I think? Finally, someone must have told her, Jim told us to give you that name. And she came in and this is something that I told her.

that I experienced as a child. So stepping away from dog training as a moment, as an 11 -year -old child in Oklahoma, my dad was in the military. And my mom checks this out of school, me and my siblings, and we go to the VA hospital in Oklahoma City. And when we arrive, we go into this room, I think we call it a comfort room now. We go into this room and the doctor comes in.

and tells us you need to prepare for your father's passing. He's not going to make it through the weekend.

And so when we finally get into the room and he soaked up all these tubes, but he can talk. And I said, dad, the doctors tell us that you're not going to make it through the weekend. My dad pulled me close and he said, son, those doctors don't know what they're talking about. The body will do whatever the mind tells it to do. And my mind is telling me I'm not done.

He lived 19 and a half years. And if you want to find out more about him, Oregon Health Sciences University studied his body for 19 and a half years because they had no explanation of why he could live. And I told that lady, your body will do whatever your mind tells it to do. Don't think that this is forever. The doctors, there's no expiration date stamped on the bottom of your foot. You get up every morning.

and you fight. And now she has a very successful business.

And yeah, I hope there's no more of those sound bites that are like that because I'll get emotional. There's more.

Lianne Shinton (20:01)

Well, it's, I think it all, it's you. And the thing that I see with, you know, you're helping your, your customers and you're following their life. You're just so involved and on a personal level. But one of the things in speaking with your staff, and I'm going to play another story here, just a short soundbite, but it's going to showcase how you really care about your staff and

and you know i i think that one of the things you said to me yesterday we're speaking on the phone and you you found that giving back was a big way that helped you to move forward

Jim Closson (20:42)

Yeah, it did. It really did. And I can tell you the specific day after the sound bite, I'll tell you. I don't know if we're going to have a flow of questions, but there is a very specific day when I realized I needed to do that.

Lianne Shinton (20:57)

Let me play another one here.

Jim Closson (24:22)

I wasn't anticipating any of this. I don't do well with people praising me. then to hear all this and how, I have the greatest staff ever. They're the greatest people, you know? And that young lady there, Tammy, she worked from home for several months because she physically couldn't come into work. And I said, I went through goal -setting with her.

checking her constantly and having lupus. was in a lot of physical pain. gosh, Leanne, can't.

I thought this was just going to be a fun thing to talk about business. I mean, it's still fun. It's still fun. But and I'm glad you're seeing that it's it's just raw emotion. And so now now, you know, and. So now we can talk about how we got the business to there and what it takes mentally and everything to get there, because there's a lot of people that if you focus just on the money, let me say this, if you focus just on the money.

Lianne Shinton (25:06)

Sorry, sorry.

Yeah.

Jim Closson (25:33)

You'll have short -term success. You know, it's no different than playing a sport. mean, you focus on hitting a home run and you go up against Nolan Ryan and you go up against him 5 ,000 times. Eventually you're going to hit a home run, right? But if you focus on taking care of others and you focus on helping others achieve success and you can't be fake about it. You have to be genuine because

The universe sees through all that fake BS. You'll have short -term success, but then you'll always have something that knocks you down. you're getting smashed in the knee by a baseball bat if you are fake. Things will pop up. We see it, unfortunately, we see it more in this industry. I you can go and Google search dog trainer arrested for animal abuse. And every single year we're getting multiple times people

getting arrested or dogs dying or whatever it is, right? And probably one of the things, and hopefully I'm not skipping ahead here, but if I were to give some advice and if I could instill some wisdom with some of young people coming up, the very first thing I would do and what I would say to them is you have to take care of others first.

In the beginning, it's your clients. You know this because your team built our new website and everything, we have a couple of mantras that our business, was really who we are as a business. And one of them is, you'll see it on there, says we develop the canine mind and we enrich the human spirit. And when you are dealing with a client,

You are not just their doctoring, you're their coach, teacher, their their psychologist, their psychiatrist, their shoulder to cry on there, you know. And you have to take that and say, this is a pleasure for me, you to allow me to train your dog and take care of you in this journey. And if you do more, this is the other thing that we live by, do more.

be more and give more to your clients. You give them a better effort. You give them a better result. You do more for them by answering the goddamn phone when they call, returning the text, even when you're tired, okay? Even when you don't want to. And by doing more, giving more, and being more, what you're gonna find by sending out that

positive energy and being genuine about it. You can't fake this shit because the dog sees through it. You can trick some of the people some of the time, but you're not going to trick all the people. And we all know trainers out there that are just fake, just, you know, all the, just worry about the money, money, money. I never focused on the money ever. It just wasn't part of.

who I am even to this day. And you know, the financial position I'm in, I'm probably one of the, I mean, I was able to retire at 46. Let's just say that most people cannot do that. And if you come to my house, you're not going to see a portion of Ferrari and all that stuff. You're going to see that I drive a truck that's seven years old and my other little SUV,

is 21 years old. my company has new trucks, but those employees get to drive those trucks. And my wife drives a vehicle, I think it's five years old. It's just, you will never see me post, know, I'm on vacation all over. I don't do that, right? I want my staff to have fun. And one of the things that I teach them is when it stops being fun,

You have to stop. You have to stop. And so that's another piece of wisdom that I would share. That when it stops being fun, you have to stop. Now, you dictate how fun it is. If you were to call right now, randomly just call the phone to my office and you say, guess what we get to do today? Collectively, my entire staff would say, we get to train dogs.

You got damn right we do. Can you believe this? We're to do this for a living. Right. And if you have that much excitement in it, it's always fun. But when you're not Jen and you're trying to shortcut the process and you don't have a high standard, the universe has ways of coming in and just punching you right in the mouth.

You know, they give a dog diarrhea. Well, now what? You've got to give that dog your focus. Or it just things happen. And I, and I hear it from trainers all the time when they have a series of just negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, it is. Right. I keep telling them, listen, this is happening because of you. need to take responsibility for anything that happens to you or around you in your business. You're not taking responsibility.

And that's the thing that I instill with my staff. It's extreme ownership. We take responsibility of everything that happens. And it's the blame shifters that struggle in this business. And the universe has a way of weeding those people out. It's unfortunate if you really want to grow and be successful. Number one, have extreme ownership. Number two,

maintain a high standard, be willing to put your name on it. I train that dog. And I guaranteed that. And have that high standard across the board, how you deal with clients, how you do your training. And so can I tell you about a day that shifted my entire focus?

Lianne Shinton (32:18)

Yes, that was actually something I wanted to ask you. Is there anything that's a big turning point in your career for you?

Jim Closson (32:25)

There was. There was absolutely a turning point because when I was young in my 20s and I had my business and my business was by all standards, very successful. mean, it was I was making more money than my dad and I was 20 something years old. But I had that 20 something real mindset. Right. I didn't. I wasn't a jerk, but I didn't respect people's time and effort and my character wasn't the best. I would.

be late to appointments, I would blow off appointments and I would cancel appointments so I could go fish in, whatever it was. And there was a day, and I wish I could remember this lady's name because I owe everything to her. She doesn't even know. But I had been late to her appointment, must have been multiple times because I showed up at her house late again.

And I walked up to the door, I knocked on the door and she answered the door. as I went to step in, she put a fit in the door and blocked it. And she said, she used to refer to me as James. She said, Mr. Claus, today is a day you are never going to forget because today is a day that your life will change. And one of two things is going to happen today. Either you and your business are going to spiral into the toilet, in which case, ironing or

You will take this information and you become the very best dog trainer anyone's ever seen and have a great business. But either way, today's the day I am firing you as my dog trainer. Good day, sir. Boom and slammed the door on my face. And I stood there and she was right. 100 % on the money. Right. I drove home and I said to Kristen, you're not going to it just happened.

Here's what we need to do. We need to call every person that never finished training and find out what I did and never can do that again. And the hardest thing for my wife to do is to pick up that phone. This is before the days of caller ID and all of that stuff. I said, tell them that you're a business improvement coach, and you wanted to find out all the negative and why they didn't finish training.

