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Why Choose a Career As A Pet Groomer?
Pet Grooming By the Numbers:
- According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, (BLS) the employment outlook for animal care and service workers is projected to grow 16 percent over the next decade – much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment growth along with high job turnover should result in very good job prospects.
- The pet grooming and boarding market has virtually doubled in size over the last decade, from 4.56 Billion in 2009 to 8.38 Billion in 2019, according to Statista.
- Today, 68% of US Households have a pet (85 M).
- According to PetGroomer.com‘s annual survey, 64% of Groomers earn $30k to over $50k.
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.
It’s About More Than Numbers:
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.
How We Serve Groomers Throughout Their Careers:
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.
Learn2GroomDogs.com – Live Stream Learning On Tap
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
We Exist For Your Success:
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.
How to Give A Dog A Facelift
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.
Well Groomed Debut Slated for Dec. 17th on HBO
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.”
Here’s a sneak peak of the trailer used for SXSW:
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!
Melissa’s Tips: New Year’s Resolutions are Dreams with Deadlines
Fuel a prosperous New Year and create a dream with a deadline! A recent study divided people who made New Year’s resolutions into two groups.
• Those who made New Year’s resolutions and wrote it down.
• Those who made a New Year’s resolution but neglected to write it down.
You know what? The results were amazing. For the group that did not write down their New Year’s resolution, only 4% of them kept their resolution. However, for the people that wrote down the resolution, a whopping 44% of them had kept their New Year’s resolution.
Increase Your Odds
“You can’t hit a target you can’t see” says motivational speaker Brian Tracy. And he is so right. A dream is a wish. Most people don’t write down their wishes – Thus, most wishes don’t come true.
Another one of his famous quotes is, “Goals in writing are dreams with deadlines.”
So have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? Have you put pen to paper or your fingers to keyboard? If you’ll just take a few minutes and get your dreams down on paper, your odds for success are going to increase tenfold. Let’s get started!
Create a Culture Employees Don’t Want to Leave
If you’re a salon owner, do you struggle with keeping employees? Have you created a culture that employees don’t want to leave? Paragon VP Joe Zuccerello is a regular speaker on this topic, and shared his insights with Profit Network Members during a private session to launch the @The Dog Gurus Business Breakthrough Workshop. You can download free highlights of his talk at by entering your information below.
Download Your FREE Employee Culture Highlights for Joe’s Talk!
Paragon’s Online Dog Grooming Program Welcomes Courtney Ramstack to Mentor Team
Paragon People bring passion to the art of grooming instruction to help our students succeed. That’s why we’re delighted to welcome award-winning competitive groomer and instructor Courtney Ramstack, CMG, to our DLP Online Grooming Mentor team! Courtney has trained more than 150 students throughout the midwest, coaching them through grooming competitions and successful salon management. Her own rise from bather to industry-leader came through her strong sense of style, attention to detail and outstanding customer service. We’re delighted to have her on board!
Plan Now for a Successful Holiday Dog Grooming Season!
The autumn leaves may still be turning, but the sweet jingle of the Holiday Rush cash register will soon ring out across the land. Are you — or your salon — ready for the holiday rush? In this excerpt, CMG Melissa Verplank outlines tips and questions to ask yourself to ensure a smooth holiday season. If you need to hire help, train them now with Paragon’s Groomer Education & Training Program, and you’ll be set to ring in the New Year with record profits!
Ten Tips & Questions to Help You Get Through the Dogs During the Holiday Season
- What are the pros and cons of working extra hours? Do you have enough staff to handle the volume?
- Should you take on new clients?
- Make sure all your regular clients have their holiday appointments BEFORE taking on new clients or ‘non- regulars.’
- Hiring extra help – is there something you can easily delegate with some basic training that would free you up to deal with clients? Cleaning? Answering the phone? Taking out the trash? (Or adding a bather/stylist who has completed level 1?)
- Have you worked out a system to maximize the types of pets you take per stylist?
- Work out a drop-off and pick-up schedule that allows you to stay focused on grooming pets.
- Stay calm, cool, and collected no matter what happens during the course of the day.
- Set realistic time goals that push you, but stay on target. Use an egg timer if necessary or place a clock where you can’t miss it – no matter what.
- Use every speed trick in the book from prepping – to bathing – to drying – to trimming.
- When clients pick up their pet, are you offering a promotion to assist in re-booking 6 weeks down the road when it can traditionally be really slow?
Correcting Behavior During Grooming
Correcting Behavior During Grooming – Learn the 4 Keys to Successful Pet Handling
If you are a long time pet professional, you’ve probably mastered today’s topic. If you are fresh to the industry, you are probably struggling with it. How do you handle the dog that does not want to cooperate with the grooming procedure?
Managing Your Schedule
How is your summer going? Busy?? Overworked? Feeling stressed? Not being able to ENJOY your summer because you are too busy?
Having too much work can be just as frustrating and scary as not having ENOUGH work. I get it. As groomers and service providers, we want to keep people happy. That’s how you build a thriving business. However, if the business is thriving – and you are not – how can that honestly be good for your business? How can that be good for your customers and pets in the long run?
We all have the same number of days, hours and minutes each year. Everyone wants to maximize their time to make the most out their lives. How you schedule appointments, how many hours and days you work each week and how much time you allot for yourself will contribute to how you feel at the end of the day.
Canine Influenza Revisited – Tips for Salon Management
As summertime approaches, so does the anniversary of the worst outbreak of Canine Influenza the country has seen. In the summer of 2018, numerous pet care facilities in Paragon’s home state of Michigan closed temporarily, required vaccinations and/or orchestrated mass vaccination efforts to slow down the spread of Canine Influenza H3N2 strain, including our own Whiskers Pet Resort and Spa. Is your facility ready for 2019?
By now, you have probably heard about the newest illness threatening our pets. Canine influenza (CI), or dog flu, is a highly contagious infection that can have serious implications not only for our pets, but for your business and our industry.
How to Build your Bath and Brush Business
In this video, Certified Master Groomer Melissa Verplank talks about ways you can be proactive in maintaining the volume of pets in your grooming business. In order to keep your business volume consistent and growing you need to deliver a service that goes beyond what customers can do at home or at a self-wash. Learn ways to set your service apart!
Get more great grooming business tips from www.Learn2GroomDogs.com – Sign up with Code LUCKYDOG and get 50% off your first month!
Want to advance your training? Check out our advanced levels at Paragon Pet School’s Distance Learning Program. Use Code LUCKYDOG to get $100 off tuition!
Education is Everything
By Melissa Verplank, CMG
We have a motto within my companies when it comes to learning:
“Education is everything.”
It is at the very core of everything we do. Why?
I see learning as never-ending. It does not matter what stage you are in your career. Or what stage you are in your life. Continued learning offers positive opportunities around every turn.
I was never a great student in school. Traditional academics did not excite me. But once I got into dog grooming, now that was a different story.
I became passionate about learning. About growing my career. I didn’t seek out traditional methods. Most of my learning was self-directed. Something much more challenging before the age of the Internet! I quickly understood the wealth of benefits continued education unleashed.