From K-9 Training to Leadership Transformation: The Habits That Change Everything

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] On this week’s episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. Our guest is Michael Soler, owner of Blue Line K-9 Dog Training and the executive coaching firm of The Soler Effect. We talked to Michael about his time as being a police officer. He spent a little bit of time in the Marines how he got into dog training, why he loves dog training. We got several really easy tricks that anybody can do to train their dog.

And we also talked to him about his new business where he is doing executive coaching called The Soler Effect, and how it is helping transform business leaders right here in Johnston County as we speak. So if you’re interested in how to train your dog or maybe some coaching, listen in.

Welcome to another episode of Best of Johnston County, brought to you by Breeden Law Office. Our host, Jonathan Breeden, an experienced family lawyer with a deep connection to the community, is ready to take you on a journey through the area that he has called home [00:01:00] for over 20 years. Whether it’s a deep dive into the love locals have for the county or unraveling the complexities of family law, Best of Johnston County presents an authentic slice of this unique community.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden, and on today’s episode we have the owner and founder of Blue Line K-9 Dog Training Michael Soler, right here in Johnston County.

We’re also gonna talk to him a little bit about his new business, which involves executive coaching called The Soler Effect, and I think you’re gonna find it interesting and fascinating. I know. I’m already interested in what he’s talking about, and I could talk to Michael all day about mindset and positive thinking and, and how to get to a sale.

But anyway, we’ll do a ton of that today, but we’ll have him talk about a little bit about what it is and how, if you’re interested in some executive coaching, you can reach out to him. But before we get to that, we’d like you to ask you to like, follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you see it, whether we on Apple, [00:02:00] Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn x or any of the other social media channels of The Best of Johnston County Podcast.

The Best of Johnston County Podcast comes out every single Monday and has now for almost 30 months. So we’ve well over a hundred episodes now. We’ve had a lot of great guests, so if you love Johnston County as much as I do, this is the podcast for you. Welcome Michael.

Michael Soler: How you doing?

Jonathan Breeden: Well, good, good, good. We, we met a, a couple years ago, Launch JoCo in various chamber events. So I’m glad you, you’ve signed up to come in and talk to us. I think it’s gonna be a fascinating conversation. So tell the audience who you are and what you do.

Michael Soler: So yeah. My name is Michael J Soler. I’m the founder of Blue Line K-9 and now owner of The Soler Effect. I’ve been growing. For a few years we started Blue Line K-9 19 years ago with the one simple mission is to keep dogs out of rescues keep them in their homes with their families. And it was a rough beginning, right? Like finding that new start was really rough. But man, when we look at how I got [00:03:00] started.

It makes so much sense. Right. And I’m sure everyone’s wondering how did this all start? Why pick dog training? I appreciate y’all asking that. Right. It’s a great question.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, I’m curious, right? I know.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I know at one point you were a Marine.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, you were a police officer. You’ve done, you’ve done a lot of stuff.

Michael Soler: Yeah, I apparently I don’t sleep is what the joke of my life is. But well, I, so the journey started when I was a kid, I opened up my first carpet cleaning company when I was 16. I sold a year later to Stanley Steamer. Making a ton of money. Wasn’t the smartest idea, but I did it joined the Marine Corps right after that ’cause that was why I sold it, to join the Marine Corps.

That’s hence the possibly not the greatest idea. Served in Iraq and then when I came home. I was lost. I didn’t know what to do, wasn’t really sure where to go. Became a police officer. Wound up moving to Maryland, and while I was in that journey I had met my wife at the time, she was my girlfriend.

She goes, you know, you need a hobby. Why don’t you go get a dog? And I was like, yeah, sure. And got a dog. And next thing you know, I, I’m sitting there training him and I’m loving him. I’m trying to prove to the sheriff’s office. At the [00:04:00] time, I was like, I really should be your next K-9 guy. Then she got hurt and when she got hurt it was like, well, what do we do now?

She lost her job because of the injury and we had to figure it out. So I was like, well, I’m really good at this dog stuff. I really enjoy it too. So I paid a guy 20 bucks to gimme an opportunity to train his dog. And I said literally how it started. And I said, listen, if. I’m gonna give you 20 bucks. You gimme an opportunity to train your dog.

