IAM1189- Author Talks About Animals and Animal Issues

Marion Zola has always been a writer and animal lover. Her first writing was poetry, until she began writing screenplays and sitcoms. Eventually, she wrote her first book, “All The Good Ones Are Married,” which became a Lifetime movie. Along the way she began producing a vampire movie and, for the last few years, a show on shelter dogs entitled “Shelter Me. Her second book is “Romancing The Dog, The Struggle to Make a Pound Dog Happy in Beverly Hills.”

• CEO Hack: Figuring out the most important things to do now
• CEO Nugget: Investing in pet business
• CEO Defined: Being able to prioritize

Website: https://romancingthedog.com/

https://theatre40.org/

Facebook: romancingthedog
Books are on Amazon: All The Good Ones Are Married

Romancing the Dog: The Struggle To Make A Pound Dog Happy in Beverly Hills

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZolaMarion

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.

00:30 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Marion Zola of the book, Romance and the Dog, the Struggle to Make a Pound Dog Happy in Beverly Hills. Marion, it's great to have you on the show.

01:09 – Marion Zola

It's great to be here, Gresham. Thank you so much for having me.

01:14 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on as well. Thank you for coming to the show. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Marian so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing Marian has always been a writer and an animal lover. Her first writing was poetry until she began writing screenplays and sitcoms.

Eventually, she wrote her first book All the Good Ones Are Married which became a lifetime movie along the way she began producing a vampire movie, and for the last few years, a show on the shelter dogs entitled Shelter Me. Her second book is Romancing the Dog, the Struggle to Make a Pound Dog Happy in Beverly Hills. Marion, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

01:52 – Marion Zola

Yes, thank you. Thank you.

01:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. I know I touched on it a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started when I call your CEO story.

02:04 – Marion Zola

When my dog Chips died, the book was really my obituary to him. But along the way, the book contains a lot of information about dealing with canine cancer and how to address various related issues, which people seem to really appreciate. I have been lucky enough to get all 5-star reviews on Amazon and was a best seller on Amazon when it came out. So, I'm very blessed to have that. But, more importantly, is the message that A lot of people don't know that there is a lot of deception and advertising about dogs.

I'm a big proponent of adopting. Why not give a home to a homeless animal that's going to be killed in many instances at the shelter if they don't get adopted? People think, oh, the dogs in the shelter must have some problem. It's not true. Most of the problems are with the owners. Or the owners got too old and sick to take care of them or they had to move to someplace where they couldn't take them. It's nothing to do with the quality of the dog. In 99.9% of cases, they're great dogs.

All of my dogs were in a shelter at some point. My current dog I adopted when she was 10. She's now 15. She's a great dog. For older people, there's nothing better than adopting an older dog because they're in the same boat, they move a little slower, and they don't run as much. They know the ropes, the animals are almost always housebroken, and it's not a 15-year commitment like it is with a puppy. But as far as puppies go, the tragedy is that most people are buying dogs from puppy mills without realizing it because of the deceptive advertising. I would love to tell your audience a little more about where to get a puppy if they feel they have to get a puppy. Something I would never do.

I don't want to go through all that hassle. Also, I want to give them a home to a homeless animal. But if they really want to get a puppy. Do not buy it from the internet, please. They are supporting puppy mills, which are horrible places where the poor animals don't ever get out of their cages. They have very little human contact. They do not receive medical care, and they are horribly treated. They are just breeding machines. When they're too old to breed, they get killed. So you don't want to support this. There are a lot of them in Pennsylvania.

I'm sorry to say the Amish are proponents of puppy mills. If you want a puppy and you want to get it from a legitimate breeder, get it in your own state where you can visit the breeder. The puppy mill people advertise themselves as breeders, but they're not legitimate breeders. You can also get a list from the Humane Society, but there's a wonderful website called pupquest.com, which lists a lot of the things I'm telling you about the criteria for buying a puppy.

A legitimate breeder wants you to come to see their setup. They breed the dogs in their own home. They're usually very knowledgeable about the breed. They check out the owners. They have the dogs have been examined by licensed veterinarians, they're inoculated. They are often fixed, or if they're too young, they should be fixed at about 6 months, but they are proud of their dogs. They are dog lovers, these legitimate breeders.

So if you wanna buy a puppy, make sure it's in your own state. If you want to adopt, there's a wonderful website called petfinder.com. You can put in whatever you want and they will tell you where the dogs that match your search are located in your area. That is not for breeders, that's for adoptions. Petfinder.com for adoptions, and PupQuest for buying puppies.

07:03 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, I truly appreciate you sharing that I think so many times you know we forget that knowledge is power, and a lot of times as somebody who rescued a puppy, it is hopefully a 15-year commitment. It is definitely a long-term commitment, but I think just having that opportunity to have that knowledge and information, a lot of times people may not know what they don't know, and I love that you've been able to kind of provide us with that information. Is that a little like what you cover as well in your book, or could you tell us a little bit more about your book, what you're covering there, and what you feel kind of sets that book apart and makes it such a great book and has been a bestseller.