To her credit, she sat and listened to these people just shit all over her. And it was all my fault. No one to blame but me. And that day I decided I would never ever even be one minute late for an appointment ever again. I would always maintain communication with my clients. I would text them, you know, because I used to do a lot of in -home lessons and I would text them leaving my appointment at

You know, Rancho Palo Verde is right now, getting your place. ETA is 22 minutes. And I set up my day where I would always get to their place. 10 to 15 minutes early. I'd park out front. I'd go through my notes. I'd look at what we did last time, but they would see me out there. I remember a gentleman once saying to me, Jim, you know what I love about you? I can set my clock by you. I know you're going to be pulling up in that driveway 10 minutes still, and you're going to sit there for seven minutes before you start walking up my drive.

I don't know what you're doing out there. looks like you're writing, but I know that if you tell me you're going to be here at 11, by God, you're going to be here at 10 minutes to 11 every single time. And that was the standard. That's what, and that's when I was training my staff from my, from my kids on, you put your name on something. You give it 100 % your best effort.

don't let anyone outwork you. And that day I wish I could remember her name. I had it in my notes for years and years and years. But that was the day. My mind set shifted. I needed to take this responsibility because people would say to me, they still do to this day, you're just a dog trainer. And I just smile.

dog trainer, it's more than most doctors, right? And I would just smile. Yeah, I'm just a dog trainer. But I took the stand that I am a professional dog trainer on the same levels as a professional whatever. And so my standard was the same across the board, which leads me into some of the viewers may not know this, but

We got a dog from someone that we both know that when we got this dog, the day I picked this dog up, I picked him up on a Sunday and I drove back from Vegas up to Boise. The very next day that dog was in a veterinary clinic, had an emergency tooth extraction because he had a broken tooth that was infected and he was getting ready to die. was 13 pounds underweight. His coat was bleached brown from the sun in Vegas.

And so I spent like $2 ,300 on surgery to get this dog. And we turned this dog around. And the reason I'm telling you the story is the standard that we achieved with this dog. And I let a lot of other people say, I trained that dog. That's why he's so successful.

I just smile, nod my head, yep. But you didn't have to fix all the shit that we fixed. Okay. But that particular dog in Brita had an opportunity and this is where the high standard comes in. Several years ago, a professional baseball team reached out to several dog tenders in the Boise area and said, we're having tryouts for someone that we want to have a back dog to pick up the bat.

So they scheduled all these times for professional dog trainers to come in. And when it was our time schedule, we arrived and I saw three other dog trainers vehicles there. So I knew, and I knew all three of them. And they put us in the waiting room first and then they come to the office and their marketing guys showing us around and all sorts of stuff. He said, don't we take you out on the field? And as they take us out on the field, I see the other dog trainer leaving. So I'm assuming the other two that I saw had already gone.

And the gentleman said, his name is Bob Flannery. There's a YouTube video of Britta with it. So you can guys can watch this. He said, want the dog to go from behind that screen over there, pick up the back and run back. And then he said something that I had to shake my head. And I looked, I said, excuse me. He said, how long will it take you to train your dog to do that? I said, let me get this straight. You just want that dog to run from over there. Right here, pick up the bat and go back.

He says, yeah. And while I was standing there waiting for him, while he was talking to the dog trainer, we were standing on the edge of the field. I was looking on the field and I saw that the right field banner was missing. I sponsored a poll. I noticed that. And when he asked me that, I said, Mr. Flannery, my dog can run from behind that cage, pick up that bat and run back.

He can run on these bases. He can slide into home plate. He can take bottles of water out to the ref. He can catch a fly ball. And if he can't do all of those things, I'll pay for that right field banner. But if he can, you make us the back dog and you give us that right field banner. And the marketing guy, the guy who came out and got us, Britt something said, I just sold the right field banner. I said, no, sir. Today you just met Jim Claussen. I am a professional dog trainer.

Britton, get your dog. And we blew him away. We absolutely blew him away. And I tell all of my staff, if you maintain a high standard across the board, when there is an opportunity, you will shine. You will shine. You hammer away at your craft, build your skillset, whether it's dog training, business, talking, whatever it is.

hammer weight that craft and you maintain a high standard at all times. And they signed us to a contract to be the T -Dog and they gave us a right field banner. And that led to the Boise State gig. Boise State had had the dog on that field since the early 1990s. But they came to us, they recruited us and said, how'd like that? Be the T -Dog. And I knew the guy that was the T -Dog, he was in the Retriever Club with me. And I said, unfortunately, I have to decline this.

They said, why? It's because they know that I'm not going to step on anybody's toes. If something happens, you dissolve the relationship with him. You'd be more than happy to come be a T .W. for it. But I'm not taking this. Just because I know that he wasn't a friend of mine. I mean, I never went out and had dinner with him, but I knew him in the retriever club. But my thing is, I did not want to bring any bad karma. And.

I didn't know it, but there was things that were happening in the background where they were dissolving the relationship anyway with him because of not having a good character, not showing up on time, letting the dog poop on the field and all of this stuff. And they reached out to the Boise Hawks and the Boise Hawks told them, when I got to tell you his dog can do something, that dog can do something. So they invited me to the Stuckl Sky Center later and they said, you thinking you'll pick up that tea?

And I said, not only can he pick up the tee and catch a fly ball, he can catch a pass. And they said, really? I said, yeah. And if you can't do those things, you give us the two dog position and give us a big banner over there. And it was so funny. We were down on the field and I said, go get your quarterback. Get ready to throw him a pass. And if you are ever at a Boise State game, they still use this video to this day. They put a Boise State Jersey on Cole.

and since passed away and I sent them on an out run and the quarterback through the pass and he jumped up in the air and he caught it in the end zone and they play that video whenever the Broncos score a touchdown. So it's pretty cool, but it's about maintaining a high standard all the time. Never lower your standard. Always give your clients more than they asked for, more than they paid.

Lianne Shinton (43:05)

That's awesome.

Jim Closson (43:20)

Because I see a lot of trainers out there charging big money, but they don't have the skill set to back it up. But they pay for all these, you know, how to be rich in dog training courses. And in the short term, they'll make some money. But in the long term, if you don't have a good character, you don't have a fat sound idea of my staff saying that about character and talent. That would make me cry too, because.

Lianne Shinton (43:44)

I don't have that one, no.

Jim Closson (43:49)

I teach all my staff and this came from the book of the book by John Maxwell called talent is never enough. And John Maxwell says, and he gives all kinds of examples of talented people that have poor character and crappy integrity. And again, unfortunately we see a lot in the dog training world. We have people that may be talented dog trainers, absolutely talented dog trainers, but they have garbage.

garbage characters, know, borderline criminal, and they have no integrity. They don't care that they screw people over. They got to take the money and run attitude. And so I all my staff members, I can build your talent, you can build your skillset, but you have to have a strong character to protect that talent. And you have to have an infallible integrity, that's your core character in your talent.

And if you have those three things, I don't care what you do, training dogs, training horses, being a professional athlete, being a banker, doesn't matter. You have those two things and you will have consistent enjoyment in life. And you have to work on those things every single day. Every single day.

Lianne Shinton (45:05)

One theme that I did get from your staff was that it's okay to make mistakes. And I think in you sharing that story of when you were younger and you were late and, you know, blow off appointments, go fishing, it's okay to make mistakes, but take ownership and, you know, find solutions. Don't keep making them.

Jim Closson (45:24)

Yeah. So I'll tell you another thing that I wish this, young man still worked for me because he would have been a great person to talk to. I had a young man that worked for me. He started working for me at the age of 17. He worked for me, I think about seven years. And we're always talking about goal setting and achieving his goals. And again, back to the, it's okay to make a mistake. I want

to be able to help people beyond those mistakes. So I tell them, it's okay to make mistakes. You can make a bunch of mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake twice, right? Because then it becomes a habit. You make the same mistake more than once. It becomes a habit. One of the soundbites you have is from one of our trainers, A -Lon, who's been with us, think six years now. And it was her, I think it's her fiance. And this young man, Greg, he made a mistake.

And it was a huge, huge mistake that most people, probably yet 100 % of all arms, 99 .9 % of all arms would have fired him. He left the roll up door open to our building overnight. So anyone could have just walked in, let all the dogs out. And most people would have fired him for it. And I said, when I found out it happened, he had made other mistakes.

not nearly critical, but other mistakes. But on this one, I called his dad and I called his dad and I said, this kid is first generation born in America out of Italian immigrants. They called his dad who was an engineer or something like that, some big high -tech dude at the, think at Micron, which is a big computer company in Boise. I called him up and I, Giovanni is the kid's

I talked to Jill's dad and I said, how does his brain work? He said, what do mean? I said, he's made a lot of mistakes. But I want to know how does his brain work so I can help him get better.