Dog training back then was not popular like it is today. So he’s like, yeah. And I said, if you like it, you gimme my 20 back and you gimme a 20 on top of that. So that was my sales pitch back then. And it worked out and it worked out really, really good. And I got really into the psychology of the animal because at the time I was really dealing with a really bad PTSD and some depression and I wanted to fix myself.

And working with the dogs really just brought it all together. So, the more I worked with the animals, the more I was able to work on myself and really just hone in those skill sets. And now we built a franchise business on that psychological method. And our motto here is that we make dog training fun and [00:05:00] easy.

And if it isn’t fun, it’s not easy. And if it’s not easy, it’s not fun. And when you break it into the actual science of psychology of the animal, the relationship that you build is uncandid. It makes training so easy for you that you just get to live your life with your dog. You get to keep ’em home.

And it was probably the greatest thing we ever stumbled upon, if that makes sense.

Jonathan Breeden: I gotcha. I gotcha. So how many people are part of this team now?

Michael Soler: So right now we have three locations. We’re in Katy, Texas, we’re here in Johnston County and Johnston County is actually a new flagship location for us because we are expanding into pet care as well.

So we’re taking this and bridging it into every animal now, cats, ferrets, birds, you name it. You’ve been taking care of farm animals. So we’ve been really blessed here in Johnston County, which is really massive because I started the company in Maryland. and a few, a year ago-ish, a little over a year ago, I moved here.

And Johnston County blessed me with phenomenal leaders and owners to join within the company that are allowing us to flagship and expand [00:06:00] even further. So I have to say Johnston County, you’re really making an impact on this world, in my opinion, growing to this new level. But and then we have our Maryland location, so a total amount of employment is we’re probably a little over 30.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s good.

Michael Soler: 30 different people that are within it. We also have a Train the Trainer program, so we have our own educational program. You can come and learn all of our skillset and bring it back to your own business or just in your own personal use or life, if you wanna just use our methods and go that route.

So we, we get into a lot of that. We also do law enforcement education. So we don’t train the actual dogs. We train the law enforcement agencies so they can hire us. We’ll come in and teach their departments the skillset to really expand what they can do with their canines as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So what’s the secret?

Michael Soler: The secret of it all and I loved actually bringing this up, is three things in psychology. It’s classical conditioning, operating conditioning, and the Clever Hans effect, which is my favorite things to talk about. And for most people, they’re absolutely boring, but for me [00:07:00] it’s a drive it’s so much fun and it allowed me to really grow myself as a father, as a husband, as a business owner, as a coach, as a mentor, because when you learn those three things, you really bridge yourself into thinking outside the box and really getting into those things. So one of the if you don’t mind, I would love to give a fun tip for everybody.

Jonathan Breeden: Yes, please do.

Michael Soler: So this is one of my favorite things, everybody I’ve worked with now. So to give you guys an idea, I’ve been training dogs for over 25 years, and this is the one thing everybody tells me, their dog knows their name. And then I sit there and I go, I say their dog’s name.

You know, it doesn’t listen their dog, right? So I want to take a second and tell you this trick, right? You’re gonna need to do this 30 times a day for 30 days. All you need to do is take some treats, hide it throughout your house, and at random times say your dog’s name and when they look at you or come to you, drop the treat on the floor and pet them when they get to you.

On the 30th day. Any bad behavior, you want your dog to stop. Just say their name, no [00:08:00] more nos, no more aas, no more ees. And all of a suddenly your dog will immediately stop doing all the stuff they’re doing. They’ll run to you for attention and affection. And you’ll have a better relationship with your dog, and you stop unwanted behavior.

Pretty crazy, right?

Jonathan Breeden: That is. That is.

Michael Soler: Think about it. Right? So most people, number one complaint we get is my dog jumps on guests.

Jonathan Breeden: Yep. My dog jumps on me. Yes.

Michael Soler: All right. So if your dog goes to jump on a guest and you say their name and they’ve been trained to come back to you off their name, you stopped the jumping, you returned to them, able to gain control, you stopped all that unwanted behavior, and you never had to tell your dog no.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s pretty good,

Michael Soler: right?

Jonathan Breeden: That’s pretty good. Yeah.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: But it’s funny that at my house I have a Labradoodle and so he has been trained by my wife and my daughter. He does not jump on them.

Michael Soler: Oh yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: But he does jump on me and my wife’s like, well, you reinforce the behavior ’cause you pet him and you know, [00:09:00] you, you love,

Michael Soler: it’s true.

