Episode 410: Franchising Secrets with Ryan Wimpey
In this episode of the Above the Business podcast, host Bradley Hamner interviews Ryan Wimpey, founder of Tip Top K9 Dog Training, about how he turned a passion for dog training into a franchise system that now spans 19 locations with plans to reach 100+. Ryan explains his personal origin story, the shift from reward‑based to classical‑conditioning training, and the painstaking process of documenting every aspect of the business into manuals, checklists, and visual aids. He describes how this documentation cut trainer onboarding from six months to six weeks and enabled a train‑the‑trainer model. The conversation then moves to the franchise model: why it appeals to existing business owners, the owner‑operator role, the extensive back‑office support (branding, marketing, call center, billing) the franchisor provides, and the decision to franchise rather than grow corporate stores. Ryan emphasizes the value of executive and franchise coaching for his own growth, outlines a measured expansion plan (doubling to 40 locations in 2.5 years, then steady growth to 100), and explains his “above the business” focus on systems that impact all locations. The episode ends with practical takeaways about using multimodal documentation, adopting a franchise mindset, and where listeners can learn more about Tip Top K9.
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Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Ryan Wimpey. He's the visionary founder of Tip Top K9 Dog Training. And in this episode, we do get into a little bit of the dog training aspect of it. But the center of our conversation is really around the business side of it. And so whether you have a desire to want to franchise the business or even want to potentially purchase a franchise business, or maybe you just want to think about your business as a franchise and have a franchise mindset, I think you're going to pick up some things from someone who has actually been able to do this, to grow it and expand to across 19 locations. We dive into what are the specific things that they've been able to do to grow that business and continue to grow that business to 100+ locations over time. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Ryan Wimpy. Ryan, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Pumped to have you. Let's start with background and origin story. I think it's fascinating how people kind of got to where they are today. So once you take us back and bring us to present day.
Yeah, so back in the day, almost like 20 years ago, I got a dog. I was in college. Got a dog off the side of the road. His name was Curly. He was a little Schnauzer Terrier mix and had two different types of hair and one ear went up, one went down. And he was a rascal, man. He had all these behavioral issues. You open the front door, he'd run away. That's probably why he was a stray. I mean, like run away, like you chase him for hours. He'd pull on the leash and choke himself nonstop. Bark at people. Uh, man, I mean, he had aggression, he had anxiety, and potty training issues. And it just got me really obsessed with dog training, reading everything, watching everything, traveling hours to meet with trainers to try to fix these behavioral issues, because it really impacted my relationships with people, right? Roommates, friends, etc., neighbors. So, um, Got me obsessed with dog training. My family's been, uh, you know, my dad and grandpa, they ran a construction supply business for over 50 years. My aunts and uncles, they've run franchises. Everyone in my family has been pretty entrepreneurial. And so I worked for some other people for a while, and then after they— as a dog trainer, and 2007, '08, '09, and in 2010, uh, opened up Tip Top Canine. So it's a dog training company. We're headquartered out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so what I found was, is that there's a lot of different ways to train a dog. If, you know, if you ever go on YouTube and you search dog training, you're gonna find, hey, no one actually says the same thing. They all have their own different ideas. They all, you know, some crazy, some make sense, but they don't work, etc. And so Basically, there's two different ways most people train a dog through operant conditioning. You have reward-based training or punishment-based training or negative reinforcement, right? So basically the carrot or the stick, so to speak. That's how most people train dogs. If you have a dog though with anxiety and aggression, if you put too much pressure on them, they freak out and they bite you, right? Um, or it impacts the relationship. It's very challenging. And so I got into classical conditioning-based training, which now we train with the training cards, classical conditioning. We don't reward the dogs, we don't punish the dogs, we condition a response, and that's what we transfer to the clients. And over the, over the last, uh, since 2010 we started, we've been franchising since 2009. So it took me about 9, 10 years to really refine a system, really outline it. Uh, so right now we have 19 locations and 19 franchises and 2 more in the works, uh, in a streamlined dog training system based off classical conditioning.