And his dad asked me what he did. And I gave him a list of all of them. He said, why haven't you fired him by now? I said, because that doesn't help him in life. What helps him in life is to coach him and teach him, show him, educate him. People are making mistakes. If we all get fired for the mistakes we made, how are we going to grow? I got to get this kid some confidence. I got to figure out how his brain works. So I sat down with his dad and I took notes.

What did you do when you were raising him? He has like, I don't remember how many brothers and sisters, but like 13, I think, or something huge Italian man. And he's like, and Gio is one of the youngest. So this guy's had a lot of experience with his kids working. And he said to me, I've never even heard of a boss caring as much as you care. And I said, I got to coach him up, man. The world is not an easy place.

We can coach these young people, we can teach them how to survive and find success, or we can just kick them aside. I'm not about to kick them aside. We need to help them. And he worked for me for however many more years. And when we got to some goal setting and some stuff, he said to me, I want to be an MMA fighter. He was a...

wrestler in high school and like top, not only tops in the state, top in the country. And his dad, Gait got him the best coach, which he was coached by some Bulgarians and he was an incredible wrestler. And he said to me, I want to be an MMA fighter. said, okay, what do you got to do to do that? And I helped him lay out a plan of action to be an MMA fighter. And I'll never forget the day he came to me and said, okay, I'm ready to be a professional.

And he put in his two week notice. said, I only have one question. I the door is always open, man. You can always come back, but you gotta, you gotta burn your ship. There should be no plan B. He said, I only have one request. Send me a ticket to your first professional match. And he said, deal. So he left probably six months ago and was training, training in a professional gym. That's all they do.

Lianne Shinton (49:52)

That's amazing.

Jim Closson (49:53)

The, I'd say still works for us. So she gives us updates.

Lianne Shinton (49:58)

That's awesome. Now you've, I know you're a very motivating person. I know that motivation and obviously hard work are essential to your success, but what have been some of the toughest obstacles you've had to overcome personally or professionally or both?

Jim Closson (49:59)

Yeah.

Both. So we'll start with personally, myself. I I had, and I know I'm not alone. So, so if you're, if you're watching this, there's a, there's a lot of people that are born with a negative mindset. And I was born with a negative mindset. And I, and so I had to overcome that first. And it's something you have to work on every now I have enough muscle memory that I can immediately I switched to.

to solving the problem. But a lot of people would get into overwhelm and they shut down. I would get into overwhelm and I would just get pissed and just stop what I was doing. And so let me say this, for those of you that get into overwhelm, this is for everybody. When you get into overwhelm, what you have to do is prioritize and execute. You ask any one of my staff members, what happens when you get into overwhelm? It's gonna happen.

You prioritize what has to be done first. What is urgent and important right now? What do I got to do? And you go through your priorities and then you fricking execute. You execute, execute, execute. So the very first thing I had to overcome and the toughest thing to overcome was me. I had to make sure that I took ownership. I had to focus on positive things. I had to get up early. I had to stay up late. I had to educate myself, not just about dog training.

educate myself on communication. So I did things that other dog trainers won't even consider. This is way back when I joined Toastmasters so I can learn how to Hopefully I'm speaking well now and you don't hear any verbal pauses. Those things, when people do that, nothing more makes you sound like a dumbass than when you do verbal pauses. And so

Lianne Shinton (52:05)

You

Jim Closson (52:07)

Excuse my language guys, but that's one of things where I teach with our training staff, where we're teaching them to do private lessons. We have clickers sitting there and every time they give a verbal pause, click, click until they recognize they're doing it and they cut it out. So way back in the early nineties, I was learning how to speak clearly, how to communicate with people. I was learning how to do sales. I was listening to back then cassettes and then it became CDs, Brian Tracy.

Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, all these things. Then I was, I knew that I could train dogs. That was easy, but I didn't know about the business side of it. So then I went crazy. I had to overcome the business aspect of it. So, and how to sell. So what I did is I went and learned how to sell cars. I went to Lithia, which was in my hometown of national Oregon. And I said, I want to be a car salesman. I didn't want to be a car salesman, but I wanted to learn how to sell because they have two strikes against them when people.

are walking in right then. So I spent two months training how to sell cars. And then once I get from where I could sell cars, I went, thanks. And I bailed. Then I thought, okay, who is selling something that's not a tangible item? And another friend of mine says, what about those guys that sell radio airtime? They sell radio commercials. So I went, awesome. And I found a radio station. I found a salesman. said, Hey,

I want to learn to sell radio airtime. He's like, why? I said, well, you're doing it right. You're making enough money. He's like, made great money. I said, well, you don't have anything to show them. I can show them a dog and what I can do. You got nothing. You got nothing but air. He's like, okay, ride shotgun with me. And that very first thing he said to me, and this is something I say to him when I'm training all over. Well, I don't train him anymore, but we're training any of our staff members when they're coming to watch how we do our consultations.

We say to them, I don't care if that client looks you right in the eye and asks you a direct question. And you may have even seen us solve it with another dog five minutes ago. You do not talk to them. You say to them, that's a great question. And since I'm here just to observe, I'm going to make sure that Leanne teaches you that question. You don't answer it because if you open your mouth, I'm leaving and you're going to have to close them.

And I did that to the guy and he got up and walked out. He just went to his car. And I didn't know what I was doing next. I didn't know what and I looked stupid and I walked out and he said, you just cost me a paycheck. Pardon. Don't ever do that again. And I learned how to sell radio airtime. And then I, yeah, so I learned all these things. I also learned how to sell insurance. became a licensed insurance agent. I became a licensed real estate agent.

All of these things on how to sell so that I had a bigger toolbox. And what when I would walk into that's that's a whole other podcast on just on doing your consultations, setting yourself up for success. When I was in college, I took a class called determination facts. And it because because one of the things I thought, well, if I don't accept the vet school, I'll be a cop with the dog. And and so I took this class, determination of facts.

And it was on interviewing and interrogation and how to get, you know, and so I had no one had to interview and interrogate how you arrange the seats, what type of seats, where you sit, how you control. mean, when you watch an interrogation of those guys know exactly what they're doing from the way they position the table to the seats. It's, it's, it's an art form. What's the same thing in sales. I do certain things.

to make them comfortable, to lower their guard, to get to the yes, there's all these different things. And we teach our staff and that's probably the biggest reason why we have a successful business. But it's not about using it in a negative way. It's about how to overcome things to get where we're at. Now, some of the other biggest challenges that I had to overcome, if you are a one man operation,

And you don't have a building yet. I lived in Boise, Idaho. Now, some of the things we haven't talked about yet, but I have to write this down so I don't get lost. Because I got to back up and tell you how I discovered this. Okay. At the age of 23, I was training, doing private lessons and was successful. But

All in one day, I had the single worst thing that could happen to me and the single best thing that could happen to me. I used to rodeo and at a rough stock rodeo in Grand Spass, Oregon in 1993, October of 1993, the shoot boss, Bo Pins from P9 Rodeo Company came over to me and my traveling partner, Shannon Jennings. And he said, hey boys.

There's a couple of bareback riders that aren't going to make it. They did come in from Wyoming and the horses are already in the chutes. We'll give you 50 bucks to turn them out. That was our entry fee for bull riding. I'm only 5 '8". I'm not that big of a guy. mean, I'm fat now because I'm old, but here's the reason why. I said, okay, I've never ridden a bareback horse a day in my life. I didn't know anything about it. And they opened that gate and it went something like this.

fucking out of the shenanigan, shoot on the horse called, good ride, Jim. I mean, that's how quick it was. And I ended up, I ended up with a compound or excuse me, compression fracture in my lower back. But I got up. I mean, I hit the, I hit hard and I got up and I'm like, man, that hurts my head. Maybe it broke my hip or something. And, and it hurt my wife's got it on video. I've seen it about now. It's funny now.

I watch it, but I only see it through the eyes of the camera. I don't remember it actually. And I had second go on the bulls. And as I was heating up my bull rope, the bull jumped straight up. And this is when vests were just becoming popular and I had saved it up money to buy a vest. Thank goodness that comes into play. The bull jumped straight up and I slipped off his back and I fell into the chute. The chute boss scared the bull back and the bull

dropped back in and stepped on my chest. But they didn't know that. They just knew I was pinned underneath this bowl. So they finally got the gate open because the bowl was leaning at me. And they got the gate open, I was unconscious. So the medic rushed me to the hospital and they did a thing called cardio -henothorax where they took a big needle and they pierced my rib cage, just the background of my heart filled with blood and they had to drain the blood. So that was the biggest thing they were worried about.

