Dress For Success: Examining First Impressions and Client Expectations with Elli Bultemeier

Hello, Hey Joe listener audience out there. This is Joe Zuccarello, your host of the Hey Joe podcast and vodcast. And I am joined today by somebody that, sort of embraces everything that we talk about when we talk about elevating the professionalism in our profession. And I am joined today by Elli, and Elli is with Smoochy Pooch. Hey Elli, thanks for joining me today.

Elli:
Hi, thank you for having me.

Joe:
So Elli, tell the listener audience a little bit more about who you are, sort of your career that’s gotten you to this point and just sort of what you do on a daily basis.

Elli:
Yeah, absolutely. I do a lot on a daily basis. So I started as a groomer, Humble Beginnings, right out of high school, went to Pet Smart, went through their grooming academy. And then I transitioned shortly after there to the private sector.

About 2017, I joined Smoochie Pooch. We, I am now, you know, as high as you can go in Smoochie Pooch, I’m a VP of operations. My husband and I run it together. And we have 14 salons and four mobiles. We’re mostly in Indiana. We have one in Kentucky as well right now.

And we also own Retro Stylist Wear and a distribution company for groomers as well. So. My daily life, I guess you could say, looks a lot like managing 60 plus groomers. And then retro is part of that. And then distribution is a very small part of that as well. So lots of things on the daily, lots of managing people, but mostly my grooming career, I’ve been a full-time groomer for over 16 years. It’s my passion. I love it now. I absolutely love teaching people, grooming and business, but I’ve always loved grooming and that’s really my passion.

Joe:
Well, I think that says a lot to the topic that we’re gonna be talking about today, which is the look that we put on, right? How do we dress? Some say, you feel how you dress or you get addressed based on how you dress, right? So, and I think really part of adding professionalism to the industry is I think by adding professionalism to the industry is essentially focusing on how you look as a professional, as an expert.

Our customers, they pay us for our expertise. I do a lot of seminars and a lot of other talkings on, we can’t expect our customers to be the expert. That’s what they’re paying us for, right? If you’ve ever went into it, especially a services based business, whether it’s your doctor or a dentist or even restaurants to some, you know, and you walk in and the person looks like they really spent time putting themselves together that they’re that they’re they, they’ve, they’ve assigned a certain level of importance to how they dress. It makes you feel confident, right? It makes you feel like, well, maybe I’m dealing with an expert now.

I mean, the proof is in the pudding, right? So I mean, if there’s still, I mean, you could dress really, really well and then be terrible with your quality. So those things have to be there, but let’s just talk, let’s just talk, let’s just kind of, let’s just dive right in, right?

So, professional apparel, the impact on the confidence level of the customer. Can you speak to that a little bit? What is your viewpoint on the confidence level of a customer before you even get to the pet professional?

Elli:
So absolutely, I think appearing in a professional manner means different things to different people for starters. I think that some people, groomers in particular, when you say professional and how they appear, right? They’re envisioning this curled hair, full face of makeup, nails done, clean shaven for males. I don’t view that as professional. I guess I… want to start by saying that.

What I view as professional is brushed hair. You know, my hair isn’t curled and fancy and I knew I was coming on this podcast, you know, my nails aren’t done, but they’re trimmed and they’re not looking a wreck. You know, I think professionalism is clean cut. So whatever that means to you, to me, it means brushed hair, whether it’s in a Your clothing is not tattered. It looks professional. That doesn’t mean you have to have a button up on, but it does mean that there should be some level of, “wow, that person looks very nice. That person looks uniform.”

If you’re commanding a presence in the way that you appear, your customers will automatically listen to you. They’ll take your advice. They’ll trust you more. Whereas if you’re wearing a tattered t-shirt and shorts with some Crocs and maybe, you know, a mess on top, they may not necessarily take you as seriously as you’d like them to. And that’s not because you don’t know what you’re doing or you don’t value yourself. That’s because it just is a first impression.

So you have to give your customers, you know, they’re coming to you to groom their pet. If you can’t groom yourself, how are you gonna groom their pet?

Joe
Yeah, yeah.

Elli”
And I think that makes- That’s the first impression.

Joe:
And again, that first impression, right? And I think, you know, I have no problem with people with different forms of self-expression, right? Absolutely. If you choose a certain hair color, or you choose to have certain… uh, you know, other forms of expression, whether it be tattoos, whether it be peers and whatever those things are, just always keep in mind, what is it that your customer is expecting to see? Right.

