How to Start a Dog Grooming Business (And Make $20K/Month)
if you love animals owning a dog roomy business may sound like a dream come true caleb perconti is living that dream with fur fighters grooming a mobile grooming business that has seen phenomenal growth since they launched as a pop-up business in 2020. [Music] two years later fur fighters has added a mobile grooming salon to their pop-up nail trimming yappy hours dog friendly cocktail events and they provide regular grooming services to dozens of apartment buildings and properties in seattle i'm not sure what it's like in other parts of the country but in seattle you don't have to work very hard to get clients what is your competitive edge compared to other groomers out here oh 100 it's the fancy apartment buildings we filled the entire day of appointments just yesterday because of the happy hour no doubt when did you get this mobile unit set up and what was the cost for doing that out with all our resources maybe ten dollars a month that's it if yeah our highest price for over a hundred pound dog is 125 i would love to have the highest quality clippers but in the end i'm shaving dog butts you know let's go talk to her come on wiley well here's kayla good to meet you nice to meet you thanks for saying yes let's just jump into the interview tell us where we're at because you managed yeah a ton of differences right now we are at the leanne apartments in uh lower queen inn in seattle this was our first apartment building we ever serviced the first one ever yep my partner alex he had a lot of dog clients during covid when all the salons shut down he wanted to help and so one of the residents here said oh i have a dog wash in my building because we didn't have any location he was still working for a salon so we got in here lots of people came by wanted to do their own dogs and uh it just went from there well show our audience where you guys operate of i'll follow you let's go wiley did you have any dog grooming experience before starting for a fighter actually no i was a dog walker before we started alex was the one who had this brilliant idea and he was a groomer first so talk to us about the different services that you offer kayla so we do pop-up apartment grooming visits we do yappy hour events either nail trimming or we do what we call pup tails the puppy cocktails and then we have the mobile grooming salon so we've got about four different things that we can do and we're pretty flexible on all those things for the pop-up apartments management can pay for everyone if they like or they can do just residence pay for the yappy hours there's different combinations they can do of nail trimming or the pup tails and then the van just runs on its own just doing the mobile grooming so yappy hour sounds pretty fun it is it's very cute does that bring in revenue or does that just create a client base that then shows up to get their dogs groomed it doesn't bring in as much revenue as we would like because the product that we use has to be really high quality good stuff for their tummies but we just also really want natural ingredients like watermelon bone broth from the pet store peanut butter no salt no sugar nothing in it so we just take care to buy the best ingredients once you add that up with the cost of staffing we're really not making too much money right but it gets the word out we actually just did a yappy hour yesterday at a brand new building and we had so many dogs there it was wonderful and we have a grooming day set up in two weeks we filled the entire day of appointments um yesterday because of the happy hour no doubt all right you guys we just came to a random address here in seattle because alex is dear is here doing the mobile cleaning he's probably working inside come here alex you must be alex hello i'm paul man good to meet you nice to meet you paul kayla said we find you here with uh what's this guy's name waldo waldo how you doing waldow when did you get this mobile unit set up and what was the cost for doing that out it was we we started the construction about a year ago dad and i had to do it in chicago that's where all the tools are that's where the garage is are you from chicago yes and it was a project that none of us have done before but we did our best and it got approved by the city we're a year running out of it now all these people out of the buildings that you saw with kayla right they only have a year lease and so we get to know their dog and then they move out and they're like how do you take care of our dog now well can't you find him in another address or yes but if they bought a house then there's no facility to groom them all right that's a good point so so the van was the best of all options because as you know it's like maybe 10 grand a month to rent a store shop around here and that means you have to be there every day so that takes the buildings off the table right but the van you can go and come however you please um the cost of the van was about 40 grand the conversion equipment was about 10 and dad wouldn't let me pay him any money so so he was like i built your sister's two houses is the least i can do for you that's awesome shout out to you dad for being so loving and nice [Music] how much did you start with for fighters how was your budget we didn't have one honestly zero alex had all his grooming tools already we just needed to buy a table which we went on the cheaper end so it was probably like 150 just for these tables here yeah just one of these tables that folds up so we can keep it mobile and then just some products like the soaps we use so a couple hundred dollars so if you have all the tools that we already went through i mean you don't really need much to become a mobile grouper just the just the