And so I was laid up, but nobody really knew that my back was broken because they were worried about being stepped on. But I just kept complaining of this pain, complaining of this pain, complaining of this pain. And I slowly got to point where I couldn't work. then I was training some police dogs in Northern California, in Crescent City, California. And my back locked up and I went to the ground. And one of the guys in attendance was a reserve deputy, but he's also a full -time chiropractor.

He got a backboard out of his truck, brought me into the kitchen, kind of stretched my back out, said, come into my office and take an x -ray, see what's going on. And that's how I discovered I had a compression fracture in my lower back. So I had to overcome that. And we...

I was still convinced that I was invincible and can do anything. And it ended up costing me everything. I lost everything. I lost my house. I lost my cars. lost, but it was, I lost my motorcycles. I lost my snowmobiles, but it was good because it taught me to put it away for a rainy day. Put it away for a rainy day, but I lost it all. Filed medical bankruptcy and

lost it all. And it was the worst part. This was the biggest thing I had to overcome. I will never forget the day that my father -in -law came down and picked up my wife, his daughter, and my two daughters, his grandchildren. Sarah, my oldest daughter, was four. Britta was nine months old. And I started to get in the truck with him and he said, no, I'm going to take care of these three. You.

You got to take care of yourself. And he wouldn't let me try. And at the time I was mad at him. I said, no, you got to solve this problem. Greatest thing he ever did for me. He could have given me a job. He had a big company. had a logging company, built roads and stuff for the state of Oregon. He couldn't give me a job. I even asked him, give me a job as a logger. He says, no, that's not your passion. That's my passion.

He said to me, you have to figure this out on your own. So I was homeless and I was sleeping in my car and my back was in such bad shape that I had to take a piece of plywood in a V shape, put it in the back seat and I slept like this. And the way I would eat, there was no cell phones back then. I would park across the street from McDonald's or Taco Bell and I would watch the drive and I would wait for someone to go through. They got a two or three bag order.

And I was parked right by a pay phone. And I would call that McDonald's and that Taco Bell. And I would say, hey, I'm the guy that just came through in the red Chevy truck with the big three bag order. You shorted me by a Big Mac and a Coke. no problem, sir, come on in. That's how I ate. For all practical purposes, that's stealing. The way I would shower, I'd throw a backpack on my back and I went up to the university where I went to school. I would just walk into the gym and shower. Nobody knew I was homeless. Nobody.

And winter started coming and it's cold, cold winter in Oregon. It's not freezing cold. It's because the humidity, it's really cold. And I would go into the library and I would just read dog books and dog magazines. used to be a magazine called Dog World come out every month and I would read it. And one day it was really cold and I was walking in and I, for whatever reason, turned down to a different aisle and a book, call it Divine Intervention, something more powerful than me.

said, look at this. And I looked down and the book was, it jumped out at me. Napoleon Hill was the author. that book, and I have to apologize. Sometimes I'll forget things my old age and another, had to overcome a medical issue. And so sometimes I can't remember even things that are, but it was a Think and Grow.

was the of the book. And I sat, started reading that book. And then I remember them over in the intercom saying, the library's going to close in 15 minutes. I got there in the morning. And now it's like 11 o 'clock at night. And I checked that book out. And that book single -handedly turned my life around. That's when I realized, OK.

If I don't change, nothing else is going to change. I have to change. Nobody is going to give me any. I must do this. So then I sat down and I took stock in my life. What am I good at? What are my strengths? I speak English. I'm college educator. I understand currency. I can read. I can write. I thought, got it. Make some money, but I couldn't physically train dogs. I thought, man, I know how to speak. I'd taken all these classes. So I went back to the university.

I went to the communications lab and there just happened to be this is another divine intervention thing. There happened to be a kid that remembered me from a few years before who was probably a freshman when I was junior. And he recognized me. I hey, can I come in here and cut an air check tape? He said, sure. So I cut an air check tape. And what I did is I patterned it after Casey Kasem and Rick B's that were popular DJs in 1980s. And I took that air check tape.

And I went to every scene, made a bunch of copies of it, went to every single radio station in town, turned it in, and I kept hearing, no, no, no,

And I go collect bottles and cans and I ended up getting a pager. was $8 a month for the page. And one day the pager went up. And I called the number and the guy said, hey, my name is Don James from KYJC radio in Medford, Oregon. I got a weekend gig if you want to.

I said, perfect. He said, come in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We'll teach you how to run the boards. didn't know anything about being a DJ. So then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, bring in the boards. said, it's Saturday, seven to midnight, Sunday, seven to midnight. I said, awesome, man. This is great. Haven't full time weekend job. said, one weekend, one time, because our regular weekend guy is out of town at a wedding. I said, okay. Thought I got.

one show. So what I did is I grabbed a country weekly magazine, read articles about whatever country artists and it was KYJC Rock in Country. And again, I just patterned everything after Rick Bees and Casey Kasich. And so when most people would say, you know, I don't even know what most DJs do. I would say things like,

Today's Busty country, KYJC, and I didn't use my own name. didn't want anybody to know who it was. I'm TK Austin with you on this Saturday afternoon. Coming up, got the brand new one from Garth Brooks, Reba McIntyre, and something that's a number one hit from a guy who used to be a hyster driver at Walmart. Stay with me, KYJC. Boom. And that was it. And I would just tease that.

People would call, who was that? was the high street? It was Alan Jackson. I read a story about it being a high street driver. But anyway, I was still homeless. So at the end of that Saturday night, when the midnight guy came in, I said, hey, I have to drive all the way back to Ashland, Oregon. I'm really, really tired. You care if I sleep in the break room and you just wake me up before the morning show people get here? And the morning show on Saturday was syndicated. So was some guy that came in and ran the boards and it was for.

Brooklyn Chase Weekly Country Calendar. He's like, I don't care. I'll wake up on me. So I went and slept in the Bricklin. And then Sunday night, the same thing, I signed off and said, okay, I'll see you later. And I'm walking out and the guy, I see the phone line lighting up and this guy runs up, hey kid, get in here. And it was that non -James. And he said, I've been listening to your show. You need to come see me tomorrow. So the next morning I came in.

And he gave me a full -time job, seven and a half full time, Monday through Friday. And he said, I've never heard you tell me you've never done radio before. He said, kid, you have prepared more than anyone I have ever met. I got professionals that have been in the business 20 years that don't prepare like you. And I realized in every aspect of my life, I have to prepare. And that got me a gig where it produced money.

And I slept on the break room couch. And after about nine months of not seeing my wife and my daughters, I finally, my dad gave me a car because all my other cars got repossessed. My dad gave me a 1972 Buick with no reverse and the heater didn't work, but it was a car. And I drove it all the way up to Eastern Oregon where my wife and my daughters lived. And I said, Hey honey, I'm going to make a million dollars training dogs.

And she said, I believe you. And I said, okay, next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to buy us the house. She's like, how? We're 11 months out of a bankruptcy, how are going to buy us a house? And one of the things that one night I was over at my mom's because it was really cold out. My mom was a nurse. She worked the swing shift and she got home at whatever one o 'clock in the morning. And she would sit and...

relax and drink her coffee or whatever cheese warm tea and then she'd go to sleep and as sitting the kitchen table on the television was how to buy real estate no money down Carlton sheets probably people in the late 80s early 90s remember this guy and my mom said that's probably fake it's probably a scam anyway i bought the course i think it was like 189 bucks

And within 45 days, I bought my very first kennel, no money down. And I went from being worth less than zero to literally one year out of a bankruptcy. I just bought a kennel. And this was in 1994 for $470 ,000 in Northern California, Smith River, California. It's very modern. I had that kennel for almost a year. And I turned that kennel into buying another kennel in Spring, Texas.

that was worth $1 .4 million, big boarding kennel and training center, and did it again with no money down, and bought that kennel. So at less than 18 months out of a bankruptcy, or maybe it's two years, less than two years out of a bankruptcy, I had a net worth of $1 .4 million. And then I lost it all again. Because I didn't understand real estate law. That's a whole other story, but I lost that kennel.