And I listen, I’ve seen people with blue hair, right. That are stunning in how they present themselves. I would, I would never doubt their expertise, but I put them next to somebody else who has blue colored hair. Who does not pay attention to those things. And immediately credibility is questioned. And fair or unfair, that’s just the reality, right? I mean, we do it ourselves. We do it ourselves. When we walk into facilities, we walk into our doctor, if they’re not wearing a white coat, right? If they come in and say, they come in overalls and a flannel shirt and boots and they come in and you say, “oh, hi, Dr. Smith.” And I’m like, “don’t call me Doc, call me Brian,” right? A

nd you’re like, “mm, right?” I don’t know. They may be trying to connect with you on a “you” level basis, but that’s not what we’re paying for. What we’re paying for is that white coat, that demeanor, that expertise. So it’s just fair or unfair sometimes, it’s just the reality of things.

So when you talk about apparel specifically, and again, what’s really so awesome is that you’re a professional groomer, you have multiple facilities, you have 60 plus grooming professionals that work for you. So you’re not coming to this conversation with, well, it’s me and my friend who, you know, we co-own a grooming salon, right? And this is my opinion. You’ve been in the industry, you’ve seen the industry progress.

Yes, you sell apparel, and I think that that’s gonna be real important. And we’re gonna make sure that the audience has full. access to all of all of your information on our site at ParagonPetSchool.com that people can go and look you up and maybe consider purchasing some things from you.

But that you do that because you saw a need in the industry. You did that because you saw that not all apparel is created equally as well, right? Because sometimes I mean… Let’s face it, we go to these trade shows, right? And we see some of our colleagues, some of our people that we share the industry with walking around on the trade show floor, not all apparel is created equal, right? Apparel is created.

And this is difficult, because listen, I’m a male in the industry, right? Which is still heavily dominated by female, which is, I mean, I’ve been in the industry for over 39 years. I’ve worked my entire career mostly around females and I’ve had to supervise and lead these different people of different walks of life in the grooming profession. It is a difficult conversation to have.

Elli:
It is very difficult.

Joe:
When you have a staff member who’s not dressing the part or managing their own personal, whether it be apparel or personal hygiene in some cases as well.

Elli:
Yeah, and unfortunately it happens pretty frequently. Uh, especially at the size we are, we come across that pretty frequently. And something I guess I would love to point out is we do have Retro Stylist Wear, right? And we do have a dress code that we have for our company Smoochy Pooch, but that dress code does not say Retro Stylist Wear apparel. It says smock.

So, you know, as long as our employees are looking presentable, with either a smock or an apron. We don’t even sell aprons at Retro right now. So as long as they’re looking presentable, that’s what matters to us, because that’s on point with our brand and how we feel we’d like to treat our employees, but we have had to have several conversations, unfortunately, with people who maybe haven’t taken the best care of themselves and aren’t presenting themselves in a way that we feel like represents our brand.

So… whatever a brand looks like for that owner is what they should really stick with. But I encourage everyone, whether it be a home-based groomer, a mobile groomer, a salon, even a salon owner. You know, there are several that do all black. I personally love that. But there are several that don’t. I still think you can have a uniform you can come across as professional without everybody having to be matchy-matchy. And I think people get about that.

Joe:
I love that. You know why I love that? Because you pointed out a word, and I think it’s very important, is that no matter what business you’re running or that you’re a part of, you’re part of a brand. Right? Whether you take control of what you want your brand to be, or you allow to be branded by how others perceive you, right? You are part of a brand, like it or not.

So at a previous employer that I was at, you know, we had, you know, we all had to wear the uniform shirts, right? But a challenge that we had were the bottoms, right? So we were a no denim facility, right? So no denim. So everything had to be khaki pants, right? Khaki pants or khaki shorts. Well, the challenge was, is that everybody’s opinion of what khaki is.

Elli:
It’s different.

Joe:
What I learned was khaki can be anything from like almost brown to just dingy, almost white pants. Yep. You know, and so it was like, all of a sudden this thing that we tried to have as uniform was subjective, right? So we went as far as, and this is a recommendation I have for a lot of people I talk to, show pictures, show pictures. It’s OK to say this is the color, this is how we want our people. Here are some examples, because we’re never going to nail it perfect. We’re never going to. This isn’t, you know, this isn’t go to the store and order our staff online and be able to order what hair color, what body shape, what height, whatever. This is the general sense of the appearance we want you to have, right?

So if it’s one or 10 pictures, something in that genre, right? To help them, and to your point, you don’t say what brand, you just say what look. You say what you want them to look like. And I think that’s really nice.