So before you came on, you probably didn't know too much of the things, uh, that I really love. And so one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because I think it's valuable for people whenever they're thinking about their own business, depending on the industry that they're in. There's some things that we can really learn from franchise businesses. I mean, by its nature, if I buy into your franchise, I'm buying a proven system. I mean, I think you said 1999, like people have bought into the fact that sure, there's branding elements to it and there's assets with that, but there's also like a proven way to do things. And I think that there's a— that's a big reason why I think franchises have had such a low failure rate in comparison to other small businesses. Like, I think the 5-year failure rate of franchises is 15%, right? Whereas most businesses is 50%. So statistically, that's a huge difference. Can you speak to that specifically about not where it is maybe now.
Yeah.
But when you were building the company initially, and it was the initial prototype, so to speak, right, what are some of the actual things that you did to then be able to say, you know what, we have a repeatable system here that we could go and be able to sell and have other people to open up a second, a third, a fourth, so on and so forth?
Yeah. So basically, early on, whether you franchise or whether you have multiple corporate stores, I think the process is literally identically the same. You're going through and documenting and checklisting everything, like every little thing. Um, I mean, the, the opening closing checklist, like we're like documenting how you clean a kennel, right? Um, you know, because if we hire someone to take care of dogs, I would like them to be able to clean up a kennel and, you know, learn that in half a day, right? That you're able to do that quickly. You know, but even our dog training. So, you know, when I started in 2008, basically everything's this word of mouth tribal knowledge thing. Well, now just one of our manuals is almost 100 pages, right? Our sales training is like 50, 60 pages along with handouts. Like everything is so drilled down. There's so much information, steps, checklists, documents on everything. Just everything's documented. So in the beginning, I may go to someone's house, and if they have, uh, say, I sometimes I would start with come, making the dog come off leash. Sometimes I'd start with loose leash walking, sometimes doggy timeout. It was kind of a little bit different every time, a little different client experience, different documents for them. Uh, also on top of documenting everything and making an order for everything, um, We also got as many handouts as possible so people don't have to memorize. For a consulting process or sales process, any of the training processes, we want them to have as many visuals as possible because memorization takes time. So if we want to speed up how quickly we can train people, the more documents and the more documented methods we have, the easier. So like My first employee I trained in 2010, it took me about 6 months to train them. And now we train people in like 6 weeks, like regularly, clockwork. Not even me, my guys will train them in 6 weeks. But that's because they're using the same documented system that I started. They're not making up how they train each person, if that makes sense.
That makes sense. It does. Now, um, I mean, you know, in my own journey, I was in the first time. It wasn't the first time I heard it. I mean, I'd heard systems and processes for a long time, right? And, but I never actually ended up basically doing it until I finally started to do it. What have you been able to do in a way that through the documentation it actually gets trained using it so that somebody doesn't You know, a lot of our clients have had the experience, Ryan, to where they, um, have documented something, they did all this work, they put it together, and then nobody ever looks at the doggone thing. So, um, no pun intended with that one, but, uh, uh, but how have you been able to get it to where people actually use— yeah, the thing that you've built?
That's good. So When it was just words, I think it's harder if there's not like pictures, diagrams, etc. You have to remember, like, people are humans and they're going to do whatever is the easiest for them. So if I tell my managers or I tell a trainer, hey, I used to train someone in 6 months, now I do it this way and I use all these documents. And because I do ABC123, someone gets trained 10 times faster. That's why I want you to train this way. And I say, hey, you won't have to train your person as long if you do this. And here's all the benefits. If I explain all the benefits and the consequences of not doing it, and I make it colorful and easy to use, and then that's also how I train them. And then I shadow my people training the next people, etc. Um, it goes a little better. So we just had a train the trainer event where we had, uh, 10 of our 19 locations come in. Some people were there to— they were newer trainers for continuing education, and some people were the managers, and they're actually wanting to watch people be trained the same way I train my guys, same way I want them to train. We're using the manuals, the posters, the handouts, and we're going through those, showing them how to use it. But if it's not, if it's not easy, like if I gave, if I gave you a— here's 83 paragraphs on how to post on TikTok, you're, you're probably not going to read it. True. Let's be real. Yeah.
How do you, um, what do you think that for either a new business owner or for the majority of our listening audience, um, they're already a business owner, right? Why is franchising an attractive business to consider as maybe a second business for someone?