And I had $6 ,500 to my name. And my wife and I were just devastated. My wife was in tears. And she said, what are we going to do? I said, honey, point me any direction you want to go. And I'll make us money there. Because I learned in reading books and lots of books, you can give a million dollars to an uneducated person.

and they're going to piss it away. You could take a million dollars away from an educated man. He's gonna earn that money back and then some. So she wanted to be close to her parents. Her parents lived in Eastern Oregon. The closest town that had any population was Boise, Idaho. So we dropped anchor in Boise, Idaho with $6 ,500 to our name in 1990, I think it was October of 1996. And

$6 ,500 to our name, I had leased a little house in the country. And that first year from October to the following December, I had to service some police contracts. So had to go back to Texas. So I wasn't there until April 5th. I got my wife settled in. I had to go back to Texas to service these police dog contracts that I had. And I was there until April 5th. April 5th, came home. So April, I guess maybe it was April 5th and maybe it was April I came home. And April 5th, 96 to December 31st.

I made $74 ,000 in that time training dogs. And I did it by developing allied resources. And that's what I didn't want to forget to tell you. If you're a one man show, here's what I did. There was no Facebook, there was no YouTube, there was none of that. You had to advertise in the yellow pages and it cost a hell of a lot of money to advertise in the yellow pages. So what I did,

is I first found out on one side of town, do dog people walk is there, there was really no dog parks in the south, but there's always a collection of dog people. And in Boise, was Hyde Park. There's a place called Hyde Park in Boise and people walk their dogs. And then there's the Saturday farmers market and everybody, shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people walk their dogs Saturday market. So I took my German Shepherd who was 15 times in three.

And we went to the Saturday market and I just did tricks and stuff. And I was signing two or three people a weekend, making money. and then started to get cold and Boise it snows partner. And when it's cold, you're going to be trained dogs outside. So I had to figure out a way to train dogs and make money through the wintertime. So what I did is I approached a feed and farm store.

And I walked in, I asked to speak to the manager and I said, I have a question for you. How would you like to have 20 to 50 people a week walk in here that you need and want your product and services and you don't have to do anything to get them in here? He's like, what is this? I said, I'm professional dog trainer, teach classes. And if I could use your warehouse to teach, I'll make sure they buy your dog food, your leashes or whatever. It's a win -win situation. And I did that.

with an allied resource from 1996 until I opened up my first facility in 2014. So, what's that? Right at 20 years, I used allied resources until I didn't have a facility. I was training in the warehouse at Peace, Feed, and Farm stores and doing very, very well to the point where they gave me a key and said, lock up when you're And I'd have my clients walk through the stores and...

You know, I could get them all rung out and everything. And that's what I did. When I had my first and very first employee, we were at that feeding farm store. And so that's how you can overcome things. You just have to get creative. You have to make sure you focus on solving the problem. What's the solution? How do I get through this? And I think, you know, I wasn't blessed with rugged good looks or height or muscles, but I was blessed with the ability to solve problems.

The way you get out of overwhelm is you prioritize and you execute. And that was prioritizing. I need to have a place to be inside. And I need to do it right now. Who has an indoor place that, you know, and rocking and rolling. That's how we did it.

Lianne Shinton (1:15:29)

That's such a great story. A lot of great information that you provided there to unpack. One of the things that's very apparent is you're one of those great people that life, these things aren't happening to us, they're happening for us. And you were able to resonate with that. And then another thing that you've touched on was all this sales training that you've done, car salesman and things like that to learn and become this amazing businessman.

Jim Closson (1:15:46)

That's right.

Mm

Lianne Shinton (1:15:58)

But I know you came out to California, worked with us. You introduced us to, the Michael Ellis school, marker training, things like that. You've been to multiple dog trainer schools because you're not like, I got this. I'm amazing. If someone's doing something better than you are, you want to learn it. And that was something I wanted to point out is that you're an incredible dog trainer. And I also wanted to play another sound bite that I have here.

Jim Closson (1:16:06)

yeah.

Thank you.

let me get my tissues. Okay, this is not like... Okay. Okay.

Lianne Shinton (1:16:27)

Don't worry, this one, this isn't as emotional, but I thought this is.

Jim Closson (1:17:20)

That's our, I don't know why I'm eating most of that. That's our director of operations. That's Devin Martin and he's got a great story. His now wife, then girlfriend, 11 or 12, 13 years ago was working for me as a trainer and they were dating. was in college. He was getting ready to graduate with a degree in international business with an emphasis in French something.

He speaks near native to main French.

He wanted to intern and I'm like, you want to intern? He's like, yeah, I got, have the intern for this. You know, I'm going to go into this company. I think it was out of don't call me as soon as that of Ontario, Canada, where were the French speaking Canadian and so they were sending him to France for like three months, but he had to do an internship with a local business. And I knew the only reason he wanted to intern with me is because his girlfriend worked there. He just wanted to piss away time, but I made him ride shotgun with me. I mean, right here, you're going to watch.

Everything I do. And he did for having me once it was. And then he went off to France. He spent three months in France. And when he comes back, he approaches me and he says, Jim, I want to work for you. So why? Did you just get a degree in business? He said, I did. But spending that time with you and spending this time in France. He said that corporate world.

is savage, savage, quotes. I love how you take care of your employees and I want to be part of that. You can teach me how to train dogs, right? Yeah, you said I trained dogs and I made them just like all my kids. Every one of my kids, even though they were competing with their own dogs and as teenagers, when they came to work for me, is their adults, they started in the kennel picking up crap, cleaning up dogs. And just because you have town doesn't mean you're not starting the body. And I made him start.

And now 11, 12 years later, he's with me. He's a director of operations. He runs the whole show and he makes incredible money. He loves what he does. And his first goal that he wanted to achieve was he wanted to buy a house. I said, okay, let me show you how to do it. And we broke it down and he bought his first house. And then I teach him more about business and about voice inflection and command presence and problem solving. One of the things we do in our business with our team,

is they are required to do homework. And there's lots of homework when you work for me. One of the things is they have to read and listen to depending on how that person's brain works. We have books, so we do a book. We go through the book and how does that book relate to our company? And so everyone

of our employees has gone through Think and Grow Rich, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick, Find Your Why by Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. But then we also, I shouldn't say I make them, I want them to be positive and I have to open up their mind to different things like you touched on, the Michael Ellis School. A lot of people, a lot of trainers think that

You know, their way or their method or their whatever is the best. And what is crazy in, in training over the years is I figured out you have to have an open mind about this. So this is going to be both in dog training and people. One of the, the audio books, and I encourage everyone to listen to this.

The author is Joseph Marshall. Joseph Marshall, I'll tell you about Joseph Marshall. He is a native Lakota, Native American, indigenous person from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Tupco. He is an Ogallala. So there's different bands of the Lakota Sioux tribe, and he's from the Ogallala tribe. And he's authored multiple books, and some of them are historical books based on historical facts, but they're

coming from the perspective of the Native American. The Battle of Little Bighorn, the Fetterman fight, all these things are all from, you we learned the history from a white person's perspective, the history from the Indian's perspective. And one of the books that he wrote is the journey of Crazy Horse and who Crazy Horse was as a man and why he was so honored within the Lakota.

tribe. And if for those of that don't know, there's a crazy horse memorial that's being built not far from Mount Rushmore. I don't know how big Mount Rushmore is, but I know they can fit six Mount Rushmores in crazy horses nose. That's how big this is. If everyone would take a moment and listen to this when you drive the journey of crazy horse.

You're going to learn things from another culture's perspective. And it's going to help you be a better person because they talk about him as a defender and him as a warrior, but things that he did to help others. Like in my life, giving a van to a person who would have had no way to get to medical points or anything. In his life, he and his younger brother, when he was

16 or 18, his younger brother was 14 or 15, major blizzard hit the Lakota encampment and they couldn't find food. They couldn't find bison. And so the warriors pulled in and he was just a young warrior. And he got his brother and they went miles and miles and miles, like two days ride into the mountains. But the blizzard was covering this whole thing.

And they finally got him into some trees and they were getting ready to make a fire and they thought they saw something. And sure enough, they found a herd of elk that had bedded down in those same trees. So they slowly picked off a whole bunch of elk with their arrows. And because of the snow and the wind, they elk didn't know the others were getting picked off. And they made multiple trips back and forth, taking meat to the tribe. And they would arrive at night so that nobody would know who it was. And they would just drop.

these quarters off at the different teepees. And he fed his family last. He fed everyone else first and nobody knew who was doing it until they finally discovered when he came in, was craziness. If you take that in your own life and you help others and you send out that positive energy, can't explain how much comes back to you because there's nobody would have bet on me.