So, question for you: When you talk about professional groomers, I would imagine at Retro, you probably want to hear from groomers about what it is that they need if they’re going to dress the part. I would imagine there’s some feedback, right? There’s some input that groomers want to have. Because I’ve seen some.

Listen, I remember jumpsuits, right? I remember like the one, the onesie, right?

Elli:
Oh, I had one of those! Yeah!

Joe:
Now I don’t think that I don’t know that they exist anywhere. Probably a bad idea here in 2024. But, but I guess what my point is, is what feedback does retro use? Does do you and your team use from the grooming population are professionals out there to create your, your apparel?

Elli:
Yeah, so that’s an awesome question. I love that question. We use a lot of information. We do a ton of research. One, it helps that I’m in the captain chair, right? I’ve been grooming as long as I have. I know what groomers need. I know it has to be hair resistant. I know it has to be water resistant. I will never say I make anything waterproof because I don’t wanna wear a vinyl tablecloth.

You know, it has to hold up. It has to have zippers that don’t break. Like these are things that I struggled with until I found this, you know. You wouldn’t know it, but this is a smock. This is a smock we make, right?

Joe:
Very professional!

Elli:
So my goal is I want to have stuff that if I need to run out after work and run an errand or go to the doctor, I say go to the doctor because I was there this morning, I want to look like a human. I don’t want to look like I just rolled out a bag, rolled out a bed and I’m wearing a trash bag. So I think listening, like having the experience myself helps greatly.

The other thing that helps us a ton is our massive amount of employees. They absolutely love helping us because that means they’re gonna get to one, sample stuff for me because that’s what I used to sample. I just pass them out to my groomers. They also love that their input matters. It’s getting listened to. We go to trade shows now, we have been for the last couple of years with Retro. And at the trade shows, what’s really awesome is everybody has ideas. Some of these ideas we have implemented and we try to implement.

You brought up a good point earlier where you were like, I’m a male in a very heavily women dominated industry. We have a really nice line that is dedicated for men. Women can also wear it and we have tons that do. I actually prefer to wear the more masculine stuff as well. Like this is a unisex, but it was designed for men, you know? So there’s a little bit of something for everybody.

And we try to listen to what the needs are and we do our best to implement those needs. Um, our designer that we work with, she actually was laid off from Vera Bradley, which is a huge company here, local to us. And she went to Hershey last year with us and she just, I mean, all the information, she took it all and we have been working on new designs ever since.

So we’re really excited to be able to offer things that haven’t been seen before in the industry. We have prints that have come out that like. They’ve just never been seen. You don’t have to have rainbow paw prints and poodles on everything. While that’s fun and some people love it…

Joe:
My team’s gonna get a real chuckle out of that because I said, listen, I don’t want any paw prints in our marketing materials.

Elli:
None, yeah.

Joe:
Which is so overdone. Looks like the 80s called them once their paw prints back, right? So. Yes.

Elli:
Like why can’t stuff change? So that’s my goal, you know, I. I hate seeing the same smocks that my mentors wore in the, you know, back in the day, they’re still available. How is that a thing? You know, like we should be ever evolving and we should be able to look nice, but actually feel good too. It’s fun to feel good.

Joe:
So looking good is important because that’s how we feel good, right?

Elli:
Yeah.

Joe:
I mean, listen. put on a dress, put on a tuxedo, put on, you know, when you’re going out to a nice dinner or whatever, you feel, you just feel- You feel good. Important, right? So you said water resistant and hair resistant.

Elli:
Yeah.

Joe:
What, if you were gonna, and I know I’m putting you on a spot because we didn’t necessarily cover this in pre-show prep, but if you were gonna say the next one or two things in importance for professional learners that you’ve heard in feedback, what would those be?

Elli:
A lot of people want pockets and things that are cool. So like they get very hot very quickly. We spent almost a whole year finding our fabric for two sleeveless styles we just came out with in March. It’s stretchy, which before we didn’t have anything stretchy and the hair falls off of it and the water just beads off of it. Took us a really long time to find that fabric though.

So we do listen. And I would say, again, depends on what the uniforms are, but wherever you’re working or if you’re an owner, depends on what you want your team to look like. But in my opinion, as long as we’re not, yes, we work with dogs, but why do we need to be covered in hair? I hate that when we’re like, we get hair anyway.

Joe:
Yeah, I saw a t-shirt that said, yes, I’m covered in dog hair. I’m like, mm. You don’t have to be. We don’t necessarily need to tell anybody either because we can tell, we can see it.