Jonathan Breeden: Him and all that stuff. And she goes. I don’t do that, so he doesn’t jump on me and literally we’ll be sitting right beside each other. He will come jump on me and I’ll be like, go jump on her.

Michael Soler: Not happening. Nope.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And it’s like he knows.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: You know,

Michael Soler: oh, they know.

Jonathan Breeden: Same thing with my daughter. Like

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: And I’m like, I can’t get my kids to always do what I want do either. So, so it’s sort of the same thing. It’s gotta be consistent. Gotta reinforce it, you know? But that’s a pretty good trick with their, with their name though.

Michael Soler: Well, I’m gonna give you one more ’cause you probably have the dog jumping on you, right?

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. The dog.

Michael Soler: And some people, some people don’t like it. It sounds like you actually enjoy it

Jonathan Breeden: though. I, I actually kind of enjoy it. All right. Even though the problem is he jumps on. Everybody jumps on guests, he jumps on friends.

Michael Soler: You do the name drill.

Jonathan Breeden: The only thing that doesn’t jump on is my wife and my daughter.

Michael Soler: So you gotta do the name drill. That’ll help stop the guest. Right?

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: But I’m gonna give you one funny one. This is one of my favorite ones is, is this. So dogs are creatures of attention and affection, which means that they will do anything and repeat anything that gives them attention or affection, period, right?

So here’s what’s crazy. [00:10:00] If I want my dog to not jump on me, right? So you’re the individual. I don’t want him to jump on us individually. I’m gonna pet an invisible dog where my dog is not. My dog will be so jealous that it will go to where I’m petting the invisible dog and it will stop the jumping behavior because the dog will say, wait a minute, the petting in the attention is happening over here while it’s on the ground.

Yeah. And the dog will change its behavior.

Jonathan Breeden: If I pet an invisible dog.

Michael Soler: Invisible dog is no joke. It’s no joke whatsoever. So when you really get into psychology, right? And understanding the mind of the animal, right? And saying these mind of people, when we get into business, right? The answer is simple. And it’s so simple.

You’re like, there’s no way this is true. But if I literally sat there and go, that’s a good boy. The dog will literally go right to that spot. The dog’s gonna be like, no, that’s my attention. And it will stay there for that period of time.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh my goodness.

Michael Soler: And then jumping will go away. Now I’ll tell you why most dogs jump and I we’re just in my wheelhouse right now. You ready?

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Soler: When you got it as a puppy, what did you do? You picked it up, right?

Jonathan Breeden: Right, right.

Michael Soler: I [00:11:00] have a puppy right now. Guess what we do all the time?

Jonathan Breeden: Pick it up.

Michael Soler: Pick it up. So that means the dog’s learning where all the attention affection comes from my face. That’s the closest pace in my face. So now that the dog is grown, the dog is now not able to be picked up necessarily, right? The dog’s trying to get back to where attention comes from. So you have to reteach the dog that it’s on the floor is where it comes from, and that’s why this trick works fantastic.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I have been working and he’s a good little dog and to not pet him unless he’s sitting, right. And so sometimes I’ve got other stuff going on, paying attention, and he wants to be played with, and my wife’s like, well, look, he’s sitting there, he’s doing what you want him to do.

Michael Soler: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: You have to reinforce this. I was like, well, I got other stuff to do. She’s like, look, like if you get mad about him jumping, but he is sitting there. With his butt on the ground, his tails wagging. You need to reward ’cause that’s what we wanna do.

Michael Soler: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: We wanted to sit there, you know, and that kind of stuff. So it’s, it’s kind of neat. We did have to go get one of those dog watch fences.

Michael Soler: Okay.

Jonathan Breeden: A few weeks ago. That cost a lot of money.

Michael Soler: Then you’re gonna be mad if I could told you didn’t need to.

Jonathan Breeden: I, well, I know, but he [00:12:00] just kept wanting to run out the front door across the road and get run over to go play with the doodle across the street.

Michael Soler: So you ready for this?

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: I’m gonna give you one more tip.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. One more tip.

Michael Soler: I’m enjoying this so much. I’m gonna give you three tips though.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: If you walk your property line for 30 days, your dog will never leave. Dogs are territorial creatures by nature of they’re predators. Predators want to keep their territory. Main reason why dogs typically leave the property is because they were never shown where it was, or because most people take their dog and they walk the neighborhood, that means if you ever let your dog out, they’ll walk the neighborhood and come back in a routine. So your dog watch fence.