07:36 – Marion Zola

Well, really, The Romance in the Dog is a story of my husband and my relationship with this dog, which had a lot of humor besides a lot of love. Along the way, you learn different things about what happens if your dog happens to bite someone or gets lost. I mean, there's lots of information. You know, one of the things around here in a lot of suburbs where people have backyards where they should not leave their animals to be stolen or get out, they shouldn't leave them alone really.

A gardener or a poolman in a place like this might inadvertently leave a gate open, then the dogs get out and if they're not microchipped or tagged they get lost, People go frantic looking for their dogs. If people would only microchip them and tag them with their name address and phone number. They have a much better chance of getting the animal back. Of course, animals are stolen. I don't even wanna say what happens to some of them, but please don't leave your animals vulnerable alone where they can be taken.

Please tell all pull men and gardeners to close gates doors etc. Kids also leave doors open sometimes we found a dog who walked out of his house when the kids left and left the doors open. So you have to be very careful. It's like having an infant. You have to make sure that they're safe. During the pandemic, there was in the last year and a half, 2 years, there's been a tremendous demand for puppies. People again, don't know where they're buying them from. A lot of them were shipped from, out of the country. Now 113 countries have been banned from selling dogs to the United States because they did not have rabies.

They falsified the rabies vaccination certificates. So all these terrible things can happen If you buy a dog from somewhere else, if you want to buy a puppy make sure it's in your state, and you went to see it, where it comes from, and who's selling it. That information again is on popquest.com. If you want to adopt which I hope everybody in your audience will like to do, go to petfinder.com or the local shelter. The series Shelter Me, which I co-produced, is about the great value of shelter dogs. You know, Gresham, some of these dogs have become search and rescue dogs, seeing eye dogs, drug-sniffing dogs. So clearly there's nothing wrong with the dogs there. It's just that people are not adopting enough of them.

10:51 – Gresham Harkless

I love those because those are kind of nuggets that might be like kind of advice-driven things that people can kind of learn from. What has made you understand that these are two strong businesses that could be profitable?

11:06 – Marion Zola

Well, they're not complicated. They don't require a degree. I know people who are making very good money at these businesses. So I suggest that only for that reason. I mean, someone in your audience may be interested in starting a little business, and it doesn't have to be full-time. Those are 2 businesses you can do part-time while you're going to school. As I say, as long as you love animals. Now the dog grooming, you could either get a job as a dog groomer somewhere to learn the trade and then you can have your own business.

11:46 – Gresham Harkless

So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO hack? So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:56 – Marion Zola

I'm involved with a lot of projects and a lot of things I wish I were more efficient, but in order to decide what to pay attention to at any given moment. I try to figure out what is the most important thing to do now that has a time element. Obviously, doing this radio show, I can't do it anytime I want. I have to do it at the exact time and hour appointed. Likewise, if I'm turning in a piece of work to a producer, I have to do it when I know he's interested and expects it to be finished in a timely manner.

I may be writing something else that I'm very interested in, But it's not finished. I have to pay attention to the projects that have some interest now and put the other ones on the back burner until I have time. I just tried to, with all the stuff that comes your way, whether in email or texts or whatever, I try to prioritize and say, well, what's the most important thing to do now? Try to sneak in some exercise every day too.

13:22 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping our different quote-unquote CEOs on this show so Marion, what does being a CEO means to you?

13:32 – Marion Zola

Again, it means to me to be able to prioritize what is the most important thing for me to do today or at any given hour. If I have somebody waiting for a piece of work, that's my priority. If it's something that I want to do that isn't being expected at a particular time by anybody. I squeeze that in around the stuff I have to do.

14:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Well, I truly appreciate that definition. I'm so sorry to hear about your husband. I know you definitely miss him. But I love that you've been able to kind of, it sounds like through your book and everything you're doing, keep his spirit alive as well too, and his memory, and everything he's done to kind of contribute to you. So I appreciate you continuing to kind of, you know, create projects and create those opportunities because I'm sure he's very happy to have been a part of your life as well.

14:28 – Marion Zola

I'm sure your audience has a lot of business people in it and business-oriented people. It's great to make money because you can do what you want and you can also give to causes that are important to you. Thanks to my husband, we were able to start a little charitable foundation. So I can support a lot of animal organizations that are trying to relieve suffering. This is a wonderful benefit. If you make money in business, you're able to give more to charity. That's a great feeling. You can do some things for people or animals that you couldn't do before. That is great. That is a wonderful feeling.

15:22 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, Marianne, I truly appreciate that.

15:26 – Marion Zola

I hope Gershwin when people might go to Amazon and look at the reviews of the book if you're interested and or if they want to contact me or read my blog it's on romancingthedog.com. I have a lot of information about animals there.

15:45 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yes, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well, so that everybody can get in touch with you and get a hold of you. I truly appreciate you for taking some time out, of course, for all the awesome work you're doing, and especially that reminder as well too.

I think so many times that we forget that the money time and resources that we have are a lot of times tools by which we can make an impact in so many different ways. So I love you and your late husband has been able to kind of make that impact and it's a great reminder for us to do that as well. So thank you so much for doing that, reminding us of that, and of course, taking some time out with us today.

16:16 –  Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]