table and your shampoo conditioner ear cleaner those types of products because most of these dog washrooms will have the tub right they'll have water they'll help the electricity not always have the table if you already have the tools do pop-up nail trim events we go to breweries we go to the seattle barkery the dog bakery we've gone and done yappy hours and you just need your nail trimming tools which is a dremel clippers and your quick cloth that's it and that's it or anything nope nothing making a mess just doing nails and you can charge whatever you want we started at 15 we're about to move it up to 18 but um i know that some places charge 20 or 23 dollars how does that happen though you mean i'm sitting at a bar eating food and outside or somewhere within that restaurant you're trimming nails for my we advertise we get in contact with the bar owner um or the brewery owner and they say yeah let's do it you'll be in this spot over here and we just sent out a bunch of social media just a flyer and make sure people know we're gonna be there if you can make it a regular event like every monday or the first saturday something like that people will remember and they'll come back every time what's been the most effective strategy for you in terms of marketing and bringing in new customers instagram instagram has been the most useful and i know tick tock is really big but i just i mean i'm 30 years old i should know how to do it i don't so no don't don't don't think you're the only one instagram is just easy i do post instagram and facebook we will sometimes pay for some advertising so not a monthly thing that you spend on no it's just me posting um tagging people tagging local organizations like if we're doing a nail trim event in south lake union i will tag the south lake union chamber or local businesses that are dog friendly or sell dog products and supplies just to get the word out because you never know who's going to share it or who's going to see it because you tagged them revenuewise where were you last year and where do you expect to be this year uh last year we uh ended the year at 75k but not a bad start i only did it full time after we built the van in july and then this year we're gonna hit a quarter million but the difference is we have five people working this year and 30 buildings and a van that's going going going nice that's good and in terms of new customers where would you recommend our other groomers watching right now that they can focus on to get new customers what are you doing like what's a good source we set up a partnership with any other doggy business to do a nail day whether it's a brewery or say like a treat shop we just parked this van right outside and people bring us dogs for a quick five-minute nail trim uh 15 bucks there are other places that do similar things right but they commit to the park district now you've got a lot of dogs there but you gotta pay them kind of a lot of money you do so if we make a partnership with the brewery drinkers are gonna go drink they don't ask anything from me in return no they they know the value in it right it's a win-win the treat shops as well they know they're gonna buy a chicken heart or several they love chicken hearts yeah they do well show our audience a little bit inside i mean there's not much to show and we'll i'll ask you the equipment because we've got bonnie here she's getting her hair done today so it's a little messy um so we when you arrive yeah what do you come with in hands the tub is what we need that's all we need is the water tub electricity so this was already here and that table over there was already here so we bring extra tables if we need it just a couple tables we bring our own dryer a vacuum necessary and then i've got my own case of tools here i've got all my blades and all of my brushes anything you could possibly need all my shears what's the most important okay let me turn her up but let's since you're bringing up equipment like if i'm starting out what are some things i need to have in my suitcase to at least get some jobs done 100 you need a good dremel for nail filing you need all the other tools for nails like your clippers and your quick cloth powder this if you if you hit the dogs quick they'll bleed so that means you cut their nail too short and it does happen it's not ideal but it does happen and so you just take a little bit of this powder put it on stop shipping stops the bleeding yeah so those are essential how much are those pieces the dremel is the most expensive part um i'm not sure it's probably you can just get it at home depot 300 bucks you think no less than that less than 100 what is your typical advertisement cost per month if any it depends on the month i would say with all our resources maybe ten dollars a month that's it if yeah and instagram does the rest inexpensive yeah instagram does a lot for us there are some months where we do donations or like we charge nail trim prices to give donations to shelters and things like that or do a food drive for dogs and cats um and if we do that we might do a little bit heavier that month and pay maybe twenty dollars to instagram and facebook to get that out heavy advertising spend a lot i'm surprised because we interviewed a ton of businesses and you know every business particular ones have a huge advertising budget obviously you're doing a tremendously great job without an advertising budget is that the case for dog grooming business industry as a whole honestly right now there's been such a puppy boom that the dogs are just common to us uh i'm not sure what it's like in other parts of the country but in seattle you don't have to work very hard to get clients you just have to have a presence online and they'll come to you [Music] what are