It's a
pleasure when someone asks this question. Of course the focus of nearly
every career seeker is "getting their hands wet" working
hands-on grooming pets, but whoa! This industry is so diverse with
employment and self-employment opportunities and many of which are not
even known by most career seekers. PetGroomer.com has done its best to
bring the many career options in the grooming industry worldwide to more
than one hundred thousand career seekers. Before getting your hands wet we
strongly suggest you form a career plan, and business plan if you are
going to be self-employed.
The answer to "Do I need
grooming management training?" is obvious if you plan to be
self-employed, "YES!" If you plan to be employed as pet groomer,
the answer is "No, but..." What's the "but" all about?
Based on extensive surveys of career seekers coming to PetGroomer.com,
over 70% plan on being self-employed within a couple years after attending
a school or apprenticing with another grooming business when possible.
Taking this overwhelming percentage of intent to own a grooming business,
we see that most pet grooming career seekers should have some specialized
grooming business management training.
Let us share that
PetGroomer.com came into being only as the result of Find A Groomer, Inc. (owner) becoming the world's leading pet grooming management
consultation firm in 1987. Even today you have more fingers on your hands
than there are similar firms. That's amazing when you consider the size of
the grooming and overall pet industry. In fact in the 1960's when we
opened our first grooming, there was NO formalized grooming business
management training or books, and the same is essentially true of the
1970's and most of the 1980's! Even in the 1990's there are only a few
grooming management consultation firms and we are NOT in competition with
them. In fact, we're elated!
It's about time that
management training be taken just as seriously as the art of pet grooming.
You can be the world's best pet groomer and not know how to manage and
maintain a stable, highly-profitable, legally compliant and valuable
(maximum net worth - the greatest contributor to your eventual retirement)
grooming business. All of these are grooming management factors, and
you've got to become familiar with them as a business owner.
Management means you have a
written "road map" and special business skills that will guide
you to your career and business goals. If pet grooming was a vocationally
licensed profession almost certainly required training would include
some grooming management training, and there would be substantially more
educational opportunities.
Too many pet groomers, in fact
a huge majority, open grooming businesses and do well on their own but one
day crash right into a wall of limitation. The wall is brick, and each
brick is a problem. For example, one brick is the industry's
chronic shortage of skilled full-charge groomers, and another is potent
levels of stress generated by owner/groomers doing it all - from client
reception, bathing, pre-clipping, finish trimming, marketing, advertising,
cleaning and on and on, instead of having the means and freedom of
know-how to delegate extensive labor burdens. Perhaps now you better
understand why Madeline Bright Ogle, owner of PetGroomer.com, wrote the
book From Problems to Profits - to help others
take a hammer to the brick wall. Know that even today it is still the only
extensive book dedicated to the business side of grooming for a
MULTI-BILLION industry - ironic isn't it?
Fortunately more pet grooming
schools today are offering some level of management training to students
than ever before in the history of the industry. Their management training
varies, from a few hours of management training part of a several hundred
hour grooming course, to the industry's most advanced 40
hour career and/or business workshop
and in a private 2 day version
just for you and your
associates.
Even today as the leading
management consultation firm in the grooming industry, we attend regular
continuing education. Everyone should in the industry, including the art
of grooming and the business of grooming. Be sure to check our
Industry
Calendar for some of these opportunities.
The need for management
training is obvious when we look at your expected duties as a manager and
owner. You will be required to provide new customer and client services,
maintain professional records, possibly hire and supervise staff, lease or
rent a van or commercial space, maintain bookkeeping, prepare and file
business tax returns, maintain adequate and proper insurance, manage a
cost-efficient and productive operation, and much much more. These duties
and responsibilities are NOT the artistic groomer in YOU, they are the
MANAGER in YOU. They are learned and experienced only through advanced
training just like the training you require to become the grooming artist.
Without these skills you are at risk.
Based on our 14 years of
providing management consultation to thousands of groomers and owners, the
#1 leading cause of owner stress is a lack of grooming management
training. Management solves problems, therefore, with
management skills problems flourish. Yes, groomers do okay, and some very well and make money
and get by, but the key is at what cost of business owner stress?
Management skills free you to love your business. In fact, many readers of our
books and those that attend our Workshop say with the knowledge they
gained from us, "I fell back in love with my business again."
Recently, Vicki Hargett of Alpharetta, Georgia told us that by her getting
more management training she did just that, and now she can't wait to go
to work every day. That's awesome!
Get all the business and
grooming continuing education you can and network with other business
owners of all types in your area to learn and share what works best in
their businesses, and their valuable lessons. If you are a career seeker,
make management training a part of your earliest training so you can
better plan your career from the get go.
What
About Home Study or Online Grooming Courses?
There are a growing
number of opportunities for home study and online courses in
grooming. The advent of the Internet is making education at home
more possible than ever. Click
here to see a list of home study opportunities.