All you really need to do is walk your yard for 30 days. They’ll never leave. Dead serious.

Jonathan Breeden: How about that?

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: How about that?

Michael Soler: So, every time my family has moved, the first thing we do is we literally would plot our property and say, this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna come out of our front door. We’re gonna go here, here, here, here. And we would sometimes dictate if we want the sidewalk in or out of the property line.

And if we included the property line, what we learned was the dog will bark at anybody on the sidewalk, but not in the street. So if you walk past our house on the [00:13:00] street, they wouldn’t bark at you, but if you were on the sidewalk, they would bark at you.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: Right. So now we learned when we moved here to Johnston County. We kept the sidewalk out of the perimeter, so.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: That way people can walk in our neighborhood and our dogs won’t bark at them.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, okay. How about that?

Michael Soler: It’s a neat little thing ’cause again, they’re creatures of habit, comfortability, and they’re gonna repeat anything. It gets attention and affection.

Jonathan Breeden: That part is true. ‘Cause I do tell people, like, they’re a little bit like little kids and they’re either gonna behave well or pay badly.

Michael Soler: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: But they’re gonna do something to get your attention and they know what it is, right.

Michael Soler: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: I think they done, like a 3-year-old knows what it is. I think the dog knows what it is. If you’re not paying attention.

Michael Soler: Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Breeden: Big time and stuff like that. So, I guess one question I’ve got is why do dogs that are trained, either trained by you or trained by other professional trainers relapse.

Michael Soler: That so remember the three.

Jonathan Breeden: It end up like they were not trained.

Michael Soler: Oh yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: And I’m just out my money.

Michael Soler: So the three things we brought up earlier, you have classical conditioning, operating conditioning, and you have what they call the Clever Hans effect. [00:14:00] Right? So classical conditioning is a repeat to behavior to create a habit, right? That’s what we learn with walk in a perimeter.

Operating conditioning. The control, and I’m bringing this down to simplistic, is the control a positive and negative to introduce a behavior or condition, A new one. But the one that always gets overlooked is the clever Hans Effect. The clever Hans Effect is about a horse named Clever Hans in 1896. And what they discovered in this was that the horse was studying the mannerisms of the people to that worked with the horse and learn how to manipulate them based on studying them.

So your dog has 24 hours a day to study you and your habits of your household. You are distracted by social media, TV, work, family phones, everything, right? Your dog’s just studying you and figuring out how to maneuver you. So your dog didn’t become untrained, they just trained you. Okay? Crazy, right? So how do you fix it?

Right.

That’s what I know you’re about to ask. How do you fix it? How do you fix it?

Jonathan Breeden: Right?

Michael Soler: So what you do is so with Blue Line K-9, we have a club. So after you’re trained with us, we create a club. And anytime you go away on [00:15:00] vacation or, or drop off for a day, we actually reiterate all the training for you to keep ’em on par.

Entire time for if you don’t wanna work with us, you’re maybe too far away or just work with a different trainer you’re happy with. Perfectly fine. My suggestion would be is just do one time a month where you just reiterate some baseline obedience cues from the get go. Or one of my favorite lines is you must be consistently inconsistent to create consistency, which means shocking all your dog come down sometimes in pajamas or dress wear when you’re not going out.

Throws your dog off for a complete loop, right? Because if you ever come down in your dress clothes, right, your dog automatically assumes you’re leaving, right? Your work clothes right? Or your dog assumes you’re leaving, pays no attention. Yeah. But wear that when you watch TV and sit on the couch with ’em, throw them on completely, and that messes up their predictability of your behaviors.

Move the treat jar around, move your keys around, do things like that that would throw inconsistency. So like for me, I take my dog’s leash and I put it around my neck and I go cook dinner. So the leash is not a precursor. We’re going for a [00:16:00] walk.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh. Because my dog will run from the leash because it it does. It’s so lazy. It doesn’t. Well, and also it’s not the walk. It’s that my daughter trains him when he is on the leash and he doesn’t want to be trained

Michael Soler: right

Jonathan Breeden: by my daughter. So,

Michael Soler: so it’s just about breaking that little, that little thing up. Right. Make it inconsistently. Consistent, so.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s fascinating. That’s absolutely fascinating.

