Dog Training Elite CEO Betsy Feaster Shares Her Vision for the Company’s Future

After a year spent further solidifying its systems and expanding resources for both franchisees and clients, Dog Training Elite, one of the nation’s leading obedience and specialty dog training franchises with over 240 units, is gearing up for substantial growth in 2024. With a goal to sell out territories nationwide, the team has worked diligently to broaden training tools available to clients and increase franchisee support, all in an effort to better the communities it enters.

“Our focus is making the community better through service dogs, therapy dogs and well-behaved pets,” explained Betsy Feaster, CEO. “We believe that if a client has a very good relationship with their dog, no matter what tool we use to help improve that relationship, they will be able to go out into the community and help other people better understand dogs and how they can fit into our lives.”

Feaster added that, while many clients will focus on what training can do for the dog itself, she uses her leadership role to emphasize the client-dog relationship throughout the system.

“It’s all about the customer-dog relationship and how that relationship fits into the community,” she explained. “Better handler-dog relationships make the community a better place through better support for those in need and happier furparents and furbabies.”

2023 Brought Meaningful Change to the Dog Training Elite System

The Dog Training Elite model has been around for decades, and members of both the leadership team and franchise system have done a great job of perfecting the technical aspect of the business. 

Owners have a deep understanding of dog training, how to work with different dogs to achieve different results and the overarching benefits that strong training can bring to a family and the larger community. However, the business aspect of Dog Training Elite ownership is just as important, and Feaster said the team worked diligently last year to build scaffolding that will better support owners in this arena, too.

“Our team knows how to train a dog, but we’re a business, too. We want our support staff to be able to look at numbers and think about how they might help a particular franchisee improve,” explained Feaster. “We’re bringing in tools like Tableau that let us look at revenue generation and provide better education and feedback to our franchisees so that our support is even more proactive.”

One of the most important changes that was initiated in 2023 was the addition of new tools to the brand’s franchisee training processes and client-facing offerings. The brand has historically used electronic collars in conjunction with positive reinforcement, a tactic that has been proven to get quick results and work for the vast majority of dogs. However, as it looks to expand to even more markets and broaden the customer base, it is adding other tools like clicker training and martingale collars to their franchisees’ repertoire. This will allow them to support the relatively small group of dogs who will succeed better with non-electronic collar methods without sacrificing the integrity of the training or focus on positive reinforcement — another important evolution for the brand.

“As a business person and dog trainer, I don’t see the dog training aspect of the business as the difficult part. It takes a level of expertise, but once you have those skills and can stay disciplined, what really takes practice is the business stuff that we do,” said Feaster. “How do you do an elevator pitch? How do you deal with objections? What is the difference between marketing and advertising? All of our internal resources are evolving in order to take the support and educational resources that have already been established to the next level.”

With a Refreshed, Even Stronger Foundation, Dog Training Elite Is Prepared to Award 30 Territories This Year

After welcoming seven new franchisees to the system in 2023, expanding to 30 new territories between the group of owners, Dog Training Elite is looking to replicate that growth again this year. With another 30 territories available to award this year, the team is focused intently on California, a relatively new state for the brand, as well as New York, Oregon and Boise, Idaho.

To drive meaningful expansion and prepare owners to scale, Dog Training Elite is currently focused on expanding with multi-territory owners who are passionate about the mission and prepared to grow through the model.

“There continues to be an incredible need for quality dog training in communities everywhere, and we offer a proven solution,” said Feaster. “Everyone in the Dog Training Elite system is so passionate about what we do, and with the advancements we made last year, we’ve never been more ready to grow. We plan to keep hitting it hard this year, doing everything we can to support our franchisees in making their own communities better through well-behaved pets and well-trained service and therapy dogs.”

To find out more information on costs to buy this franchise, please visit www.1851franchise.com/dogtrainingelite/info