Do you own “Notes from the Grooming Table – 2nd Edition”? This book will help you build your grooming career, boost your communication levels with your peers and clients, while expanding your career growth! You can purchase a copy HERE or at any one of our partner book sellers.
If you’ve just watched Paragon’s Facebook Live on Staffing Secrets: Reward & Retain, here are some followup resources that may assist you in creating a great work culture!
Visit Our Employer Resource Center – Creating a Culture Employees Don’t Want to Leave
Listen to the Podcast Series: Part 1 Creating a Culture Employees Don’t Want to Leave
Listen to the Podcast Series: Part 2 Creating a Culture Employees Don’t Want to Leave
• Help Your Groomers Avoid Burnout with This Article from Melissa Verplank:
8 Steps to Overcoming Professional Burnout
• Rejuvenate Your Team Through Continuing Education – Hey Joe Podcast with Connie Bailey
Listen in to find out ways to get your team ready for continued education, engagement, plus ways to educate your customers.
Continuing Education: The Benefits of Knowing More
Want help engaging your staff through continuing education?
Melissa Verplank, CMG and Founder of the Paragon companies, shares some of her time-tested tips to master speed and efficiency in grooming. Boost your profits while freeing up more time for work-life balance by becoming the most efficient, productive groomer you can be!
Five Easy Ways to Give Yourself a Raise
How Do You Get Smooth Legs on a Close Haircut
An Easy Way to Create a Poodle Beveled Cuff
How to Scissor a Leg in under Two Minutes
Save the Date: April 6-7, 2022 in Jacksonville, FL
Paragon’s Partners at The Dog Gurus know how to put on an exciting workshop! This year, Paragon President Joe Zuccarello will be a panelist on The Value of Prioritizing Working on Your Business to help pet businesses accelerate a business breakthrough. This is the Workshop you need to plan your way forward in the post-covid world of inflation, wage increases, and staff shortages! Your business can still thrive…and The Dog Gurus will show you how!
Join The Dog Gurus in Florida! 2 days of your time invested in this workshop will help you
In a recent Facebook Live, Melissa Verplank, CMG and Founder of the Paragon companies, shared some of her time-tested tips to master speed and efficiency in grooming. Boost your profits while freeing up more time for work-life balance by becoming the most efficient, productive groomer you can be! Stay tuned for future installments!
How Many Pets a Day Should You Groom (Opens Learn2GroomDogs.com)
Do you enjoy learning something new? Figuring out how to do something easier. Faster. Give you a more satisfying result? Expand your knowledge base. Build your confidence.
Sure you do. We all love learning when it’s easy right? But most of the time learning takes work. Effort. And sometimes it’s difficult and confusing.
I mean – really learn. Absorb it. Get it. Can do it and achieve results you are happy with?
So, what’s the best way to learn?
There are lots of different learning methods, but most fall into two categories. Passive or active learning.
What’s the difference?
Passive learning is when communication is mostly one-way for the sole purpose of gathering information.
Active learning includes doing anything interactive with the content to enhance your understanding of the topic and/or skill.
Which is best? It depends on what you are doing and how you need to apply the information.
Not everyone learns at the same pace. Nor does one technique work the best for everyone. Learning is a personal effort. Your level of involvement combined with a variety of learning techniques will greatly influence your long-term results.
Think back to a time when you learned something.
I’m talking about a time when you were curious about something. You wanted to know more. You researched it. Maybe you watched a few videos on the topic. Talked to people. If it was a skill, you tested it and practiced it, right?
You thought about the topic a lot. You wondered how it related to you or how you could apply it in your life. As you explored, you uncovered more and more on the topic. Connections were made. Dots were joined. You discussed the topic with friends and co-workers. You strengthened your understanding even further.
When it comes to learning retention, hands-down active learning is far more effective than passive learning. However, both have their place in your learning toolbox. Personally, I like to use more passive methods of learning first to familiarize myself with a topic. However, I almost always tuck a bit of active learning into it to ensure I can recall the information more readily.
