For pet grooming
business owners, expansion is an important sign of success usually
brought about by a demand for pet care services beyond what they
can serve within a reasonable time. If your appointment is
steadily booked more than a week in advance, your services are
obviously fine, but to delay an appointment for more than a week
or two is not effective client service. It can be a distracting
inconvenience for pet owners who have helped build your business.
The signal is being flashed to add more staff.
For most, but not all,
pet grooming business owners the most difficult expansion is the
first one requiring them to hire employees. Fear of being an
employer is very real for many first-time small business owners.
Sometimes the fear is replaced with regret, after all there are
many new duties and responsibilities associated with being an
employer. Knowledge is the best medicine for employer anxieties.
You must learn what the duties and responsibilities are to legally
operate as an employer, and compensate for the time it will take
in work schedule. If you can get over this first dread, regret or
fear it won't be as difficult in the future when your growing
business requires additional new employees.
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There is no better
source of pet grooming business expansion information for business
owners than From Problems to Profits.
Three entire chapters are devoted to effective planning, hiring,
training, and supervising pet grooming employees. The manual even
provides sample job descriptions, and dozens of personnel
management tips and tools. It's a must for anyone expanding with
new pet grooming employees. Your local, county, state and federal
government employment offices are a good source of employer
information. Contact them before you hire employees. Your local
Chamber of Commerce may be of assistance too. You will definitely
need to file for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the
Internal Revenue Service before you hire any employees. You can
search the Internet for assistance too. We suggest the Small Business
Administration and
Grooming Business in a Box®.
If you are the point of
deciding to plan an expansion, a marketing and advertising plan is
your objective. There is a great deal more to marketing a pet
grooming business beyond the Resources Directory and local publications.
You definitely need a Resources Directory display ad and some advertising
in local publications, but there are additional methods that cost
much less.
Expansion requires that
you have charted a course first. Your business
plan should describe stages of expansion. If you have already
been in a business without a plan for some time, create one now
for the expansion. In fact, if you are seeking a business loan for
the expansion, your banker will almost certainly require a business
plan strategizing your expansion. You must be prepared with
personnel management tools such as job descriptions, work
schedules, employee handbooks, possibly job agreements,
employee-related insurance, and excellent organizational skills to
maintain employee records. There are O.S.H.A. concerns and job
training requirements, but once you organize these efforts you are
ready to grow a business. It's just like preparing a new garden
for many new crops season after season, sometimes you have to even
endure "double-digging" strains, but it is worth it if
you create a rich soil ready for the long-run.
For most pet grooming
business owners considering their first expansion, as consultants
we need to look at their present operation schedule, and what are
their desires for their "working lifestyle." Here we
will discover why most pet grooming businesses are small,
one-person businesses. There is nothing wrong with that, but the
potential for high-profitability must be reckoned with as very
low.