you doing to this gal right so yes this is bonnie bonnie bonnie bonnie okay mom likes a super round face so she's got a summer cut on her body i haven't finished her feet or her tummy yet but yeah mom likes a super round face so that's what we're going for just big and poofy bobble head how much time do you think you'll spend with her and what are the fees that you're charging the customer so if it was just me and her going non-stop i would say two hours big doodles take three to four hours sometimes a long time yes i mean i get in for a haircut it's like 45 minutes it's long enough a two-hour dog like this she'd be uh if she was a little smaller she'd be 75 but she's at 90 dollars for the full groom and haircut and we include all the necessary things so that includes the bath okay the dry the brushing the nails the ears if she needed a gland expression we would do that and yeah that includes her hair cut if we're doing no haircuts they start at fifty dollars okay pretty reasonable yeah and that's pretty on par with salons in the area bigger dogs our highest price for over a hundred pound dog is 125 and that doesn't include a haircut so if they're a doodle it could be 150 or more so just more more work more difficult more time spent um more work if there's matting we need to charge more because that does take time and it impacts our tools right it dulls our blades it builds our shears we just need to keep on top of those things because you know we use really good products on them and we take care of our tools so we need to charge for it okay [Music] what about licenses if somebody wants to get going and have a similar van in a different state basically it was 250 to get someone to come take a look at it there's no guarantee that they're going to approve it but they give you a list of everything that you need and it's pretty simple i mean they have what guidelines on a mobile dog washing station or something yes like you got to be able to turn the hot water on or off depending on how sensitive the dog could be these sprayers are just garden but sometimes like the straight jets will be too much so you need to have the mist setting they'll also be very cool about it like if you have not the right thing they'll be like this is what you need i'll come back you don't have to pay again to my understanding california is the hardest they need you to pass a test and and whatnot kayla talk to us about the appointment process and the moment that the client connects with you to the appointment actually happening what happens there so for our buildings when we have them make an appointment there is a qr code with a little flyer that we send to each apartment community and they have their own private booking page so all they have to do is scan that link only people that live in that building can book there so they'll be exclusive yes it's very exclusive um so they will pick their own time slot we have to approve all those appointments make sure there's enough time for that breed of dog make sure that we have all the notes that parents might want to give us sometimes they give us something about their behavior or their physical ailments once we approve the booking they get a text message that says you're approved and what time it is and what building they're at because some of our clients um have moved to other buildings that we service [Music] what else to our viewers can you share in terms of just expanding your clientele and all these creative you know you get the happy hour yeah yappy i keep saying happy it's in my brain what else do you think is worth mentioning to our viewers about that yeah always be creative but also if you're a groomer dogs are all around you right if you see a dog on the street that you think is beautiful alex and i will go up and tell them and we'll be like oh we're groomers we don't try and you know here's my business yeah unless they ask for it but we just like people that know hey we appreciate your animal and once they see that we're cool people they want to work with us so just you know be very sociable no it's not good customer service and a smile most of the time you've got a great smile it works thank you you've got a lot of things going on uh you know in terms of invoices payments your finances for the business what systems and tools you use to track and manage all that yeah so we use square for all of our transactions and our invoices and then to keep track of everything as far as like the bookkeeping we use quickbooks everything transfers automatically even from our app groomer io which is just our scheduling app it will transfer all of our transactions into square for us so they're interconnecting yep everything's interconnected everything is easy to manage which makes my life a lot easier because i'm a one-woman office team i do all of it myself so with square people can pay you what via visa mastercard pretty much anything you watch anything and we also take checks we take cash although we don't carry change anymore just to keep ourselves safe um and we also take venmo we can also do cash app okay yeah sure we're really yep we're flexible what would you say the majority of your payments are just in general if you were breaking down um most of them are cards actually with the buildings um we send a pickup text and it includes a link in there where they can pay on the link so that makes it even easier for us to the groomers app groomer io yeah it'll send a pick up text and then the link will be right there most people use that link which makes it really easy for us [Music] we care about you well done you got big cuddly cute eyes how many employees do you have alex right now what do you typically pay them including me it's five and depending on experience we do 18 to 22 an hour