Our Management.
We've done this job. And we think you'll love it.
Getting into a franchise business means that you’ll be business partners (and, with us, you'll also be friends) with that franchisor for many years. So, you’ll want to know as much as you can about who you’re getting into a relationship with. At Dogs Love Running!, we’re an open book and we’d love for you to get to know us both at a professional and personal level.
The first thing we want you to know is that we've experienced this job first-hand. When we originally started as a small and independent walking/running/sitting company, we did absolutely everything that needed to be done all by ourselves. This included both operating the business as well as making all the pet visits.
This is critically important to know because it means that we know exactly what you'll be going through.
It means that we won't ask you to do unrealistic things that we haven't already done ourselves. You can rest easy knowing that, with Dogs Love Running!, you won't get some out-of-touch CEO making dumb decisions from a skyscraper penthouse.
You'll like us because we're real people that were just looking for something better in our lives when we started this. We're just like you.
Below you'll find a little more about our personal backgrounds that should make you feel pretty good about trusting in our leadership, experience, and capabilities to help you be a success.
John
John did the whole "corporate thing" for about 11 years. You know the drill: drab fluorescent lights, cubicles, casual day, TPS reports (you’ve seen the movie Office Space, right?), etc, etc. With a degree in advertising and marketing, he spent a number of years in television advertising working directly with small and medium-sized business owners in creating TV commercials and then strategically buying air time on networks like CNN and ESPN to grow their brand awareness and sales.
He then made his way into the recruiting field helping mid and senior-level professionals find jobs. With his work experience as well as knowledge gained from a DePaul University MBA degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, he had started a successful recruiting company. However, it wasn't much fun (that's an understatement). So, he and his wife, Erica, put together an equation of what "fun" looked like and Dogs Love Running! was the result. John is now on a mission to bring "fun" to you, your pet, and anyone else that wants to be a part of this fun and adventurous company.
John is a "think tank advisor" for the Association of Pet Sitting Excellence, a pet industry trade group, where he provides input to help pet business owners. He's also been an expert panelist offering advice for many different APSE discussion groups and interviews.
He’s the marketing and operations side of things. With the background listed above, you can see that he has extensive and direct experience in the two most important things you'll be doing in your business: recruiting staff and marketing to customers.