Yeah, I think for the person that's already a business owner, they're actually going to be even more attracted because they know how hard the startup phase is. Like, they've already gone through that pain. Like, when I started up, um, and there's no systems and processes, there's no plans, there's no marketing plans, HR documents, etc. If someone was like, hey, for 6%, you can call me, I'll write out everything for you, I'll give you your marketing strategies, I'll help you with HR, I would probably have been like, sounds like a great deal. And that's kind of what franchising is. It's just that coach, that mentor with 15 years of experience that's already gone through all the hard issues and they're giving you all of their trade secrets. You know, a lot of our, our people, if, if they're hardworking people, uh, they can ramp up and get the same success that took me 8 or 10 years, and they can have that in 2 or 3 because the processes are already there. So I think the franchise model appeals almost more towards someone who's, hey, they work their own business and, and they're not on that business yet. They're actually, you know, they're in the business. So if they're working 60, 70 hours a week still trying to figure out everything, I think franchising appeals even more to that person.
Do you— how do you view somebody, let's say I contacted you and I said, hey, I'm really interested in this, I love dogs, um, and, uh, yeah, I want to be a part of it, right? I mean, I want this to be a part of my portfolio. How do you feel that the owner franchise owner, what do you feel like that their role is in the— or in, in that organization? Like, how do you structure what you believe that their role is, maybe in the beginning and then even as it, as it begins to grow?
Yeah, it's a good, good question. So we're a little different in the fact that we don't really advertise absentee model. Um, we're really looking more for an owner-operator and just explain to them off the bat, hey, you're going to be, um, in operations to begin with, and then you're going to transition from owner-operator to manager to more of that actual location role where you could either just be the location owner working whatever hours you decide to work, or at that point then you could open, you know, an additional 1 or 2 units, etc. But most of our people, we start them out because it's more of a trade. So people are coming for actually 6 weeks of training. So with our franchise model, we do very in-depth training. So that normally needs to be with the owner. So the owner, it could be a few months, 6 months, 2 years, whatever. And also depends on if they have more lifestyle goals. They want, you know, a lot more freedom or they have income goals and how many hours they're kind of putting in.
Transition a little bit. What have you learned about business and creating a franchise model instead of the franchi— okay, I get this wrong— franchisee, franchisor. I guess you're the franchisor. What have you learned about being the franchisor about business?
Um, I mean, it's different than the corporate stores for sure. Right. So one, one thing that I realized is part of who appeals to that franchise, part of what appeals to a potential franchisee is having more support. And because of what people have requested, we just kept adding more. So when we launched our first two, we gave them, hey, here's your documents, here's your pricing sheets, your one sheets, your business cards, your flyers to drop off at vets and groomers, etc. And here's the logos for the shirts, hats, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, everything in nice documents, everything with Dropbox linked, itemized. And there was printing issues. There was issues with the embroidery people, the screen printers, and they're calling. And so we're like, okay, well, we actually started doing the, uh, we started up a store, start doing all the shirts, all the flyers, just deep discounting everything, and then, um, wholesaling it to them, um, because they're spending so much time on it instead of their actual core activity, dog training, generating income. And so we kind of took that. We do the call center now, we do billing for them, we have the store, we'd source the marketing companies. Because I think what, what I learned specifically is the people that are really interested in that model, they want a model where their hard work equals money in the bank and they don't have to be the business guru.
Hmm.
Right. Because talking about like, you know, if you're going to buy a chain of bagel franchises or, you know, 5 or 6 Jimmy John's on a multi-unit or something like that, it's a different than, hey, I'm buying a $50,000 Tip Top K9. It's a different model for a different person. So the person that's like, hey, uh, you know, that sounds attractive, I could do that and I could potentially work out, get outside my business or work multiple units. But that person is working somewhere, they're making, you know, $40,000 to $120,000 a year probably, right? And then they are— have the freedom to be their own boss. That person for our specific model, they, they want more backend support and they want to really focus on doing the work and they don't want to do as much of that back office stuff. That's kind of the biggest thing we found. And what we thought was a lot of support wasn't. And we just kept adding.
