Must love dogs

Prescott’s Shelly Gilliam turns animal boarding into an art form

When you visit the Web site for the C Bar C Doggie Dude Ranch, you’ll see photos. Lots and lots of photos. Mostly, they are of smiling dogs and contented cats – furry clients, if you will. You’ll also see a few humans here and there, employees of the business that was recently voted the best kennel in Prescott. But there is one person you won’t see much of: owner Shelly Gilliam.

Gilliam, who is Mexican-American, recently made history as the only Latina business-owner to make the finals in the Make Mine a Million contest for Arizona. Gilliam says that the entire experience of applying for the award, and attending the events for it in Phoenix last month, inspired her to make some changes to help her already successful animal-boarding business become even more successful. Such as? Investing more in real estate. Joining Toastmasters. And putting herself front and center with the public and media – and in more photos.

“I am so camera shy,” says Gilliam, 42. “I also have a fear of speaking in public. But what this whole experience has taught me is to get over it already! I realized that too many women tend to put others first, and I’ve realized that in business, when you say ‘oh, it’s not about me, it’s about the team,’ you are actually undermining yourself and your business. It is about you. Of course it is. You have to give yourself permission to shine.”

Gilliam and her husband, Daniel, inherited the kennel business from his ranching father 15 years ago, she says. At that time, neither one of them knew much about animals, but that did not stop them from giving it a go. With Daniel being severely diabetic – and limited in his work for UPS at the time as the disease progressed – the couple were looking for a way to become more self-sufficient.

“I never had pets growing up,” says Gilliam, who was born in El Centro, Calif., and raised between there and Arizona. “To me, everything we do in life is learned. So I didn’t see my lack of experience with animals as a barrier. I saw it as a challenge to go out and learn as much as I could.”

Now, Gilliam, a bright, exceptional woman who holds a college degree in liberal arts and philosophy and who frequently attends conferences to keep up to date on her industry, is every bit the insightful expert on dogs and cats that Cesar Milan, aka “the Dog Whisperer” is, according to those who know her.

“She has a dynamic personality and enthusiasm and is always willing to try new things,” says J.D. O’Reilly, a kennel technician who has worked for Gilliam for nearly a year.

“Every animal has its own personality,” says Gilliam. “And I believe that every animal, like every person, has a destiny to fulfill. Our philosophy here is to help them do that, gently, and with compassion and integrity.”

It’s a formula that seems to be working. C Bar C is not only thought to be the best kennel in Prescott, it is also by far the busiest – posing a whole new set of challenges for Gilliam.

“We are learning how important it is as a small-business owner to be able to delegate responsibilities and trust others to get the job done,” says Gilliam. “For all these years, we’ve worked so hard. We realized our daughter, who’s sixteen now, never had a normal Christmas, because from the time she was two, we had her working in the kennel with us with some job to do. We gave our employees vacations off, but that meant we had to work. It’s a badge of pride for a small business-owner sometimes to say you work 90 hours a week. But there comes a point, when you’ve gotten big enough, that you really have no choice but to delegate and trust, or stagnate.”