Have family law questions? Need guidance to navigate legal challenges? The compassionate team at Breeden Law Office is here to help. Visit us at www. breedenfirm. com for practical advice, resources, or to book a consultation. Remember, when life gets messy, you don’t have to face it alone.

Jonathan Breeden: So what are some of the services you provide? I know you provide drop off services you provide

Michael Soler: mm-hmm

Jonathan Breeden: one-on-one services where you coach the owner and the dog you provide. I mean, you can go out of town, like almost like a kennel. I mean, talk about that.

Michael Soler: Yeah. So we have, right now [00:17:00] our here in Johnston County, we have a lot more options than our other locations ’cause we are flag shipping and new service a year but mainly we start out with our training programs. And one of the most important things for us is to create a baseline that’s customized to you and your home and your lifestyle. So the first thing we do is we, first off, we interview you to find out about your lifestyle, and then we would design the entire training program and method.

That fits you and your family. So that way we’re not forcing you to change. We will guide, right? We’re the professionals. We’re gonna build and guide the program to fit what you’re doing. And how we do that is a couple different ways. One, we have a board and train program, which we would do everything in our power to recommend. You don’t do that. Which is crazy.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, okay.

Michael Soler: And the reason why is we want you fully engulf with us. We want you involved with us throughout this program. So we created a program called our Platinum Program, and how it works is it’s you drop your dog off during a day, one day a week for seven weeks. And during that day we will do all the repetitions.

We’ll take your dog for field trips to Holt, Lowes, home improvement grocery stores, [00:18:00] fast food places, things that you would be driving your dog with, farms, walks, things like that. So we’re doing it while your work. We’re taking care of all that. Introduction and hard work for you. And then when you come to pick up your dog, we would give you a lesson and then you’re gonna have six days to practice.

So then the next week comes and you’re gonna drop your dog off again. You’re gonna give us a rundown, what went good, what went bad, and that way we can critique it up and we’re gonna have you and your dog grow together through that program.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. Well that’s pretty interesting. And you’re taking new dogs as we speak?

Michael Soler: Every day. Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: Every day.

Michael Soler: Every day.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, cool. So how could people find out about BlueLine K-9?

Michael Soler: So you go to our website, which is BlueLineK-9.com or you can give us a call at 1800-266-2365 and just pick the location closest to you.

Jonathan Breeden: And you’ve got a charity event coming up on May 2nd?

Michael Soler: Yes, sir.

Jonathan Breeden: For the, for dogs. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know y’all do it.

Michael Soler: Yeah. So we started an event. We, we, we called, it’s a Rainbow Bridge event. And, what it is for is we call it the blessing of animals. [00:19:00] So every May we do this annually that we get everybody to come together and we have a pastor come out and bless your animals.

And we try to really give back to our community. We try to get food trucks and other businesses involved to bring more community together and just get people connecting in a giant. Location based community. This year we had since we’ve been in business for quite some time now we never calculated this, but it’s hitting us hard this year in particular, is that a lot of pets are now coming to that, to their end.

So a lot of our clients, and we keep our clients for life, you know, we have a really tight community and they, they’re a part of it. And recently a lot of, a lot of our, our community has been moving on. They’re getting new dogs, which is wonderful, but they’re also saying goodbye to their older dogs.

So we’ve decided that we are gonna create a new foundation called the the Rainbow Bridge Blue Line K-9 Rainbow Bridge Foundation. And what we want to do is we wanna put a little memorial at our building where you can put your dog’s name tag on a wall, and that will come with us if we ever move or anything like that.

It’ll stay there forever. And the net money will be [00:20:00] utilized to either help dogs in. Rescues to find their forever home or given the scholarships for people that can’t afford the training, so that way the money raised will go back to giving back to other dogs and giving them that ability to have that life.

Jonathan Breeden: So where is that event gonna be at?

Michael Soler: That’s gonna be at our location here in JoCo.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: Which is in 472 Cleveland Crossing Drive Suite 101 here in Garner.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. 40 42.

Michael Soler: 40 42 Area

Jonathan Breeden: 40 Veterans Parkway, whatever you wanna call it.

Michael Soler: Yeah. They, they changed the name on us.

Jonathan Breeden: I’m always afraid they keep changing the name. Alright, well cool. Now we’re gonna transition to ask you a couple questions about The Soler Effect. This is a new executive coaching.