You know, I think it's a good example that the technical skills that you need to do the job in the industry that you're in is different than the business skills and tools of what it takes to, to run the business. I mean, obviously, uh, that's— Gerber talks about that a little bit in, in E-Myth as well, you know, that there's two different skill sets. And to your point, like, some people are like, I don't want to be the business guru, you know. But, and depending on what industry you're in, unless you're in a franchise, I'm like, we You're the business owner. You have to be. And I think that's, you know, you don't really have a, have much of a choice, uh, because in entrepreneurship nobody's coming to save you, right? But, but at the same time, it's kind of what we signed up for, to be an entrepreneur. A lot of people want freedom and flexibility and the income potential that comes along with it. How did you decide to go the franchise route versus having you know, maybe just yourself, like, what was that thought process of doing that versus maybe just owning, I don't know, 150 locations that are corporate owned?
Yeah. So part of it is, um, if I want someone, if I have somebody and they have a high skill set in a, in a technical trade, like, you know, dog training, it's somewhat technical. There's nuance to it, right? And if I have someone with a high skill set, what the trend is more that someone eventually they go, hey, so like if one of my guys at corporate, if they sell $80 grand of dog training in a month, they go, huh, I sold $80 grand in dog training. Maybe I should do this on my own. Right. And they start to get that entrepreneurial seizure just because they see that dollar bills. Um, and so if, if I do those corporate stores, the people with the higher skill set, they almost are gonna need some equity, right? To really keep them long term, I'm gonna have to give them some equity. And if I'm going to be— give them equity and partner with them in some, some way, franchising just made more sense for us. You know, I think we, we could have been successful either way. One partly was a lifestyle decision on us. We were traveling for executive coaching 2 hours once a week to Oklahoma City, and we go, hey, if we have corporate stores, we're going to be flying out to those stores all the time, right? That's just how it rolls. Or we have someone. But for us, I think part of it was just Maybe a little bit of the travel, but a lot of it was just, hey, if I really want to lock down high-skilled technical people, you give them equity. And I think franchising makes the most sense because they're the most invested if they're the full equity partner, right?
That makes sense.
That's kind of how we did it, because half our locations are our employees or clients that as soon as we started doing it, um, I think it's 12 out of the 19 or were either employees or clients currently.
That makes sense.
Yeah, so otherwise I would have just trained my competition, right? There's a lot of people do.
You mentioned something that I'm curious about, um, which is, you know, you, you traveled for executive coaching, so it sounds like obviously you've really valued your own personal and professional development. Can you maybe speak to the importance that making that investment yourself in a coach or a program or something like that has meant to you?
Yeah, we have gone— so my wife and I have gone from, uh, coach to coach to coach, and I think that's what everyone who succeeds, at some point they're reaching out to somebody for coaching, whether it's, you know, we did sales coaching, we did management help, uh, executive coaching. You know, when people are like, hey, you know what, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do it all, and they don't know it all, and someone else has 20 years experience building sales teams, someone else that they've been, you know, managing people at a high level for 25 years, you're not gonna— do I want to wait 25 years to get that experience? No, absolutely not. Um, I will say the one caveat is I think we, we should have moved quicker through our coaches. So now we still reach out, we still are coaching. Uh, right now we're coaching with a lady, started a franchise, she ran it for 20 years, went to 150 locations, and then had to exit, right? She's our current coach. Well, we keep leveling up our coaches, right? And, uh, you know, reaching out to another guy, he's a franchise consultant, he you know, he's exceptionally expensive. He charges $5,000 for 90-minute sessions, right? Pretty, pretty expensive. Um, but if someone's been in the industry for 30 years and they have that knowledge that other people don't have, like, I don't want to wait 30 years to get that. I can part with $5,000 a lot easier than I can part with 30 years experience, right? It just, it, it makes sense. I'm not— you can't have— you got to get rid of that ego, like, hey, I'll just figure it out. That's not gonna happen.
Yeah, I think, uh, I don't know where to attribute this to, but you're gonna learn it one way or the other. You're either gonna learn it through taking time, or you're going to invest the money to get the learning from, from someone else. Yeah, I totally, I totally agree with that. That's why I asked that question. Ryan, where, where is Tip Top going for you? Like, maybe— I don't know if you want to let us big time under the hood, but what's your— what's the big vision of kind of where you're wanting to, to take, you know, the— this business for you?