Elli:
We can see it. So I think being cool is a big one, especially this time of year. Having pockets is another one. Most of our styles have pockets. We do have some economy type styles I don’t, but it just… zippers are another one. Like where they go all the way in zipper, although we’ve come out with two button-up styles and they sell just as well now. So I’m not sure.

We’ve done a lot of surveys too at the shows. If you put my email in the link and anyone has any feedback they want to get like we listen.

Joe:
You guys heard it. She said send her feedback. So be prepared. You’re probably going to hear from, you know, because one thing that we’re really good at in this industry is opinions.

Elli:
Oh, absolutely.

Joe:
Very good on opinion people. Yeah. So, you know, those are some of the things that people want. Would that match sort of any challenges you have in the apparel industry? I mean, what, give us a peek behind the curtain as to what it is that you kind of run into in challenges with apparel.

Elli:
Honestly, our biggest challenge is sizing. Especially plus sizing. It absolutely breaks my heart when I have people come into the booth and a smock that they absolutely love doesn’t fit them. That is it. I mean, it hurts because I want everyone to feel included. I want everyone to feel comfortable. I want everybody to feel confident. And you can’t feel confident if something doesn’t fit right.

So unfortunately, that is our biggest challenge. it’s hard to get those fits because there are so many different shapes.

Joe:
Sure.

Elli:
To be honest, it’s not anything other than that. It’s you have really short, you have tall, like it’s really hard. That’s why honestly plus size in general across the board, fashion across the board, the industry struggles with it.

There are some companies that do it really well, but there aren’t many. My mom’s been plus size my whole life hearing her since I was a kid saying, why do I have to wear a trash bag? Or they want me to wear these ugly prints. You know, that’s by far been our biggest struggle and something we’ve been working on kind of constantly. So we are always working on that.

We also have really, really teeny tiny people that we’re trying to cater towards too. So sizing is by far our biggest challenge.

Joe:
It’s funny you mentioned that because of fashion, I can just imagine. I mean, just having, and even if you had the styles, just having the inventory, I mean, just the sheer volume of you’ve got to have six different sizes for this one color and then that one, or that one color and that one design, but that one design comes in six different colors and three different patterns. I mean, I can just imagine.

Elli:
A lot of SKUs.

Joe:
Ah, right, I can just imagine that. But you know, One of the things that the fashion industry, right? We’re consumers, the fashion industry, the way that they’re tackling this is instead of stores carrying a lot of inventory, now you’ve got these boxes that, right? You can sign up for a membership and they’re gonna send you a box and then whatever you like, you keep and you pay for, whatever you don’t, you put back in the box and send back. And they keep sending you, right? And it’s sort of a, you know, get to know your tailor or get to know your fashion designer, your fashion. consultant that will continue to send you things.

I don’t know if that’s going to be something that sticks. I know that there’s a lot of people that use those types of programs. I don’t know if that’s something that would make sense in, well you use it, I don’t know if it makes sense in the grooming apparel industry, right? To send a smock a month, right? Or some kind of short a month and if they like it they keep it. I don’t know.

There you go, you can have that and you can do on that.

Elli:
It’s a good idea. It’s been a thought but another one of our biggest challenges is honestly groomers. a lot of them, not all of them by any means. Let’s even say 50% just to be very generous, think they only need one smock and it should last them a year and a half or two years.

Joe:
Yeah.

Elli:
You know, so you’ve got some people who want one of each in every single color and you’ve got one, or you know, a couple who want one smack and that smack better last them an entire year or it’s your problem, you did it. No. You don’t go to Kohl’s or Target or use even a high, you know, Von Maur, whatever you have by you. You don’t go to those places, buy a shirt and expect to wear it eight hours a day to 10 hours a day, doing a dirty job, wearing it five days a week and expecting it to last a year or more.

Joe:
That’s right. No, you’re exactly right. And I, and you know, and I think this too, this is just a, okay, so you have about 60. grooming professionals that work for you. Again, I told you in pre-show prep, I don’t get many, I don’t get to talk to very many people that have that many groomers that work for me. I mean, I get up in front of people, I say, I had 60 dog groomers that work for me. We did a hundred thousand grooming appointments a year and people are like, 60 dog groomers? So it was great to go toe to toe with you. I mean, we’re like on an even playing field.

But you know, here’s my tip for employers out there. If you want your staff to look good and you want your staff to recommend your services or your products that you provide. You have to remove the financial barriers for your own staff to look how you want them to look and promote what you sell.