Active learning promotes a deep, understanding of a topic. For most people, this is how we learn the best. In an active learning environment, you are engaged, empowered, and excited to learn.
Active learning occurs through collaboration, discussion, critical thinking, problem-solving, and connecting new knowledge with your own world.
Passive learning is all around us. But it’s not the best way to truly understand a topic or test your skills.
While reading, you can highlight, tab important passages, take notes, or write your own comments. When you do this, it becomes more of a two-way conversation in your head instead of passively reading the material.
After learning, take some time to think about how you can apply the information. Ask yourself questions to obtain the most out of what you just learned. Here are a few thoughts to get started with to help cement the learning in your own mind.
When you are working on a new skill, break down the steps. Think about how you could follow you progress. Track you progress by simply jotting it down, use an app or create a spreadsheet to monitor your progress.
This is a great way to improve your speed, track your progress when mastering a new skill or learning a new breed, or ensure the effectiveness of new sales techniques. You could even make a game out of the learning.
The sooner you can apply a new skill or technique, the better. Test it out while it is still fresh in your mind.
Studies show even within 20 minutes of learning something new, you will forget about 40% of the details! After 2 days, you will forget up to 70% of what you learned.
The saying, ‘Use it or lose it’ certainly applies when learning a new skill!
Coaches or mentors can help you fast track your learning.
Why?
Because they give you instant feedback helping you improve your skills immediately. A great coach will help you take years off the learning process verse trying to learn on your own.
If the learning revolves around a skill, a technique or a thing – collect images of what it looks like when done correctly. Assemble the images into a grouping you have easy access to. Actively work on building your collection. As you add images, think about HOW the results were achieved and visualize yourself achieving similar results.
To find out if you have really absorbed the knowledge, explain it to someone else.
Go step-by-step. Describe the details of the lesson. Keep it streamlined and simple so whomever you are talking with can absorb correct information.
If you struggle anywhere, go back and review where there are gaps in your own understanding. Continue to share with others your new knowledge until you can explain the topic confidently and the listener understands clearly.
To verify you have positively progressed in your learning or mastered a skill, go for validation. How? There are many ways.
You need discipline and nerve to admit what you don’t understand. What you find hard to do.
Ignoring those things is the worst mistakes a learner can make. You’ll need a strong foundation before you move on to a more advanced level.
When you’re self-learning, you’ve got to go the extra step to gauge yourself. It’s the only way you can learn improve and develop faster. Validation is how you’ll find your strong and weak points, so you know what to focus on.
Learning a subject or skill takes time and effort. You will never thoroughly understand something if you only use passive learning.
By utilizing a few of the active learning method outlined above, you will create shortcuts to your own growth. Mix and match these methods based on the skill or subject you want to learn – or come up with other ways to retain new information.
The team at Paragon’s “Hey Joe!” Podcast by Pet Professionals for Pet Professionals is pleased to announce that the popular show will now be available on Spotify and Google podcast platforms in addition to its current distribution to Apple, Stitcher and Tunein.
The podcast, introduced earlier this year, features Paragon’s VP, Joe Zuccarello and guest industry experts who examine trends, products, tips and techniques in the pet grooming, pet care and pet supplies industry.
Episodes cover a wide range of informative and entertaining topics, from interviews with grooming icons such as Victor Rosado to deep explorations of deep conditioning with Dave Campanella. Many episodes give practical ways to increase revenue in grooming salons or to improve health and endurance for groomers.
Prior to joining the Paragon team in 2018, Joe’s rich career spanned managing luxury pet resorts, bringing pet supplies products to market, and coaching a wide range of pet business entrepreneurs. Learn more about Joe.
He is a sought out International Speaker and author, providing management, operations, and sales guidance tailored specifically for the Pet Industry.
Check out “Hey Joe!” in our Resource Center, or Subscribe on your favorite platform using the links below.