Yeah, so right now we're at 19 locations. We have a few more planned, uh, or already in the works, just not currently open. So we're looking in the next few years to double, to go to 40, which is very doable. A lot of that growth will be internal. So about a third of it will be from locations opening a second or third. We already have— so 4 owners own 2, 1 owner owns 3. So multiple people already own multiple locations. We're trying to grow that way. It's very easy to manage. The culture stays very good. But yeah, right now, so 40 in the next 2.5 years and then slow growth to 100 because we support all of our locations heavily with call center, uh, marketing, product support and training support and conferences. Uh, we are not looking for that explosive growth. Uh, some of the franchise world does have that super explosive growth and then corporate, uh, has a problem maintaining all of their locations. So, you know, like I said, we have multiple advisors and coaches That's one thing. So we're kind of capping 8 to 10 a year as far as our growth currently because we want to support it all and have that long term. You know, I've been doing it 15 years, plan on doing it another 15. So we're not looking to just sell locations and then, you know, have an exit, but keep, you know, keep rocking and rolling, slow, steady growth. Our locations that are currently open, that some of them are having like explosive growth. But as far as like putting more dots on the map, for us, we want to make sure we have the right people. Really, we're looking for— we have a 7-year franchise agreement. So really, our internal goal, you want under the hood, is really 20 years. So a lot of franchises don't have, have someone for 20 years. That's our real internal goal. But we have to have the right people and super solid relationships that are beneficial both ways for that to happen.
Ron, somebody wants to connect with you, learn more about— maybe just connect with you, find a little bit more about Tip Top K9, maybe the franchise and opportunity, or just even connect around entrepreneurship and business. How can they find you?
Yeah, they can go to our website, tiptopk9.com. Um, on, on LinkedIn, Ryan Wimpy, you can find me on there. Um, but the website's the best. Fill out the form, click on the franchising tab, come out if you think you're possibly interested. We do a Discovery Day where people come out and see what it's like, uh, running and operating a dog training business.
Awesome. What does working above the business mean to you, Ron?
Yeah, I'll tell you. Above the biz right now, um, when we had— so let me tell you what it's not above the business for me. So I used to be, you know, and like a lot of people, in the trenches, right? Every day, all day, every day, you know, 12-hour sales day, 12-hour training days, etc. Um, right now above the business, I'm looking at marketing, we're looking at ads, we're looking at vision, helping our locations grow their people and doing work that impacts the direction and the brand, not just the individual dollar from one client. So in the business, I'm like client to client. On the business, I'm location to location. So right now, my work, half of my workday should consist of stuff that's going to impact all 19 locations or add more. And if it doesn't, I'm not working. On my job. I'm not working on top, right?
Love that, love that.
That's good stuff, Ron.
I think one of the kind of several of the takeaways I had was just really a lot of good reminders to me that the same thing that makes a franchise successful, even though I don't— I may not have a franchise per se and maybe not even want to franchise, my current business or whatever the case may be. It, it, it's almost like a franchise mindset is a way to think of it more than anything for a business owner that, that's potentially out there. And I think the other thing is, is that stood out to me specifically is you made it really clear is that not only is there written documentation, but the use of, uh, pictures and images and I don't know if drawings or video to be able to tap into the other, the different ways that people consume information, right? So written and videos and pictures, etc. I think that really stood out to me where it just can't be a 35-page sales document that's just nothing but words and the person is like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? It's like reading, you know, I don't know.
So we had a textbook or something. Yeah, it was like 30-something page text document, you know, and I'm spending 200 hours on it. And we literally took that and broke it into sections. It's 20-something sections, took a very interactive picture and put like 6 or 7 words underneath each picture and then would read it, go over the picture, and then they can take this picture sales document that's very colorful, pretty. They can practice with that, even take that in, lay it on a table. That impacted the training almost more than the document almost became for the, you know, person who's training the trainer. Sure.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It does. Ron, appreciate you coming on, my man.
I appreciate your time. Thanks, sir.
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