One of the things that just really gets to me is when I hear that facilities don’t have a, well, my staff gets 50% off of boarding services or 50% off of daycare services. And I have a different opinion. I say, Can you make it free? And can you make the, can you remove all financial barriers? Cause I mean, you know how much you pay your people. So if your people are going to Disney world for the first time, cause they’ve been saving for five years to take their kids at Disney world,

Elli:
Right.

Joe:
And you’re going to charge them 50% of what you charge. I mean, some of the nicest facilities are up to a hundred bucks a day. Right. Well, they can’t afford that. So we’re putting financial barriers with regards to apparel. Yeah. If you want them to look the way you want them to look, consider either an allowance. Right. So much per month that you’re going to give them so that they, if they run over and then their, their clothes are tattered. Well, then they’re responsible for replacing them on their own dime.

Or, you know, like we had one of my previous employers on my team, we had a buy one, get one. So if they bought the first one, we bought their second one. So the staff always had some skin in the game. Right. So, but I knew that they were going to lease him two, like two smocks.

Elli:
Right.

Joe:
But to your point earlier, but do you see and recommend, do you have any other creative ways or just encouragement for employers out there that own the same thought?

Elli:
You know, I’ve seen a trend and maybe it’s because I am doing Retro now, but I have seen a huge trend, honestly more on the East Coast of business owners outfitting their entire… salons. And I don’t know how often they’re doing that. Actually, I might start after this conversation asking, you know, how often are we doing this?

But I do think either an allowance or better yet a quarterly, I like quarterly for, you know, every quarter we’re going to get you a new, whatever your uniform is, you know, for us, they can go on our website, they can pick what they want. That’s easy for us. We can do that because we have it here. You know,

Joe:
You have the answer to the test, Elli.

Elli:
Right. So I, I work with a lot of business owners. They do outfit their entire teams. I do see that turning a little bit and becoming a trend. A lot of people do go with black because it’s easy. Like you said, with the million different shades of khaki, black is pretty standard. Right. So A lot of people are going with black, you know, they’ll just put some embroidery on and things of that nature, which is really nice.

But I think, I think having an allowance, I think having that every quarter we’re going to get you X, Y, and Z or an allowance or whatever it is, I think that’s, that’s a really nice thing to do. And I think there are a lot of people that can’t necessarily afford to do that on their own.

Joe:
So you know, what’s cool too is, is I heard of a facility. closer on the West Coast, maybe it was California or some Arizona area out there. But what they did is they were saying, listen, they put a high value on change, right? Change is scary for people, right? Change is, you know, but what they did is they said, remember when you were like a kid or when you’re, just say right now, if you’ve got a new outfit, right? You like changing your outfit.

They said to your point, quarterly, you know, Q1 was gonna be the black apparel, Q2 was gonna be the blue apparel. Q3 is gonna be the green. So whatever was in their brand colors, like, you know, and that’s what they did. And they did it and they planned ahead. And then any other staff that was anniversary the next year, they would say, how is, you know, we’re getting ready to go into January. January, we start black, right? So how is your black, you know, oh, it’s a little tattered. Okay, let’s get that new black one. Or when new members joined the team, then they started at whatever color. And then the whole team was the same color, but it changed and it was just something other than just a mundane Groundhog Day, come in groom six seven eight dogs go home, wash rinse and repeat tomorrow.

Elli:
And it’s fun that way too you can throw a little bit of color in there and yeah that’s a lot of fun I like that idea for sure. Yeah and I think something like that would be pretty simple to do as well

Joe”
You know one of the things that I throw on is be careful what you create because you have to manage it Right. So you notice in that that’s probably as far as I would go. That’s why the pictures for the example of this is what we want to look like. Right. So you could just point at things and say, hey, no, yes.

Right. So this is how I want you to look. Question for you, though. Let’s talk about somebody like just starting their career in pet grooming.

Elli:
Yeah.

Joe:
We’re talking like people may be going through grooming school or they’re being apprenticed or mentored by somebody or they’re a baby groomer out in the field.

What advice from your history and now with Retro and Smoochy Pooch, what advice do you have for that new person that yearling may be regarding their professional appearance?

Elli:
I think I probably have quite a bit. I hate the term baby groomer because they’re not babies. They’re adults.

Joe:
Thank you. I love that you corrected. No, no, no. I appreciate that because they are adults regardless of sometimes the way that they behave, but they are adults.

Elli:
Absolutely. But the professional groomers have been grooming 20 plus years can behave that way too.

Joe:
Absolutely. We’re going to do a whole other. We’re going to do a whole other podcast, a whole other Hey Joe episode on that. All right.