If he said, Hey, I got this kid who keeps getting this thing we didn't talk about when I got out of the Marine Corps, I went and saw my veterans rep and I got a job before I got into school and everything. kept getting fired from jobs because of my attitude. wasn't that I was a bad worker. It's just if someone squared off on me, like one guy made fun of my haircut, because when you separate from the Marine Corps, they immediately shave your head again. So this guy was making fun of my haircut. I can only take it so long. And then, then he took a swing at me.

And I got this job at Fred Meyer. have, I didn't even get my first paycheck. This guy took a swing at me and things got really ugly for him. And the police got called. I got fired, but I didn't get arrested because it was all on security camera. He started this shit. So then I got a job at a pizza parlor. And again, they, you know, they had cameras in there because the pizza parlor had been robbed before, but it wasn't like cameras they have today.

but one of the managers grabbed a girl by the ass. So I hit him in face with some hot pizza pans, knocked him out. Right? I knew I was going to get in trouble. Now the savior grace was he didn't see you did it. He was out cold, but you don't do that. And he turns out he was a sex offender. Right? But I had to leave that job. And then another one, I got another job where this guy anyway, and I kept getting fired. And my dad said to me, he said, boy,

You better plan on one of three things in life. One, you keep going down this path. You better get used to living in a 24 hour controlled environment because that's where you're in. Two, you go back in the Marine Corps and take any job they'll give you. Three, you will be your own business and figure out how to do this with no one else's help. And that's what I did. You know, they changed my character and everything.

that book, I always have to keep putting good stuff in my brain. And so I'm always listening to audio books on improvement, success, the psychology of how the brain works. And that leads to learning about different styles of training in the Michael Ellis School. know, the people that think, and we have really two big camps. have the purely positive that think you don't even use the word no, right?

Shame on you for using a leash or an e -collar. And then you have people that think the e -collar is the only way to go. Right? You can do anything with the e -collar. Well, they're both right. They're both wrong. But a good training, just like a good mechanic, has a huge tool set. So I, like you, and like I encourage all my staff, I my staff to Michael at school. I send them to different seminars. I mean, we do all kinds stuff. Because I want them to have a broad knowledge.

And any trainer that says, can only train with me, you can't train with anybody else. That's a big problem. That is a big problem. That's a guy who's trying to create his own cult, right? And it happened.

You have to have big knowledge. And one thing we learned by training with all these different trainers and nobody really discusses this. And you and I have talked about this before and you know that I trademarked this a long time ago, but it didn't matter who I was training with, whether I was training with Michael Ellis or I was training with Mike Lardy, which is a guy who's won 14 national retriever championships or Terry Chandler, who's in the hall of fame of training German short hair pointers, you know, or

drawn a blank on Raymond's last name. Raymond was a guy when I lived in Texas, he trained hound dogs to Bay of hogs. But any of these guys from, from world champions in agility that my daughter trains with or world champions in hurting, hurting judges, Carol Gerken, all these people.

If you pay attention, meaning you tune out the white noise and you focus on what's being done, it doesn't matter if they're using the decaller, they're using the lease, they're using the clicker, they're using food. What's happening is they all were abiding by principles. And principles are an undeniable truth in relation to a belief or a method.

So principles in dog training are things like make it easy for the dog to do the right thing and make it hard for the dog to do the wrong.

And a lot of people don't realize this, but they do it all the time. Okay. An e -collar trainer will make it easy for the dog to do the right thing by keeping him on the leash in the beginning to teach him how the collar works. And then they take them off the leash. Clicker trainer does the same thing. The clicker trainer keeps him on the leash, makes it easy for the dog to do whatever. Someone who doesn't use a clicker, doesn't use an e -collar, but just uses leash pressure, they keep them on the leash and they fall into that principle of make it easy for the dog to do the right thing. Make it hard for the dog to do wrong thing.

Well, we've identified and there's more out there, but my staff, can ask my staff. are 49 principles that we have identified that it doesn't matter who you watch train, whether you watch Ivan Balabanoff doing Shitsun, you watch Bart doing Belgian ring. You watch Michael doing Mondial ring. You watch Sylvia Turkman doing agility and

Europe, well, the one thing that every one of these people can agree on, they may not understand the concept, but you can watch a video and I can point out a principle. And then I'll say, okay, now go watch this person. Go watch Bart with the remote collar. And I'll show you the exact same principle in play right there. Go watch that houndsman who starts his dogs on collars from day one.

And I'll show you the same principle as Zach George, who doesn't use anything negative, but the principles are all the same. And what that allows you to do where other trainers, and this is in the gundog world, especially in the gundog world, people will have their system, their method, their way of doing things. And here's how you can spot a guy. Ask them, do you ever get dogs that wash out? yeah. That one question.

tells you he has one way of doing this. And if the dog doesn't learn his way, he washes them out. I never have wash ups. They don't happen because I don't try to fit a round peg in a square hole or a square peg in a round hole. What I do is I use principles. We are principle based trainers and that's what we have trademarked, principle based dog training. We see the principle and then we find

what works for that dog. What works for training a Bischlo to be a competitive hunting dog. It's not gonna work for training a German import Drahtar who has a totally different drive set. Yeah, but they're both pointers, ha ha. There's two things you have to understand. This is another principle. To be successful training a dog, you have to know two things about.

What he is, we call this the what and who principle. What that dog is, that's genetics, that's DNA. You can't change that. Okay. A greyhound, different than a draughthound. A border collie, different than a pit bull. Right? A great dane, different than a chihuahua. So what is he? What are his hardwired instincts? And then the second half of that is who is he?

What are his individual characteristics? What drives that dog? Is it a ball? Is it a frisbee? Is it a tug? Is it food? Is it sheep? What is it? So when you know what they are and you know who they are, then you build a program to them. You teach how they learn. You don't teach how you learn. It's not about us. It's about the dog. So we get a client says, I don't want to use food. I said, I totally get it, man. You're not alone.

I absolutely get it. Let me ask you question. What do you want to use? Well, I want him to do it because I tell him to do it. Get perfect. But can I share something with you? And he said, yeah. He said every dog has to work for something. So wouldn't it be more advantageous for us if we could find out what he already likes and then we use it to our advantage? I said, for example, you work for money, right? You get paid, right? He says, yeah. Well, what if I said I'm going to pay you 500 an hour? Would you go work for me?

Of course you would. Well, what if we got to the end of that pay period and you went to pick up your check and you're thinking, okay, 500 an hour times 80 hours a week. Man, my page is going to be $4 ,500 or whatever it is, But then I hand you a pile of oranges and you just look at me like, what the hell, would you be mad? Well, hell yeah, I'd be mad. I say, yeah, but what if I said, I don't believe in money? I believe in barter. So I'm going to give you 4 ,500 oranges.

And then you can barter that for your food. Would you be mad? Yeah. I said, it's a dog in the same way. Don't break the trust. Build on what the dog wants. And if we have to use food, I'll show you how we eliminate food later, but let's use it to get started. Yesterday, we had a client that flew in, Donnie is training, Ed's a visual. And he's out with his client, right? And yesterday, the client said to me,

I've had to fix this dog. had taken this dog to another gun dog trainer and he was referral and we've had to fix it. So this dog was mentally broken. And he sees the dog yesterday. The dog comes out and I'm going to say that this dog, just the sight of the shotgun would cause this dog to defecate and fly off. And he comes out and I said, sit here in the gator. We're going to go down to the lower pasture and I'm going to show you. So he jumps in the gator. We drive down to my little pasture.

and Donnie gets a dog out and the dog was stuck to him like glue before all fear, know, Velcro dog, right? And the last thing I teach about pointing dog is how to heal because I want them out looking in the field. don't want healing. So Donnie gets a dog out, brings it out and the dog's at the end of a 50 foot check part acting like a sled dog. He's like, how come that dog's not stuck to Donnie like glue? I say because the dog has confidence.