not bad if you're used to handling dogs and you can really help then you're worth it would you take newbies that just love dogs i guess when you need to you'll train them that's where i came from i started as a walker which is what most of us start as uh walking is not easy it uh definitely shows that you're no that's when you say i was a dog walker i'm like i can walk a dog and get paid for it but tell me about it what if one gets loose on you yeah you're screwed they do that they see a squirrel and they take off this is a controlled environment there's not a chance he's getting loose on me that's true so that's a little bit less and also if you don't vibe well with a dog if they just for whatever reason don't like you like to mess with you yeah um this is only a two to three hour job and then we're done like if you get a dog who's a walk weekly like oh man waldo's gonna kill me again he's gonna tear my arm off anything else you want to highlight in terms of finding the right employees and just creating a good team atmosphere what can you share from your experience don't be afraid to let go it took me a minute to let my employees work on my favorite dogs because i'm always afraid that oh they're not going to do it just right and we're going to lose that client don't be afraid to let go you got to let people cut the grass as well even if you think you can do it better [Music] this is a pretty tiny spot is this always the case for all apartments or are they no this is one of the smaller locations many of these dog wash stations are in the parking garage or um we're not in a bunker guys in case you're wondering just a parking garage but then some of our other clients have their dog wash rooms on the 40th floor with a beautiful view of the city would that be a cool spot yes those are very very cool those are picture perfect places to work but in the end it's all just dogs they don't care where they are right they don't usually [Music] well for those watching us right now right who are in the grooming business what highlights about your booking process that you want to bring to our attention that others can replicate and i really love we have for the mobile grooming we have an intake form now so we can fill out all of our own questions so the mobile grooming is a little bit more intense because we need to know the address we need to make sure there's parking for us our vehicle is what we call a plug-and-play where we plug in for the electrical we have our own water and everything like that but we need to know all of those little things to make sure that we can physically get there park and do the appointment so you didn't have an intake before but now that's what we do yes it's a digital form yes it's all digital and it all stays on our app we use groomerio they are fantastic and they're always very fast with their customer service they're a relatively small company as far as i know i mean for the time that they give to me one business it's been really valuable what is your competitive edge compared to other groomers out here oh 100 it's the fancy apartment buildings and i encourage anyone who is looking for another revenue stream in their grooming business to try and contact any higher end apartment buildings that are amenity focused use the method because i honestly think it is doing the earth a great thing you're taking cars off the road you're helping dogs be less anxious for grooming and you're making it more convenient for the people i like that so are you one of the few that you're saying operates out of apartments or others do as well i've seen a few try and fail like rover rover is an app used to hire groomers i only know this because i saw the posters in the buildings that i work and i always wondered like how are they affording to do this because they don't have all the equipment at all these buildings i have a jeep full of equipment and i have to like mix and match okay this place doesn't have a table this place doesn't have a dryer but these rover people were just coming in and doing it for dirt cheap they don't do that anymore and i don't know any other companies that do what we're doing so if you're watching this right in a different market call those apartment complexes yeah even if they don't have a wash area they obviously they can probably build one in further more expensive on the trip to chicago to build the van we had an empty van and we put all of the equipment in here i contacted buildings in salt lake city in jackson wyoming and in minneapolis and we were able to pay for some gas money along the way just telling people what we do we know you have a dog wash would you mind and yeah we got a bunch of dogs so salt lake city jackson wyoming and minneapolis minneapolis is probably the best of those three there are a lot of buildings there this is a pretty important question like you get a first first-time client like her what's your top strategy for maybe turning her into a repeat customer most of the time if i have a first-time client i'm thinking all about education i'm thinking about what breed is this what things do they need to work on behavior-wise or taking care of the coat at home a lot of the times my new clients are new doodle owners or new owners of a long-haired dog that they've never had before and they just don't know how to take care of the coat so i show them how to brush what types of brushes they should buy and talk about what their behavior was like what they can do to help their dog have a better experience while they're being groomed mostly it's the clippers on the body so anything that buzzes like an electric toothbrush just running it all over them getting them used to those sensations and people seem to really appreciate that um they like to hear that we know what