Elli:
Sounds good. So. One thing, I was raised maybe a little bit differently. I was raised in a military family. I was raised no matter where you’re going, you’re gonna look presentable, period. Presentable, professional, whatever you wanna call it, people perceive you how you present yourself.

So as a newer groomer, as someone just starting out, I think it’s even more critical to look as nice as you can because you are going to have a… commanding presence that way. You automatically walk into the room, one you typically feel more confident. If you’re dressed nicely, whether I’m again, I’m not saying a whole face of makeup, I’m not saying curl your hair, I’m not saying go crazy, but if you’re dressed nicely, you feel more confident in yourself. If you’re rolling out of bed and you’re wearing sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, you’re gonna be like, “hey guys, what’s up?” You know, like you’re gonna give that. kind of presence to your customers.

So as a new groomer, as an apprentice, whatever it is, if you’re in training especially, it’s very hard to speak with the kind of confidence you have to speak with to let those pet parents know you’re going to be caring for their pet and doing everything you can to keep them safe and happy and comfortable, because that’s the primary goal before anything else.

So it’s part of that commanding presence. And if you’re not a confident person and you’re not there in your skill level yet, the more confidence you can give yourself by looking as nice as you can, yes, we’re bathing dogs, yes, we’re getting wet, we’re doing all that, but we can still brush our hair. We can still look nice. That’s gonna make you feel confident and you’re gonna stand just a little bit taller. And people respond a little bit differently to that than they do someone who just rolled out of bed.

Joe:
You know, I think that’s a great point. And I think it commands a couple of things. One, and you made a really, and I want to go back to a point you made. It was, I don’t want to say it was subtle, but it was in there, but I really want to shine a spotlight on it, which is: Sometimes you’re not confident. Sometimes your skills aren’t where you would, you know, where they’re going to be, but you’re just not there yet.

I want you to put on good clothes and you present yourself in a certain way. You’re giving yourself the best chance to be seen as the expert to the pet parent. And one of the things that I’ve said a lot, which is you can be a groomer out there with average grooming skills. I mean, really 90%, maybe even hot, maybe even a higher than 90% of our customers are coming to our grooming salons. You know what they want? They want a squeaky clean, tangle free, really average, above average groom.

Elli:
Yep.

Joe:
They want above average treatment of their pet and they want above average treatment of them.

Elli:
Yes, absolutely.

Joe:
And I ask groomers, you know, again, now this industry has taken me all around the world. I’ve been in Asia, I’ve been in Europe. I’ve been in South America for all about the pet industry. And no matter where I go, I would ask groomers, I said, why did you want to start grooming? I said, because I like pets more than I like people.

Elli:
1000%. That’s always the phrase.

Joe:
And it always just like, I don’t know why, but after so long, almost four decades, I still get a little gobsmacked by it because I think that may be true. That may be true, but we still have a role to play. with those pet parents. One, because really the pet doesn’t have its own credit card. Not that I’ve, you know, I’ve seen pets with their own wills and, you know, life insurance and some benefits being beneficiaries to people’s life insurance.

I’ve seen some crazy things, but we have to, we have to respect people enough to know they’re the ones paying the light bill.

Elli:
Exactly. Right.

Joe:
So for those, for those new groomers for those less experienced groomers, the people that are new to our industry, they’re just simply, quite honestly, you’re going to make more money. I don’t know, you’re going to make more money. The better you dress, the better you present yourself. Okay, get yourself to average pet grooming skills. You’re going to make more money than somebody that’s a phenomenal dog groomer who may not present themselves really well.

Elli:
I see that every day in my company. I do. I have groomers who are phenomenal groomers, like will blow your mind away. And then I have groomers who are average pet groomers. But honestly, those average pet groomers. They have amazing soft skills. They have amazing customer service. Their customers will never leave them. And that’s what I want. I would take somebody with average grooming skills any day of the week if they could talk to customers.

And something you said that I kind of wanna touch on really quick is you said, I like dogs more than people or I like pets more than people. What’s funny to me is I said that, right? Like I was that person and I’ve, you know, been full circle in my career. Well, not full circle, I still got a lot to go. But I didn’t realize until actually this past weekend, we had Pina here teaching our team. She came in to do a continuing education event. And she asked me, do you miss grooming? Because I don’t groom full-time anymore. And I said, honestly, I do sometimes I miss it, but I miss my clients more.

And like, as I said that I was like, I really do.

Joe:
Like when did you turn that corner? Right?