Michael Soler: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: Power positive thinking thing that you’re doing. What is that? How does it help people?

Michael Soler: Great. So The Soler Effect what is it? Well, first off.

Jonathan Breeden: And that’s soler. S-O.

Michael Soler: E-R.

Jonathan Breeden: -L-E-R. Not A-R.

Michael Soler: Technically it’s Soler it is my dad is from Vega, Baja, Puerto Rico. He’s Puerto Rican. I’m technically a Jersey boy, so I’m not from Puerto Rico, I’m from New Jersey. So I can’t claim that. [00:21:00] But what is funny, and I have to say this, is that, you know, with dog training, we talk about habits, right?

So when the name of this business was created, you’re not gonna believe it, but I didn’t create it even though it’s my last name.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Michael Soler: My VP of marketing in Blue Line K-9 I was like, yeah, I really need to come up with a name. She goes, well, why don’t you name it The Soler Effect? And I was like, I don’t really want my name on anything.

And she goes, I’m telling you, Mike, it’s what it has to be, so I’m not gonna argue with a professional. Right.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. Right.

Michael Soler: There’s a reason why she’s in her spot.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Michael Soler: And as badly as I didn’t want it, I also have to humble myself as a business owner going. I got here by trusting.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Michael Soler: I have to trust.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, it’s kind of a neat name though.

Michael Soler: Yeah. It’s catchy. Right? And now here’s the crazy thing is I’m pretty old, right? I mean, I’m in my 40’s and I never knew this or I never looked it up, but my last name is a Spanish verb of habit of, so technically, if you read the name right, The Soler Effect, it’s technically meaning the effective habits.

And it meant so much because once you get into learning about the business and the executive coaching and [00:22:00] how we support you through inspiration, giving you your guidelines, what we’re doing is we’re building the habits that you need to succeed. And I think that’s what’s even more amazing is not only did I not come up with this name.

What the name actually meant. And being in my 40’s and not knowing that it meant that is even more shocking lemme tell you is the fact that I didn’t know that, but it is what it came out to be. This is a shirt from our Soler Effect, which is making people realize that the powers within them.

You have to believe in yourself, and you have to be you. We don’t want you to change. We don’t want you to do that. We wanna bring out the best in you. And that’s what what happens a lot of times in small businesses, they hit these roadblocks where they get bad advice or they spent money on advice and they get stuck.

And we want to give them that. This is the situation where, hey, listen, between dog training, we learn about habits. We learn how to build it. We know that what gets recognized gets repeated. What makes us different, and we started putting that all together. So it started out with a, a quote of the day, which is a, it’s just a morning little video that we [00:23:00] push out every day.

We’ve been doing it now for over 360 days which is even crazier to think about how that started which was that I just wanted to prove to somebody local that you can use social media for positive and use it for accountability. And next thing you know, I did it for a few days. We were in Launch Joco, right. The mentor program.

Jonathan Breeden: Right, right.

Michael Soler: So the day I met with my mentee, I didn’t post the video.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, okay.

Michael Soler: My phone blew up like you wouldn’t believe

Jonathan Breeden: people thought you died.

Michael Soler: Oh, it was crazy. I’m getting message after message. Where’s the quote? Where’s the video? Where I’m like, well, this is not a job here.

This is, this is, I was just doing something nice. Right. But it was, they were expecting it at, at a delivery time of nine something. Right. But that morning I had met with my mentee, Darlene, and I was talking to her and we got chit chatty and I didn’t post a video and next thing you know, by 12 o’clock, man, my inbox was.

Ridiculously loaded, which proved my point, right? Right. It proved the point that you, there’s [00:24:00] accountability. Right? And I knew there that I was like, I have to keep doing this. So I and if I challenge anybody, if you don’t believe the story, what you could do is you go to our YouTube channel, right? Which is The Soler Effect.

And you could see the videos in the beginning stages where I’m in Horn Square in downtown Clayton, and I randomly pull a quote outta my, my Tuckers right, and throw it out there and you get to see me. Literally just showing you the art that’s in the thing. And that’s how I, you can know that the story is how true that story is ’cause I literally tell it right then and there.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man. That’s great. That’s great. So you’ve got, sort of a group mastermind group that meets on Wednesday mornings.

Michael Soler: Yes, sir.