And then he turned, Donnie got into the wind, that dog locked up on point. And then Jody comes out with the 12 gauge, bird goes up, boom! And the dog stays locked on point, doesn't move. This guy immediately called his wife, you're not going to believe this. And he said, how did you do that? I said, she told us how to train her. Well, what do mean she told you? And I talked to him about principles. And for those trainers that will focus on principles.

instead of methods, they're going to find success like they've never seen before. Because now you've opened up a bigger tool box, but you got to know how to use those tools. Another, another principle in training is create the tool before you use the tool. Teach the dog what the tool is. So the way I introduce a dog to a remote collar is radically different than the way most people introduce a dog to a remote collar. As a matter of fact,

I'm now seeing more and more people doing it this way. And I don't know if they watched me or whatever, but I know they didn't do that before, but we create the tool before we use the tool. So we create what the clicker is before we start using the clicker to mark time. We create the verbal keys. We introduce the leash. Like when someone buys a puppy from me and they say, man, why is it so easy to teach a puppy to walk in the leash? Well, let me tell you why. When they're eight weeks old, I tie them together in pairs.

It's an old trick I learned from a horse trainer. He would take his young colts and tie them to a donkey and the donkey would go all around and the young horse would be forced to follow the donkey. Well, guess what the puppy learns when he's tied to his little mate or a young horse. By young I mean in age, you know, because you can't ride them until they're mature enough to handle a rider. But put a halter on them and you tie them to a donkey and they learn to give to pressure. So these six, seven, week old puppies are tied in pairs.

They're put loose in my yard and one puppy wants to go this way and another puppy wants to go that way. flip over and then they start a little fight and they're like, Jesus, stop pulling me around. but guess what? They learn. They learn to give to pressure at a young age. So by the time the owner puts a leash on him eight or nine weeks, they're like, man, this puppy doesn't even pull. He knows to give to pressure. And that's another principle, the pressure principle. As dog trainers, I don't care if you're a

exclusively food -based trainer. You don't use anything negative, exclusive or low -calorie. In order for your dog to be happy in life, a human to be happy in life, a gorilla, a lion, it doesn't matter. They have to know how to turn off pressure, whether it's pressure of hunger. I, because I live on the reservation, it's, I don't know if you can hear the background. Can you hear what's playing in the background?

Lianne Shinton (1:38:10)

No.

Jim Closson (1:38:11)

Okay, so in my house, I have speakers on my house and I play Native American flute music because it relaxes the dogs. It's crazy, but you watch dogs coming and they're amped up and they just, they just melt because it's set to certainly be primitive. But anyway, out here, I have hawks and I have eagles and I have what, pronghorn that I've taken and elk and moose and wolves and coyotes. They're all, those are my neighbors. Okay.

And so when you watch them, watch them solve pressure, you watch a coyote solving the hunger pressure. What do they do? They feel the pressure. How do I turn it off? They learn how to hunt, right? So for those people, those trainers that say, and again, this is more prevalent in the gun dog world. You can't train a dog till he's six months old. Here's what I hear.

I don't want to train your dog to a six months old because I use so much force in my training. He has to be able to mentally handle the ass kick and I'm going to give him.

Does that happen in nature? It doesn't. I've never once, and I have three significant coyote populations around my property. Never once have I been sitting on my deck, watch a coyote pair say to their puppies, stay in the den. We'll come get you at six months old. We'll teach you how to hunt. It doesn't happen. You watch them out here. Those pups...

start off stocking grasshoppers and butterflies and the moms teach him how to graduate from that to field mice and ground squirrels. And by the time that animal's a year old, he's bringing down fawns three times his size, right? He's had all this whole year of experience hunting all these little things. And as his skill goes up, his confidence goes up and then his prey gets bigger.

Same thing with the wolves, same thing with the cougars, right? They teach them from the very beginning. And the more you learn about how the brain works. So as a dog trainer, you need to learn not only how a predator's brain works, the dog, but you need to learn how human brain works. So I get this description psychology today and I have a part of different groups on how the brain works. And there's been a lot of studies.

that had been done on how the brain works. But this all goes back to when I was in college. Here's another story about me overcoming something. I've overcome a lot of stuff. When I got out of the Marine Corps on a Friday, I didn't take the sack. I knew from high school I was going into the Marine Corps, so I didn't bother taking it. And so I go to the university, they say, you take the sack, no, come and take it on Wednesday. So I come in and take it, you pass. So you're in. My first term in college,

I got five F's and a D. And the D was in tennis because I was cutting that class trying to figure out how to study for all this other stuff. Right. And I go into a student advisor and they put me on academic probation. They deny me my, or they put a hold on like my, the stuff in my military, the GI Bill and some other, said, if you don't get this up. And, and so.

I said, high school is easy for me. I've breezed through high school and tell a story about, but I had motivation. I wanted my own dog and remind me to come back to that. Cause that's a great story too. But they sent me to the student advisor. He said, instead of putting me in easier classes, this kid, and again, I wish I can remember this kid's name. He said to me, tell me about yourself.

I just got a record three months ago about how I was raised. He said, okay, I know you want to study prevent medicine, but I want to introduce you to a professor I think would be much better for you as an advisor. He's in the criminology department. I said perfect because I thought if I can't get into vet school, I'll be a cop. I I want you to go see Dr. James Brady.

This guy had a profound influence on my life. I'll never forget the day I met him. The kid said, I'll set up a time for you. The kid set up a time and I arrive. I'm still programmed because I know I've been on the record three months and that programming stays with you for quite a while. And so I'm there early. I'm sitting in a chair in front of his office. His office is locked and I see this six foot tall bright red guy look like.

Tony O 'Brien, but he walks a swagger. He had these dark sunglasses on and as he walks by, just looks down at me. He opens up the door, he walks in. I can hear him shuffling stuff around. I hear him say, get in here, kid. He come walking in, handed my folder. He opens up my folder, split through it. He's mumbling. Sets the folder down, he said.

So you're a dumbass, huh? I said, I didn't think I was. He's like.

Why'd you choose this podunk university, Southern Oregon State University? Anyone who went to Southern Oregon State in the early 90s knows James Brady, because he didn't give a rat's ass. He said, I got tenure, I'm not going anywhere. He wouldn't sugarcoat nothing, I loved it. He said, why'd you choose this university? I said, got out of mid -corner Friday, came here Monday. They said I had to take the SAT, I took the SAT on Wednesday. He said, what?

He said, yeah. He said, you didn't study? said, no, I didn't study. just took it. You know what you got? No, I have no idea. I passed. He said, the average knucklehead that comes to this university gets a 900.

He said, son, you blew the lid off this thing. You got a 1370. You could have gone to any college you wanted to, but now you're stuck here because you got five S and a D. He said, I'll take you on, but you're going to do me a favor. You're going to figure out how your brain works. And he sent me to this class and it was all about the human brain. And they didn't have the term then ADHD, but damn, I know I have it. I've never been diagnosed.

But I figured out I had that attention span of a nat and I had to figure out how to study. I, I, my way of studying was putting everything on flashcards. And I, I promised you that I don't study on anything more than five minutes at a time. I'm not the guy who can go sit in the library for three hours. I was the guy who would sit in the back room and I'd be like, man, that's a pretty brunette right there. Do I change oil on my truck this week? Huh. You know, and I can't focus.

So one of the things I learned is I had to sit in the front row. Now fast forward, it took me four and a half years and I still didn't finish. I left, I told you that I left winter term so I still have one whole term to go. But four and a years I was there. And I ended up when I left, I had repeated all those classes. And when I finished all the other classes I'd taken and you can pull my transcript and see this.

I ended up getting one B one time, all the rest of street. And it wasn't because I'm a fricking genius. I just figured out how my brain worked and I applied that to dogs. Cause I thought, if I can't focus for more than five minutes and I speak English, there's no way that dog. So when we do sessions, we do short little sessions, bursts of repetition and consistency and.

In those short little sessions compounding on top of themselves over the course of the day will spill over into long -term memory, long -term memory of results. That's what you want. So I see trainers, you know, a trainer like this, I know a trainer like this. Don't go out and work his dog for two hours straight. Because that's just the way his brain works. He would get up. You've seen him do this at one o 'clock in the morning and go out in the parking lot and work his dog for an hour straight.

And I would just watch that and be like, dude, that's, that's how his brain works. So he thinks the animals brain works up there. And there's all kinds of trainers when if they would focus on principles, they could find the solution. Okay. Whatever that solution is.