Elli:
Yeah, I know. So like these clients become part of your family. You talk to them about their kids graduating high school or their kids having grand babies and like all of these things, these people become. your family and while their dogs are part of your family too, they come and go, unfortunately, we wish they would never go and leave us, but they do. And they bring the next one to you. And it’s just this constant relationship with our customers. While we have amazing relationships with the dogs, you have to have that customer relationship. And it’s ours.

Joe:
And again, when people don’t know you. Yep. your very best chance is looking the part.

Elli:
It is, absolutely. Absolutely.

Joe:
Otherwise, I mean, you’re starting off behind at that point.

Elli:
Absolutely.

Joe:
Because think about how much weight then is on, or dependency is on your skills. Your customer hasn’t even, they’re trusting you to groom the dog for the first time. You’re putting ships all in on skills because your appearance, They’re, they, everybody out there listening, right? I’m not a dog groomer. We know that, right? So Elli’s got one up on me, right? But I will tell you, I’m a consumer. And I will tell you the hard facts and you all are, you all are like this as well.

When you walk into some place, you can doubt a professional or whoever’s working there before they even speak a word to you. You can have doubt. You can have questions. And you know what? And if push came to shove, It might actually influence your satisfaction. You might’ve actually been able to offer grace and understanding to somebody that was trying really hard, especially in their appearance, right? Whereas you might be a little more frosty to somebody who didn’t even take time to put themselves together, let alone may or may not have done a really great job grooming the dog. right? Or in anywhere where you spend, anywhere you spend your money.

So when you focus on these things, and Elli, you’re probably this way, when you focus on these things, since you run an apparel company, you probably are looking with very critical eyes every where you go. Even outside of the pet industry, but you’re probably looking at everybody going, oh gosh, if I could, if I could, if I could dress them.

Elli:
Yeah, absolutely. And especially at trade shows. Oh, I can’t tell you. Because there are companies who try to, and I’m not putting anybody down, I think there’s space for everybody, but there are companies who just try to like throw colors on things to get people to, you know, oh, this is the newest cool thing. And that’s not what I think comes across as professional, not even a little bit.

Joe:
Right. And you focus on new technologies. You talked about stretching material and things. What are the new technologies? I mean, I guess. I guess there is technology in apparel. So teach me and teach our audience that’s listening. What new technologies or materials are you working into your products?

Elli:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. And usually we launch several things at Hershey. That’s our big show. So we launched 21 new styles last year at Hershey, I believe. This year we have, I think, 17 slated. So yeah, we have a lot coming.

One of the biggest things that we’ve done recently is that stretchy, waterproof, hair-resistant material. It looks like, if I had one, I would show it to you, but it’s kind of, it looks like you’re going out to play tennis. It’s super cute, but it’s not necessarily like your zipped up smock type of thing. Another one is a double-ended zipper. So there’s a zipper up here and then one down by your belly button. So that kind of helped our fit problems a little bit. So, you know, our ladies with our big hips and big booties, you know, they’re struggling a little bit. So we put that double zipper and that really helped. We have a couple other things coming in Hershey, maybe some magnet type stuff, some really light.

Joe:
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Not.

Elli:
Right. We did change our material. I’m not going to lie, if you look at it very quickly, it looks cheaper because it’s thinner, but it is so nice. It is lightweight and you can actually move in it. Our old material was amazing. I actually, I love it still, but it’s heavy. So we had a lot of people being like, it’s really heavy. It’s really hot. It wasn’t breathable. So we did change our material and it’s lighter and it holds up really well.

And so it’s just kind of a constant ever evolving door type of thing.

Joe:
I bet it is. And I mean, you got to get excited about it too, bringing change, right? I mean, you don’t want to say, you don’t want to be selling and putting the same thing out and into the grooming industry. Because again, you’re, from what I gather and getting to know you, through this process of working on this podcast is: You want to push professionalism. You want to, what is professional today may not be tomorrow, right? I mean, paw prints might’ve been professional in the 80s.

Elli:
Yeah, absolutely.

Joe:
But paw prints might not be professional in 2024, right? So for you, you’ve got to get excited about that, but you’re constantly trying to promote professionalism in the grooming industry. What do you… What do you feel like you and your team and Retro does to promote that professionalism? We touched on it earlier, but let’s sort of book in this and come back to promoting the professionalism.

Elli:
Yeah, again, I think professionalism is subjective. I think that word is a very subjective word. It means something a little bit differently to everyone. So it just kind of depends on what it means to you. But to me, it means you’re going to be a clean cut. You’re not gonna have rips, tears. You’re not gonna have huge clumps of hair all over you. You’re gonna take a shower, brush your hair.