Jonathan Breeden: Is that right? And, and people come together and you sort of tackle, you know, a problem. Yes. You know, a, a general problem that everybody suffers from.

The one thing I’ve learned through all the business coaching I’ve been in and the mindset coaching I’ve had. Over the years is my business is no different than yours. The problems I have are the same problems. Blue Line has You just sell dog training? I just sell legal services.

Michael Soler: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: But, but it’s still [00:25:00] all the same.

Michael Soler: All the same. You know, it’s a human to human business out there. Right? So that’s the thing that we teach mowing, is that, that refocus. We meet at 7:30 every Wednesday morning here in Garner at our 472 Cleveland Crossing Drive. Wednesday mornings. You come for free for a couple. Make sure it fits you if it does.

Then we invite you to join our, or join our group, join our pack. When you join our pack, not only do you get to participate in our. Weekly lives, but if you miss one, things happen we record them and we have a member portal for you to watch the lives so you can go back and watch it.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s great.

That’s great.

Michael Soler: Yeah. So there’s, you never really miss out any information.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So what else are you doing? You’ve got that group. I, I know you go give motivational speeches. People can hire you for that. Anything else that’s part of The Soler Effect? I know it’s a new business, but it’s got a lot going on.

Michael Soler: There is a lot going on. So The Soler Effect also offers, coffee. So we have legendary brewed coffee. We are starting a clothing line here, which is. One of something that I’m really trying to do to get a message out. So one of the, one of my favorite parts about the clothing line is that anybody that buys one of our shirts we give a [00:26:00] shirt to the Isaiah House to close one of the children in foster care.

And if they’re not needing a shirt, then we give it to somebody that is homeless. So that way we’re, we’re spreading a message and clothing somebody in need,

Jonathan Breeden: right?

Michael Soler: So.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright, so how people are interested in executive coaching or having you come speak, how can they learn about The Soler Effect?

Michael Soler: So you can go to www.TheSolerEffect.com and it’s with er as you said earlier, it’s not ar, I’m not a science experiment.

I am Hispanic. So it’s er Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Well that’s good. That’s good. Well, the last question, I can talk to you for hours. We’re gonna have to come back ’cause we could probably do. I get started talking about the mindset stuff and

Michael Soler: Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: And the books and, and selling and emotionals and like, I mean, we, we’ll definitely have to do another one in a, in a few months.

But the last question I’m gonna ask you for this episode is, what do you love most about Johnston County?

Michael Soler: The people, I will have to say that I’ve, I’ve had the honor of living in a many different places. Born and raised in New Jersey, moved to Southern Jersey, Maryland. It was in the Marine Corps, lived in the West coast.[00:27:00]

Originally, my family and I, when we came, we didn’t wanna move. We were leaving Maryland. We didn’t wanna leave to come to North Carolina. We, North Carolina was actually the no, no state for us which is pretty funny. We don’t really have any reasons for it except it’s just what it was. We came here to do a site inspection of the location and we.

For giggles. Went and looked at a house. Saw the house. We bought it, sight on scene. We didn’t even check the neighborhood. Oh geez. We were like, this is the house. We don’t know what it was. We had to come here. And when we got here between the, the Chamber of commerce, the community, the people.

The, it felt as if we lived here our entire lives. The community is so welcoming, so supportive and the fact that no matter where you are in your careers your life, your, if you’re growing, your family, changing, your family, just looking for someplace, it’s an amazing place in the to come and just.

Immediately feel welcomed and I, and I, I can’t

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. Everybody says it’s the people. I believe it’s the people. They do make you feel welcome. [00:28:00] Everybody is so nice and so welcoming. It’s tremendous. It’s one of the reasons so many people wanna come here.

I know we have growth issues and we’ve had all the candidates over the last few weeks on, you know, we just had the election and you know it’s interesting. But yeah, the people, the people are the best. Well, we’d like to thank Michael Soler with Blue Line K-9 and The Soler Effect for being our guest on this week’s episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast.

If you’d be so kind as to leave us a five star review down below, it’ll help us attract more guests and increase our visibility. If you’d also tag us in your Instagram stories, Best of Johnston County, that would help raise our awareness as well. Please, like, follow, subscribe to this podcast wherever you see it.

It comes out every Monday morning at 10:00 AM and has now for almost 30 months. Until next time, I’m your host Jonathan Breeden.

That’s the end of today’s episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. [00:29:00] Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.