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Paragon School of Grooming and our parent company, Melissa Verplank Enterprises, are innovators who bring new products and service to market for the grooming community.
News & Events
Webinar: KPIs of Grooming Services with MoeGo
Date: April 16 at 10am PST / 1pm EST
Speakers: Joe Zuccarello (President at Paragon) & Brian Krotine (Sr. Manager, Strategic Partnerships at MoeGo)
Do you know which key performance indicators (KPIs) are driving your grooming business’s success? If not, you’re not alone! Many grooming professionals struggle to track and use data effectively—but we’re here to change that.
Join MoeGo and industry expert Joe Zuccarello from Paragon for a must-attend webinar on how to measure, manage, and maximize your grooming business’s performance using KPIs.
What You’ll Learn:
What KPIs are & why they matter
Key grooming industry benchmarks
Financial & managerial accounting made simple
How to track the right data for growth
Smart & simple ways to set goals and budgets
Maximizing your grooming team’s performance
How MoeGo helps you stay on top of KPIs
Register now to take control of your business’s success!
President Joe Zuccarello Joins Pet Care Staffing Summit April 7-11
Paragon Pet School President Joe Zuccarello will be speaking at the upcoming Pet Care Staffing Summit, running online from April 7th–11th.
If you’ve ever struggled to hire, train, or keep good staff in your pet care business, this event is for you.
Across five days, you’ll hear from real pet business owners and industry experts sharing what’s actually working right now to:
• Attract better applicants
• Hire with more confidence (and less time-wasting)
• Engage your team and reduce turnover
• Control labor costs without sacrificing care
• And much more…
Joe will be sharing his in-depth recruitment strategy, “Employ Differently” with attendees on April 9th at 4 p.m. EST. This session charts the recruitment journey through marketing for, finding, training and retaining certified professional dog grooming teams.
He joins a seriously strong lineup of speakers, including facility owners, hiring specialists, enrichment experts, and leadership coaches.
This is a rare chance to get focused, honest advice on solving the #1 problem facing most pet businesses: staffing.
You can save $200 on a ticket if you grab the early bird offer.
You can check out all the details and grab your ticket here:
Paragon President Joe Zuccarello’s Speaker Sessions at Groom’D 2025
ParagonPetSchool.com president, Joe Zuccarello, has teamed up with our partners at WPA to offer an exciting trifecta of topics for grooming businesses at the GROOM’D trade show and grooming competition in Atlanta, GA, March 7-9.
GROOM’D is the ultimate one-stop-shop for pet care professionals at every stage of the game to discover new trends and tools, the latest in pet wellness, business insights and outstanding competitive artistry. The grooming-focused pet trade show is presented by World Pet Association, the global pet industry’s first trade organization. For more than 70 years, WPA has provided professionals of all experience levels and in a variety of roles with valuable educational resources, industry news and forums that allow our community to promote the health and growth of businesses and our industry.
In addition to exhibiting in Booth #135 with Director of Operations, Cara Evans, Joe will connect with pet pros while leading the following educational workshops:
How to Set, Raise and Correct Pricing
Saturday, March 08, 2025 • 1:30 pm–3:00 pm • Italian Suite
In this session, Joe Zuccarello will help demystify the challenges of establishing the best pricing for your services, who should be setting the prices, how and when to raise prices, and how to correct prices that might be way off where they should be. Joe will also provide some recommendations on how to approach your clients with communicating pricing changes. Believe it or not, many businesses leave a ton of money on the table by missing some basic pricing strategies. And many businesses are inadvertently confusing their clients. If you want to seize every opportunity for every dollar you and your services are worth, join us for this seminar.
Succession Planning
Sunday, March 09, 2025 • 12:30 pm–2:00 pm • Italian Suite
Exit Ramp Ahead. When is it time to exit the “freeway” or traffic of business? What is your succession plan? Description: It’s coming. The day when you feel is best for you to exit your business. But much like driving your car, do you know where you are heading, when, and how to plan to get moved over from lane to lane so you are properly positioned for your exit? What destinations are out there for you to consider? What steps do you need to take to reach your desired destination? And when do you start using your “turn signals” to start maneuvering toward your destination off-ramp? In this session, Joe will identify some of these options for exits, planning, positioning, etc. No matter if your business is new, growing, maturing, or ready for an exit, this session is a must.
Anyone Can Sue for Anything
Sunday, March 09, 2025 • 10:00 am–11:30 am • Italian Suite
While most people we deal with are compassionate, loyal, fun, and responsible, there are times when we are challenged by customers who may see things differently than we do, especially when it comes to their pet’s care and hygiene. In fact, there are stories where clients are threatening (or successfully) suing their pet care providers for haircuts that didn’t turn out the way the pet parent envisioned or worse, if there is an accidental injury to the pet during grooming procedures. During this session, Joe will share some stories and recommendations to limit the chances of this happening to you. Strengthening your client messaging to protect yourself and offer your clients choices that everyone wins is the goal takeaway from this session.
For more business coaching inspiration, visit our Employer Resource section and select Joe’s 10 Minute Coaching for Pet Care Pros.
Looking for a keynote speaker for pet business coaching sessions? Contact Us.
Paragon Teams Up with The Dog Gurus at Breakthrough Workshop
Paragon President Joe Zuccarello joined forces with The Dog Gurus at their annual Breakthrough Workshop to help pet businesses of all types build their teams and boost their bottom line. The Pet Business Growth Workshop is an intensive three-day conference designed to elevate your pet care business. This transformative event brings together industry experts and pet business owners to address key challenges in launching, growing, and building profitable enterprises. Here’s a peek at the workshop topic Joe led.Growth Workshop: Stop Grinding, Start Growing: A Path to Business and Personal Fulfillment
In this session, Joe guides a conversation focused on getting the most out of the energy you spend building your business. It may sound cliche, but it is true. To maximize desired results, you must work more ON your business and less IN your business. But how can you accomplish this? It starts with a VISION. What does it look like when it is done correctly? Once you have that figured out, then you must execute the plan for your business by identifying why, who, what, how, and when you want to do it. You have a job, and that job is not to do everyone else’s job for them. So, how do you make sure they know what you want? How you want it done? And if they are successful or not? And if they are not successful, what do you do then? With the right approach, what results can you expect? One thing is for sure: if you get caught up spending your energy doing the wrong things, you will never reach your fullest potential and neither will your team or your business.
For more business coaching inspiration, visit our Employer Resource section and select Joe’s 10 Minute Coaching for Pet Care Pros.
Looking for a keynote speaker for pet business coaching sessions? Contact Us.