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Here are some helpful resources from Dave Campenella of Best Shot Pet, as well as every episode of the Hey Joe Podcast he’s appeared in to date!

About Dave Campenella

Dave Campanella is an informative and entertaining seminar speaker, contributing trade columnist, and genuine grooming enthusiast. He is Best Shot Pet Products sales and marketing director and has over 25 years of pet industry knowledge and experience. He and his wife Tracy co-owned a full-service pet salon and self-wash in Ohio prior to relocating with Best Shot to Kentucky. Together they enjoy exhibiting at grooming shows, being industry ambassadors and showing their Kerry Blue Terrier and Samoyed dogs.

Listen To Episodes of the Hey Joe Podcast Featuring Dave Campenella

Storing & Dispensing Grooming LiquidsProper Disenfecting with Dave Campenella
Caring For Skin & Coat During Winter with Dave CampenellaUnderstanding Conditioners with Dave CampenellaMindful Grooming Balance with Dave CampenellaMasterpieces From Nightmares with Dave Campenella

Downloads from Dave Campenella

Shampoo Dispensing GuidelinesShedding & Coat PhysiologyContemplating Pet GroomingUnderstanding ConditionersDisinfecting Guide

Create a World Class Pet Care Center

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

• Create a job description that attracts the best people
• Create interview questions that work to select the best employee
• Increase hiring and retention
• Reduce ghosting and turnover
• Create a plan for new hire recruitment that brings the right candidates
• Get 3 tools to help raise staff wages and stay profitable
• Know how to price for profit AND explain that value to your clients
• Take home done-for-you programs to sell more to current clients
• Learn why and how to create a membership program
• Bring your key staff and go home with specific plans for hiring new team members, updating your pricing, and adding profitable activities to your business. Be ready to soar!

Learn More & Sign Up

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!

Roundup of Blog Posts – Set 1:

• Speed and Efficiency: Clocks Are Your Scorekeepers
• The Need for Speed

• How Many Pets a Day Should You Groom (Opens Learn2GroomDogs.com)

• Time = Money in a Pet Grooming Salon
• The Importance of Canine Anatomy
• Grooming Efficiency Versus Grooming Fast – What’s the Difference?(*Opens Learn2GroomDogs.com)

Download Time Frames for Proceedures

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.

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.

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!

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!

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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.

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!

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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

1. What are the pros and cons of working extra hours? Do you have enough staff to handle the volume?
2. Should you take on new clients?
3. Make sure all your regular clients have their holiday appointments BEFORE taking on new clients or ‘non- regulars.’
4. 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?)
5. Have you worked out a system to maximize the types of pets you take per stylist?
6. Work out a drop-off and pick-up schedule that allows you to stay focused on grooming pets.
7. Stay calm, cool, and collected no matter what happens during the course of the day.
8. 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.
9. Use every speed trick in the book from prepping – to bathing – to drying – to trimming.
10. 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 – 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?

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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.

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