If you’re a man and you have facial hair, like, you know, groom it. If you have un-groomed going on here, why are they gonna trust you to groom their dog? It all is full circle. And what you wear is the cornerstone of that. What you present yourself as is the cornerstone of that professionalism.

So while it can be subjective, it still at the end of the day means you’re looking presentable. And while that may mean something different to everyone, you know, to me, I don’t care what color you’re wearing. I don’t care what color your hair is. I care if you’re clean. I care if you’re looking nice.

Joe:
Yep. Let me, and we’ll start wrapping it up. Cause I, and again, thank you for being a guest and on the Hey Joe Podcast. And again, for all of our listeners out there, you’re going to be able to find all of Retro’s information on the ParagonPetSchool.com website under the podcast so you’ll be able to find it there. So Elli’s gonna make all of that available to us. She’s even got some resources that she’s making available to us out there so that you can go out and pull those down as well.

I want to leave you with one thing real quick Elli. I want to ask your opinion because and I think I know where you’d go with this but you know one thing that I think always surprises me is professional groomers not having a backup outfit.

Elli:
Yes.

Joe:
I mean, and I look at it, I think about that. I think about the 60
groomers that I had working for me. And on average, I can’t remember seeing where maybe they kept it. And then they might have kept it in their car.

Elli:
But I think as a groomer, and what I used to do was I kind of get shoved in a drawer. I’m not going to lie. I would love to hear comments if you guys show your smocks in your drawers. It might not be ideal, but if you are in a pinch, it works, you know?

I probably had, when I was grooming full-time, at least three smocks in my car, one in my drawer. I think a lot of salons now, I’ve seen that I’ve toured, have full hooks on their walls for their groomers to hang their stuff. And I do see several with a lot of backup attire, because yeah, you never know what’s gonna be all over you and it can be gross.

And you don’t want your customers to smell that and you don’t want to smell it all day. That’s disgusting. And that one day you clean out your car and take everything out is going to be the one day that you get pooped on or anal gland.

Joe:
You make a good point because I think employers, yeah, or when you pick them up, they leave you that little turd in the pocket, right?

Elli:
Oh no, no. All of our pockets are zipped. You’re not going to get the turd in the pocket.

Joe:
I’m glad I pointed that out because I’ve seen that happen plenty of times.

Elli:
Yeah, I had that happen. That’s why they’re all zipped.

Joe:
You know, as I think about it, you know, I just want to encourage our employers out there because so many people that listen to our podcast are employers to put their students through Paragon, right? They hire, it allows Paragon allows people, employers to hire for attitude and train for the job, consistency through the program, all of that.

So we get to speak to a lot of employers.

Elli:
Yeah.

Joe:
One of the things I always just want to make sure that I’m impressing upon our employers is make it easy for your staff to do what you want them to do.

Joe:
Exactly.

Elli:
If you want them to look good, remove the financial barriers, support them and being able to purchase, right? Being able to purchase the apparel that you want them to wear so that they look not only good for themselves, but for their personal brand, but for your brand as the employer.

But also just like this, right? This backup, like you said, you’ve went into facilities now and you see maybe like a little coat rack or something where a closet where they have their backup apparel, sort of the Mr. Rogers kind of in a probably way just blew away probably half of the generations that are listening to this, right? Go back and watch Mr. Rogers, the beginning, right? He changes from his outside outfit to his inside outfit and then back and vice versa whenever he leaves.

But my point is this. for my employers out there, for all of our listeners out there, employers, Elli, would you agree? We’ve got to make it, we’ve got to remove financial barriers for our staff in order to get them to look and perform. That way we need them to look and perform.

Elli:
Absolutely, yeah, 1000%.

Joe:
So Elli, let’s wrap it up, thank you again. So for anybody out there who is, if you’re driving, don’t, I’ve said this before, don’t try to, write down what Elli’s about to say, just go to ParagonPetSchool.com and look under the podcast link and you’ll see all of her information.

But for the people that are watching this right now that wanna go right to their computer and type in your URL, find out what it is that you do and your products are, how do people find you?

Elli:
RetroStylistWear.com – super easy. I’m super easy to find on Instagram. @elli.mae.clip.it is my handle and or you can just type in Elli Bultemeier.

And I always respond to messages. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Joe:
Great. Elli, thank you so much. I would love to have you back to continue this conversation on enhancing the professionalism of this profession. So, but I’m going to give you a sincere thank you from our entire audience. So thank you for doing what you do. We can’t wait to see the cool stuff at Groom Expo in the fall and hear more about it.

So thank you again for being part of the podcast.

Elli:
Yeah. Thanks again for having me!