Lianne Shinton (1:47:02)

Yeah. One of the things that you taught us was, years ago you came out to California and we were sitting just outside of Camp Pendleton and you know, you really concentrated on what we were doing and how we can do it better so that we are not having clients be unhappy with us and asking for their money back. And so I think it would be great cause we are reaching that two hour mark almost if we could have

Jim Closson (1:47:20)

yeah.

okay.

Lianne Shinton (1:47:28)

multiple podcasts because the number one thing that I think people want to learn from you is sales. Another one is the principle based training so that, you know, clients are happier. The dogs are happier. The team is happier and they're not having to give money back. And then another one that I think everybody would want to hear is like how you manage your team. I know you treat them like family and I've talked to them and I have more sound bites.

Jim Closson (1:47:44)

Mm

Lianne Shinton (1:47:56)

But I think talking to us as dog trainers, how to enhance and make our team's lives better so we have less burnout. And then a biggie that you've touched on today that I know you're knowledgeable about is like the one man show versus, you know, a team and streamlining so that you can grow, scaling to grow. So I think all of those amazing topics, if you could give us more time.

Jim Closson (1:48:06)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would definitely give you more time. More time.

Lianne Shinton (1:48:26)

Perfect. That would be amazing because I love how you're giving back to all of us dog trainers. Thank you. Thank you.

Jim Closson (1:48:32)

You are welcome. One of the things that popped up that you asked me about, and I didn't want to touch on this one because it won't be relative to other things, but one of the things you asked me was reflecting back what was the most rewarding moment in your career, especially given where you started. I'm blessed every morning that I get to go and be around dogs. So blessed.

But I can tell you the most rewarding thing that has ever happened. I've had some incredible things happen. I've had clients give me tens of thousands of dollars in gifts. I had a client buy me a $20 ,000 dog trailer because she loved what I did with her dogs. That's happened twice. I've had clients give me at the time when they were six and $800 new Tricondex dogs. I've had clients.

Handed me cash because I wouldn't take it. So they would give it to Chrissy. Please give it to him. Greatest moment. It's ever happened to me was I got invited to a dinner and it was a business dinner. was like soup and tie. I had to go out and buy soup. And the thrill lady, her, her sister and brother -in invited me, said, you have to come to this. have to bring Christy. Now, before I tell you about this dinner, I'm going tell you about

this particular plant. Years before, six to eight years before this, I got a call from a victim's advocacy group. They wanted to know if I would donate. If I had any dogs that would be a protection dog. And I had told the dog to the apartment of Florida and he had, within the first 30 days, he'd shattered his elbow and I had to replace it. So I got her back. So he couldn't jump. couldn't just want to stop. He was still young.

I said, I can donate a dog, but this is a maximum force dog and I have to teach this person, this woman, how to handle this stuff.

And they're like, that could be a problem. so what they did to solve the problem is they sent me through training with psychologists, maybe even the psychiatrists, but I had to complete 40 hours of training with this council group, which had these psychiatrists or psychologists. And what it was, these women were all victims of violent crime. So I had to learn how to position my body, how to talk.

I mean, all these different things that I now use in when I'm doing a demo, especially if it's with a single lady, all of these things to make this lady be comfortable. And so I went through this training, they signed off that I had completed this 40 hours of training. I had to pay for it too. They weren't paying, I had to pay for it so I could donate this dog. And, but I never complained. So I paid for it.

And I said, now we're going to start these lessons, but I don't want this dog to live with her yet. She has to do lessons with me first. And so she did four or five lessons and there was always somebody from that group. One of the counselors was always there at these meetings and I was teaching her how to do this. And then one day she shows up by herself and I was not allowed to start the lesson until that counselor got there.

And so I called the office and I said, Hey, she's here, the, but her, the assistant or whoever counsel is like, Jim, you won't see that person no more. She is so comfortable with you, but she's not ready to do lessons. okay. So we went through the training and then the dog finally lived with her and, we still maintain training, just like when you're training the police officer, right? The dog needs to do what we can, course.

She said, you're all sweet. And the day came that this person was getting paroled and he made good on his promise and came after her. And that dog died.

dog died protecting her. Okay, he went back to prison. He's still in prison to this day. So fast forward, I got another dog. Fast forward, we go to the Skinner, sheet and tie. It's in the Grove Hotel downtown Boise. And they were giving out the business. It was a bit, I out it was the business woman of the year for the state of Idaho.

And she was getting it. Now, when I went through training with her, she worked at her mom and dad's home business. And she was getting this award for her own business. And she stands up and she says, most of you don't know my story. She tells a story about how her ex -husband kidnapped her from a family camping trip she was on with her sisters and tortured her over several days. And then.

a rope around her neck and threw her off a cliff. She survived. She this story. She says, but I know my success to a person who's here today would never let me be a victim. That in order for me to survive and to handle this, I had to be a leader. I had to have Plumia presence. And he taught me this with comfort and care.

and firmness, he would never accept weakness or nurture weakness. I had to be a leader. And I looked at Chris, I said, I wonder who that was.

that I learned this from a dog treat. And I just burst out in tears. G1, Idaho business woman of year, three years in a row, we're starting our own firm.

She still has Truman Shepard's from an apple I find to this day. The second dog I got for her was my personal dog, a female. gave her because I wanted to die. And anyway, that's the most rewarding thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And she has two boys that still send me letters on their mom's birthday. And her birthday was when she, her actual birthday, but this is when she was reborn and saved.

Lianne Shinton (1:54:55)

Wow. That is...

Jim Closson (1:55:08)

Her boys will send me letters. They're grown. You know, this happened to all of them. And I look back. I could die tomorrow. It's greatest thing that's ever happened. The money and all the awards and the dogs I've owned. None of that compares to helping a person achieve that. And I don't change their life. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened. And hopefully other people...

will have stories like that in their life. That when they truly figure out how to be for others, you know, I don't care what color you are, I don't care who you love, I don't care, you know, whatever you want, right? And I'm surprised one of my daughters did tell the story about how we went into a restaurant one day and we saw a gentleman. Now, normally I wear a cowboy hat.

I'm not wearing it today because I have my... But I wear Wranglers, I wear boots, I have a cowboy hat, and people will stereotype me, right? There's some redneck in an old Dodge truck. I met Britta, my daughter Britta, my wife Britta, and one of my other trainers. We decided to have lunch in a Mexican restaurant. And from where I was sitting, I could see it looked like a grandfather, son, and a grandson. The grandson's probably in his 20s. And they were all Hispanic.

And the grandson was.

not like me. He had painted nails and painted lips and he had fake eyebrows and I'd glance at him several times. And as we got up to leave, we had to walk past their table. And I kind of bend over the table. My family's all out ahead and I said, can I say something? And I know his dad and grandpa were like, fuck, some redneck's gonna tell me about my grandson looking like this.

And I said, thank you. And the kids looked at me. He said, thank you for what? I said, for developing the courage to come out and be who you are and show the world who you are. Don't ever, lose that. So here's why. There's going to be people that don't like this. There's going to be people that make fun of you. I'm sure that's happened. But don't be.

Don't quit because somewhere there's some other young boy who has those same feelings and he's pushing him down because he doesn't know what they mean. And because you have the courage to come out in public and show the world who you are, you're going to bring courage to that young kid, that little boy or that little girl, or even that older person who's hidden that for 50 years.

to show them it's okay to be who you are. I just want to tell you things. And this kid immediately started crying. And my family's standing at the door like, what are you saying to him? And I reached over, I took him by the hand, I touched him on the shoulder. And I said, the world needs more people like you. The world needs more courage. And I looked at his dad and I said, you're a great dad for allowing this to happen. You're a great grandfather for loving him for who he is.

And they just looked at me. The dad couldn't hardly speak. The grandfather just said, thank you. And I said, be strong. And I walked away. And my wife said, every day, you amaze me.

Who I am? And if there's more people like that, they get me all. Anyway, that'd be the wisdom I'd share. Next time we got to really tap into what do you got to do to be successful? Thank you for letting me spend the time, Leigh Ann. You're an absolutely wonderful person to bring this to the front. And I appreciate it. Thank you for allowing me to be here.

Lianne Shinton (1:59:15)

Awesome Thank you for being here and thank you for the words of wisdom and the beautiful stories So yeah, thank you so much Again, everybody. I'm Leanne the host and we've got Jim Kloss in here. You can visit him at positive pets dog training and Thanks so much for listening

Jim Closson (1:59:27)

You're welcome.