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It has certainly been a benefit to major pet superstores with grooming departments. One of leading ways for a career seeker to learn grooming, especially in areas without grooming schools, is to inquire with PETCO, PetSmart and others for training. The only other choice is for career seekers to take home study and seek apprenticeships, and the latter is problematic at times and variable in availability. It is our opinion that the market for grooming schools is somewhat open except where well-established schools have already taken charge and brought opportunity to thousands that want to become a pet groomer.

Are there really thousands that want to become a pet groomer in the U.S.? We think so. In a typical year at PetGroomer.com we welcome about 500,000 unique visitors. Figuring there are about 80,000 groomers in the U.S. as some estimates state, that leaves over 400,000 other visitors. Yes, some are pet owners trying to find a groomer, but even still there are thousands who must be career seekers. This reason stands the test when we study how many of our visitors use the new career assistance links. On average, about 3,500 to 4,000 career seekers do just that at PetGroomer.com every week. We're confident then that it is correct to say that there are tens of thousands of people in the U.S. interested in a pet grooming career and educational opportunities.

Opening a school of pet grooming, usually by expanding an existing grooming business, offers three major benefits for the best candidates.

Personal Satisfaction

One of the best reasons for opening a school of grooming is the satisfaction of helping people achieve their goals to start a new career and to be successful at doing that. As consultants we lectured to students at grooming schools for a few years. We provided the with the Becoming the Business Person That Grooms Workshop™ which balanced their how-to grooming instruction with a 3 to 5 day seminar on the "business side" of grooming. Now years later we still keep in contact with many and enjoy seeing the fine businesses they quickly established with our seed knowledge. There were plenty of hugs, smiles and happy times along the way as they achieved their goals through school and beyond; we would never have traded that experience for anything and even today that is one of the reasons we love our PetGroomer.com; it's helping people and it's a feeling money cannot buy in the same way. If this appeals to you, and you're very patient and intent on finding the professional teacher in you, you may find tremendous pride and personal satisfaction in owning a school of pet grooming.

Reduce Physical Wear & Tear

You cannot be in any trade as physical as pet grooming without being concerned about the wear and tear on your body. It's simply natural there is wear and tear, and you can do a lot to mitigate it by taking care of your health, learning how to properly stand, sit, hold scissors and clippers, lift pets, etc. However, there's more. If you are one of the few who develop a large grooming business you can at some point start "putting down the clippers and scissors" more and letting a hired staff generate the income and you manage. How you do that takes very special knowledge, and we've given much of that knowledge in our book, From Problems to Profits-The Madson Management System. There's another way, you can be paid for teaching. Neither direction fully eliminates the need to do some grooming, but you will not be grooming full-time at your workstation and instead demonstrating part of the time, and supervising part of the time if you manage your school program correctly. How to do this should be learned from your getting education from groomers who have done this evolution of their grooming business.

Increasing Net Worth of Your Business

Without being too technical here you should understand that every business has "revenue sources." For pet groomers, they have a primary source, their grooming services. Some grooming business owners add retail sales, and that's a second revenue source. Others offer some pet sitting, training or dog walking etc. All of these are additional revenue sources. A well organized business plan for an expansion of pet grooming salon into a school will document the financial expansion clearly showing how revenue from tuition becomes a new revenue source. If the overall business is run properly, and profitability, the net worth of the business can be expanded as well its operation as both a grooming business and a school of pet grooming.

Is Grooming School Tuition Expensive?

Whenever we consider if something is expensive, moderate or low priced we must the personal point of view of the consumer. In our opinion, most schools of pet grooming providing a comprehensive education and hands-on experience are not expensive. However, we have many times heard comments such as $4,000 for grooming school is "so expensive." Let's take it apart and see if that is true.

First, how many hours is the school program. Let's assume 400 hours. The hourly tuition would then be $10 an hour. Now, in our opinion to learn the basics of a trade that can lead to a job or self-employment earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year for $10 an hour is a deal. There are thousands of families and individuals that paid $25,000 to $100,000 for college and earn similar annual incomes upon graduation. We've seen grooming school programs range from $8.00 a hour to $40.00 an hour and many in the middle or the lower end of that range.

What we have to understand is the perspective of people that want to go to grooming school but they don't have the savings for tuition and related costs to attend, including a toolbox. It is indeed a lot of money for them to come up with; that's understandable. In this predicament the potential student often translates their inability to invest in their career choice into a statement that pet grooming schools are expensive, and few really are. The field of pet grooming has thousands of such potential students, and it is in the interest of the new school owner to investigate tuition assistance. Keep in mind that offering financial aid from government sources is usually not available until the school has been operating for 2 years and earns its accreditation. Some schools accept payment plans they finance, or they find private parties who offer private aid to students. We suggest that school owners explain as we have here just how low the hourly fee really is to give the potential student a more correct perspective.

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Are Students Essentially Employees or Students?

There are some legitimate arguments against some schools for the use of students as nothing much than employees, yet charging tuition. Obviously students need to complete lab experience by grooming dogs (cats too), but there is a substantial need for classroom time. We estimate that a 500 hour program could have 15% of that time allocated to the classroom, usually in stages. It is true that we have heard from students that they were given less than a few hours of classroom time and basically were quickly shown this and that and put to work. It's enough here to say that we support a very well-planned curriculum with stages of classroom and lab experience in stages of progression from entry level to advanced grooming. We could never favor students viewed the school owner primarily as a substitute for employees; and fortunately most schools today are operating this way.

Further, it has been our experience that the wise school and grooming owner will communicate to their employees that students are actually "clients." They are indeed, just like the pet owners paying for grooming services, students are paying for educational services. They are clients of the business whose satisfaction is just as important as the pet owner patrons. We've experienced many grooming schools where this viewpoint was askew from the viewpoint of the employees. It's understandable; they are not business owners and managers, and it is duty of the owner and manager to enlighten their hired staff to treat students as clients of the business.

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