we're doing and tell them how to help their dog so that they're not constantly getting matted and unhappy so the top strategy that you're essentially talking about is just educate your customer yeah be friendly um have a good uh relationship with the dog that's kind of a given that's about it you want to get your yeah one of the first things i do and i'm pretty sure most groomers do is when we see a dog for the first time we get down on the ground we get down to their level we say hello we let them sniff give them some pets if they want to and if they're a little shy it might take some time to warm up but we got to meet them where they are right and parents notice that [Music] how many hours a week are you investing personally just into running this business and doing the grooming and everything i work every day and i average on sundays yeah i average like 10 hours a day so 70 hours a week you're a true entrepreneur at heart right now well it just kind of blew up and i uh i don't want to lose any of the business that we currently have nobody else is doing the apartment visits either i think for groomers it's a lot to carry all of your equipment from place to place it is it can be yeah i think a lot of them want my little tower there every day but it's a small price to pay for the dogs to be more comfortable for the people to be more conveniently served and not to mention every time we go to a building and i do eight dogs i'm saving eight car rides because every one of those would would need a ride to the groomer you're prepping him to dry right now how long is the try gonna take uh probably about 40 minutes to an hour you guys are welcome to hang around but it's gonna get real loud that's a long time wow he's uh really good for it but uh so he enjoyed that part he's really good for it but i don't think many of them enjoy it this is just to not be as loud on him but it also helps dry his head because it's like a scrunchy kind of towel thing tell us why you're dressed the way you're dressed you got a snowboarding goggle on well you could wear goggles but if you wear glasses you kind of have to have something bigger that'll fit over and i usually wear a mask and i usually wear headphones just because i've gotten too many things although in all my my face holes but uh well i bet what else can you talk about in terms of instagram advice suggestions to our viewers in the same industry what have you learned tips tricks so i one of the biggest tools that i use especially for instagram advertising is canva i love using canva it's a website it's graphic design but it's getting you halfway there so you're not starting from scratch it gives you all these templates you can use that are already done and you can put in your own pictures you can change all the colors and it just makes really really professional looking flyers and advertise instagram yeah that flyer in the elevator that was all made on canva by me and i am not a graphic designer so and look you guys have seen it earlier on so that's pretty cool what about after the appointment so once this is done what do you what kind of follow-up do you do after either to encourage a review or i build that report yeah i always always encourage them to rebook because getting a grooming appointment right now is so difficult how come there was a huge puppy boom in covid and um a lot of groomers at the same time exited the business interesting so you're encouraged to rebook right after the appointment i i encourage them to and sometimes they don't want to and i and that's okay but i always warn them hey we might be booked up to three months when you reach out to us which could be six weeks down the line when they get a reminder text message from our app right so i just encourage them to rebook sometimes we do specials we'll give 10 off for a google review after the appointment um after the appointment yeah so it would be for the next appointment right we put it on their profile on our app so that'll remind us [Music] what advantage is there to hiring an expert when it comes to website design because you guys did that right yes we did somebody has more budget to start with somebody doesn't what what can you share with us insights we didn't have much of a budget when we made our website so i used wix and we do pay the subscription for our domain but i tried to build the website myself did it work i am not great at it it was very very basic it wasn't a total fail but it was very basic and so when i saw how many clients we were starting to get how many buildings realizing i'm gonna have to go full time soon we wanted it to look more professional so i hired someone from peachtree city websites actually he was really awesome and i just asked him to make three pages because he charges by the page so that was 300 that's not a lot not a lot at all and it got us started so now i had something to build off of that he created and i can modify [Music] what's the biggest struggle right now uh to in running this business for you and kayla timing uh uh help we uh we can't find anybody to hire and hear that all across the industry yeah yeah i mean there's a lot of industries like that but if you overwork yourself in this one you could get hurt it's kind of like massage therapy like yeah the money's great and the work is out there but if you don't take your days off and you don't rest you're gonna throw your shoulder or something and then you can't help any dogs right so that's really it i wish i just had like two days a week somebody would just want to work two days a week that'd be phenomenal [Music] they need tips on the right clipper you know for somebody watching maybe they're struggling there's a lot of debate and i would love to have the highest quality clippers but in the end