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Obviously I’m in the educational field, so I’ve got a lot of different materials with notes from the grooming table, theory of five, learntogroomdogs.com in the core skills or the just getting started videos at the Paragon school. We also have a home study program which a lot of salon owners are working with right now to help them get assistance trained rapidly and utilizing quality techniques to get that end result. But whatever you program or however you go ahead and teach, I want you to think about teaching in incremental steps. You’ve got to start at the very bottom and then work up and work up and work up. And you need to paint a picture for the new learner of what does it look like when it’s done correctly? And then show them samples of what you would accept or what are you looking for when it’s done correctly so that they have a very clear picture in their mind of something to aim for.

So make sure you give them lots of examples and the examples aren’t just a challenging dog. What does a lab look like when it’s done correctly? What does a golden retriever look like when it’s done correctly? What does a bichon or a lhasa or a shih tzu or any of the mixed breeds, the doodles, what does it look when it’s done correctly? And focus more on coat type more than breeds because we’re only going to see a couple different coat types and you can train and break that down a lot easier for the individual so that they can get it done correctly. And then once they are in the learning process, whether they’ve read a book or watched a video or you’ve demonstrated something, I can’t stress how important it is to have them do it immediately. The studies show over and over again it is amazing how rapidly somebody loses the detail of what they’ve just been taught if they don’t apply it immediately.

So it’s really important to have them do some type of training, educating, learning how to do it and then have them demonstrate it immediately. And then once you get them to the point that they’re working and they’re starting to provide dogs and going through the bathing and drying process, when they’re bringing dogs out to you, make sure that you give immediate feedback because you can’t fix what you don’t know. And some of the most effective learning comes from making mistakes. So if you don’t point out what was done well and what could be an opportunity area to be done better, they’re not going to know to fix something.

And here’s an idea that seems to work really well for a lot of folks and I love using number systems. It just really helps simplify what we’re trying to achieve. And sometimes it can take a little bit of the sting out of, if somebody isn’t working quite up to snuff by giving a number system to it. And maybe you’re going from one to 10 and one to three would be, you know what, the work just isn’t acceptable. It’s got to be done again. Or maybe you go up to a four to six, it still needs some work. Maybe a seven an eight would be it’s acceptable, still room for improvement but it’s acceptable and then a nine or a 10 would be absolutely knocking it out of the park.

This is exactly what you want to see every single time. And you know, even on one particular dog, they might have absolutely nailed it, knocked it out of the park in one area but there’s another area on the dog that still really needs work or shoot, maybe it needs to be done again. You’ve got to give that feedback and if it needs to be done again, don’t you do it, have them go back and do it correctly. Because if you’re not holding them accountable, they’re just going to start giving you subpar work and that’s not what you’re looking for.

So, is training tough? Yeah, it can be challenging because you’re having to normally teach on the fly. Normally you’ve got a full load already. You’re trying to do all the finish work on the dogs and at the same token you’re trying to train an assistant. And that can be frustrating, but I’m going to tell you when you do it, when you take the time and do it right and you’ve got a willing learner who strives to do it correctly, there is nothing better. And honestly it shouldn’t take that long to get a bather up to the point that they can really be an asset to you maybe doing 80 or 90% of the dogs that they’re working on for you and doing them well and helping you move through your roster a lot more effectively. And really focus on those 80% of typical dogs that you see every single day.

And then as they build skill and confidence, you can start adding little more challenging. Maybe it’s a little different coat type. Maybe the personality of the dog is a little more challenging or maybe you are leaning on them to get some of the mats and the tangles and the dead coat out more and more and more for you so that you can focus more on the finish work. But just start again, just break it into small steps. Allow that learner to feel success, to get the praise that they need that they’ve done a good job, and I’m going to tell you, most of them will really strive to continue to make those dogs look better and better and better for you ultimately making the entire salon run much more smoothly.

How I defined success in my 20s and how I define it now in my mid 50s, totally different, and that’s okay, but what I will tell you is that with every layer of success that you achieve, it opens up another level for you to aim for, to strive for, and so just because you think you’re successful at one point in your career, more than likely there’s a lot more things that you can achieve, but you’ve got to be able to know what you’re looking for. You’ve got to have some kind of an idea of what kind of a path you want to take, and so you’ve got to ask yourself some questions, and some of the questions are things like, what does truly matters to you? What do you think about? What do you want to achieve with your life, with your career? And how can professional pet grooming get you to that point?

And then the next thing is to be passionate about whatever you’re doing. Now, obviously if you are in the world of professional pet grooming, I’m certainly hoping that you’re already passionate about pets, but even within that passion, find your own personal superpower. Some folks love to do just the small dogs, others love the big furries that they make huge transformations in what they look like, others love to do just low maintenance, every day salon trims, making their customers happy as they walk out the door, other people love to do the show dogs or the more fancy trims, while still others maybe don’t want to do dogs at all. Maybe they just want to do cats. Maybe they want to be a feline exclusive.

Whatever your superpower is, whatever breed, haircut, type of animal you like to work on, all of those are fine. Find your superpower and work to be the best that you can be, and the one thing that I find with success is that normally it doesn’t come with just fall in your lap. You generally have to be really focused, really dedicated, and you’ve got to work at it and you’ve got to build your knowledge base because if you don’t have the knowledge, then you’re not going to have the confidence to be able to communicate with your clients, to be able to execute the skills with ease, with safely and to do it efficiently, and so you’ve got to build up that knowledge base.

You’ve got to be really focused and really diligent about learning, and then stop and think about things like, where do you want to be a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now? Don’t just think about tomorrow or next week. Take it out further than that. Where do you want to be and how can the career take you there? Think about, what does success look like? Do you want to spend more time with your family doing what you love or doing things that you love to do? Or do you want to build … have a wealth play going on? What does it look like and what is it going to take to achieve that success? Write it down, think about it and make a plan to get there, and how are you going to achieve it?

And like I said, success looks different to everybody and not only does it look different to everybody, it’s going to change as you change with your own life and your own career. So the one thing I will tell you is that for those of us that have achieved some success, most of the time, especially in our field, we love to help others achieve their own personal success, and so we’re going to reach out and I don’t care whether you reach out to myself or my team or the companies that we have, but what I will tell you is that people that have succeeded love to help others also achieve success.

So reach out, look for that knowledge, figure out how to gain the confidence so that you can have your own success, and if we can help you in any way on your own personal journey, we would love to help you out.