These trends make the potential for success in pet grooming highly likely when combined with a great education and opportunities for continued skill development. In pet grooming, once you have a happy customer, you’re likely to keep a happy customer for life. The more breed profiles you know, and the better your speed and technique, the more happy customers you’ll have, and the more profitable your solo or salon team will become. That’s why at Paragon, Education is Everything.
Choosing a career in pet grooming is more than just the numbers, though. It’s about doing what you love AND earning a great living doing it. The best way to maximize your earning potential is to constantly challenge yourself and learning from others who’ve achieved top recognition. It’s also about having access to great business advice.
Many of our students and community members go into the field because they LOVE working with animals, and they love the independence a well-trained groomer can achieve. Read their Stories here.
The Paragon family of companies can teach absolute beginners to become professional groomers through its On-Campus and Online Dog Grooming courses, voted #1 Dog Grooming school by the Pet Groomer Industry Educator Awards. Our award-winning textbooks, Notes from the Grooming Table and The Theory of Five are invaluable reference materials that groomers will use throughout their careers. But our support of novice groomers doesn’t end there.
Through Learn2GroomDogs.com, Paragon encourages the continued professional development of any skill level, with more than a thousand instructional video episodes available to members. These videos feature tutorials by our Industry Training Partners who represent the very best in the industry. Many are GroomTeamUSA alumni, authors, and are in-demand on the workshop and seminar circuit. Membership includes access to business coaching advice to help you succeed. Learn2GroomDogs.com members also have the option of belonging to a closed Facebook group that is designed to help networking and problem-solving in your day-to-day work life. Fresh content is served up every week.
Explore membership in Learn2GroomDogs.com
Our mission, whether through books, professional grooming courses, or streaming instructional videos and our community, is simple. We’re here to help YOU become the best, most successful groomer you can be.
Reach out to our specialists if you’d like to know more about the wonderful world of professional dog (and cat) grooming, or would like to learn how we can help you achieve your dreams.
In our salons, one of the most popular head styles is round. Especially when it comes to Doodles, mixed breeds of all sorts, lots of drop-coated breeds plus a few others.
Did you know there is an easy way to make any dog look younger? More perky?
And the best part – it’s SIMPLE!
Shorten the ears and the muzzle.
Long ears and muzzles drag a dog down, making them look older. It also detracts from a bright expression.
Plus, all the excessive coat is a dirt magnet. It’s constantly getting dragged through their food and water dishes. Longer fur drags on the ground as they pick up all their ‘doggie messages.’ (that’s gross!) Unless it’s being washed almost daily, it gets dirty, stinky and oily. And the potential for mats and tangles is increased the longer the coat.
How short do you go? That’s up to you and the owner.
Whatever the look, it should complement the trim and the dog. It needs to balance with the overall haircut.
Save the date to check out this colorful documentary that chronicles a year in the visually stunning world of competitive and creative dog grooming. WELL GROOMED follows the lives of a group of creative groomers whose dedication to their art is “bold, imaginative and eye-opening.” Learn2GroomDogs.com Expert Angela Kumpe is one of the four co-stars of the film, and you might catch a glimpse of several “friends of Paragon” during filming in the competitive ring. After making the rounds at SXSW and several film festivals across North America, the film was picked up by HBO Sports for a debut Dec. 17th on all platforms.
According to director Rebecca Stern, “The film explores a world where competition, art and animals combine in the most vivid color and is a perfect match for the HBO Sports ethos of innovative programming.”
Accompanying a group of champion groomers and their gorgeous, vibrant dogs for one year on the technicolor competition circuit, WELL GROOMED effervescently explores creative grooming. From South Carolina to California, New York to Arkansas, the film follows the group from their homes to large-scale dog grooming competitions and showrooms where their communities meet, discuss, and compete with technicolor exuberance.
Kudos to Angela and her crew for bringing a slice of groomer life to the American public!