i'm shaving dog butts you know we gotta get the best one for that i'm getting some dirty stuff so these are the walbreveras and i added a little loop here which was a great tip from um i went to the tacoma convention which is pretty cool so now it spins so it spins around if the dog kicks my arm it's not going to ruin my clippers and fall on the floor so like my shears these are my kenchi loves which i adore see they have a slant that's different these are curves yes like curves are for yep doing the head shape doing all kinds of different curved areas the ear shapes and then you've got some straights do you do your spaces yeah i've got i've got so many shears in in the back here but each pair of these i think these were around two to three hundred dollars wow yeah so they're they're not a couple no okay these are really really great you really can get shears at all different prices they range from maybe like 50 bucks if you do a cheap pair all the way up to hundreds and hundreds of dollars so that's pretty much your tool kit right yes this is my tool kit how much value do you think is in there just a few added up at least a couple thousand you think maybe even up to five thousand because i've got i've got all of these blades in here i've got a bunch of little teeny tiny tools i've got backup stuff because what happens if your clipper drive all of a sudden stops working or is working funky you want to have a back-up pair just in case [Music] what other presence do you think grooming businesses should have in 2022 definitely instagram lots of people are on tick tock doing amazing things oh yeah i would say just stay with the times look at what's popular i started taking a couple classes on what they call asian fusion cuts because it's in demand um i don't have experience with color yet but i am trying to get into that market yeah what giving them cool pops of color in america i know yeah so just staying with what's popular but don't stray too far from the basics you know we're here to keep them clean and keep them healthy and that's really the most important part once you have a regular client that is coming back to you every month or every six weeks um then you can do those really cool creative things once you know them and know that they're well taken care of [Music] so what's one thing that you wish you knew when you got started that you know now uh what comes to mind finance i didn't have to have any upfront cost because i discovered the building method and so i was like you know light bulb moment but once we had to start building this van i really wish i'd paid attention in some of those college classes with uh with how just difficult it is to buy a vehicle that's relatively new right like i kind of feel like we got ripped off but i feel like everybody gets ripped off new or used we bought used but only like 40 000 miles the credit union that holds our loan kept changing hands you know i don't even know if that's legal like the paper that we signed is a lot different than the paper that we see now so waldo likes attention that's what he keeps grabbing for i paid attention in business school and strategy but you should pay attention in the finance part of it too don't get taken advantage of that'll come in handy you guys if you're enjoying this video we appreciate a quick like thank you so much for watching what are your tips advice anything that comes to mind to our viewers who are inspired by you what else do you want to tell them oh just take a chance i never thought i would be a dog groomer and i just have totally loved this and it's now my life's work uh and it's all because i trusted alex to take a chance on a business that nobody else was doing and in a crazy time too yeah and a crazy time and letting each other be creative use your creativity take chances and talk to people be social because that's going to get you further than anything else there you go thanks kayla give me five thank you and willie i'm gonna miss you little dude okay stay bright look at it look at the cute bow tie what's the story on this is it just his design or what he just likes to dress up for work good job you're cute thanks for playing props with me today what is your goal for the business in the next year to five would you say what are you thinking with kayla well since it's hard to find people to work as a groomer i'm thinking of a unique self-wash idea i'd like to do a school bus where you walk in and you pay the driver you're 20 25 bucks and the first half of the school bus is all tubs and the second half is all drying stations you're really going mobile so then you go well no it stays in the same place oh okay like i make a deal with like a taco joint or something to keep in their parking lot so you step in you pay you wash you dry you walk right out the back door that's pretty cool so enter one door exit the other with a clean dog yeah it's a lot easier to teach somebody how to clean a tub take money than all the specific cuts it takes a couple years to really learn how to do any dog so yeah i could train a groomer to do like cocker spaniels this and that but to get uh to get the full doodles and poodles done you need time you need effort well we we may come back and check on you in a couple years and do a a follow-up interview so this has been fun thank you walden for cooperating that'd be great and alex thank you very much it's nice to meet you both and uh good luck up flip well that's a wrap with alex and kayla the owners of fur fighters here in seattle i hope you guys really enjoyed it it's a it's a place you can start as well if you love dogs we appreciate you as always for watching take a second to like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our amazing videos thank you guys
2022-08-10 00:39
