Become A Pet Groomer

Becoming a pet groomer can be an incredibly rewarding career. Not only do you get to work with animals every day, but you also have the opportunity to improve their health and wellbeing through grooming. As a pet groomer, you will help keep pets clean, comfortable, and looking their best. Additionally, you'll have the chance to build lasting relationships with both the pets and their owners, making a positive impact on their lives. If you have a passion for animals and enjoy working with your hands, becoming a pet groomer could be a fulfilling and enjoyable career path.

Reasons to Be a Pet Groomer

There are several reasons why someone might choose to become a pet groomer. Here are a few:

1. Love for animals: Many pet groomers are passionate about animals and enjoy working with them. Being a pet groomer allows you to work with a variety of animals, develop a bond with them, and help them look and feel their best.

2. Flexibility: Pet grooming can be a flexible career, as many groomers work flexible hours or make their own schedules. This can be a great option for individuals who need to balance work with other responsibilities.

3. Opportunities for entrepreneurship: Pet grooming businesses can be run from home or in a mobile unit, allowing for low start-up costs and the ability to be your own boss.

4. Job stability: People will always need their pets groomed, so pet grooming can be a stable and secure career option.

5. Variety: Pet grooming can be a varied career, with different breeds, temperaments, and grooming needs presenting new challenges and opportunities for learning.

Communal Impact

Doing well at your job has significant impacts on your community. When you excel in your work, you become a positive role model and inspire others to work passionately as well. Productive individuals always have a better career, earn more income, and contribute to the local economy. Your job could also provide goods or services that positively change people's lives, such as access to medical care, education, or technological advancements. Success in your career could translate to opportunities to give back to your community through charitable donations or volunteering.

Furthermore, by performing well in your job, you also help your company become successful and grow. As the company grows, more job opportunities are created, not just for you but also for others in your community. With more job opportunities, the community becomes less dependent on government support programs, and people are empowered to improve their situations independently. As local businesses thrive, they often reinvest in their communities through partnerships, grants, or donations to local nonprofits that address social and environmental issues. In summary, doing well at your job does not only benefit you but also has a ripple effect on the community you live and work in.

Are you Ready?

What to expect with your pursuit as a pet groomer. Becoming a groomer has challenges and sacrifices that need to be potentially considered to becoming a groomer.

You don't make money right away. You have to build a book of business. Even if you start at a shop that has an excellent reputation and you are handed a book of business you still need to keep that book of business.

Start up costs. You need tools and a place to work. All grooming tools can be acquired for under $2000 if you want to start at a shop that has already purchase a tub, table, client management software, and dryer for you. Start up costs can be as much as $120,000 to open a brand new mobile grooming van or your own shop. Most groomers will start in a shop and may eventually venture out to start their own shop.

While working as a new member of the industry expect and prepare yourself financially. You want to succeed, so give yourself plenty of time to learn. You may need to collect enough savings to live on while you learn. You may want a second job.

How Long?

In our experience the average person is able to perform grooming adequately at about 6 months. Understand that in order for this to be true you need a variety of dogs to work on and an opportunity to continue learning.

To be a solid groomer you can expect it to take about 12months depending on frequency and availability of grooms.

After about 12 months you should begin to settle in to your personal style and continue to refine your skills.

Pay

We find that many new groomers struggle with understanding pay. Sure, there's much information that can be found about "50%" commission but what does that really mean.

50% commission has become an industry standard for adequate compensation for a groomer you needs NO support. Too often new groomers feel entitled to 50% but cannot perform a groom on their own yet. Meaning they need assistance with check-in, grooming techniques, etc. Grooming businesses do not make money when you are not grooming. It is difficult/impossible for grooming businesses to pay groomers that are not performing service.

As a groomer you are responsible for your own pay. There are two ways to earn more money as a groomer. You can groomer more dogs or perform higher quality work.

How many dogs can you groom in a day and multiply that by .5 (50%), and that's what your pay is. You can only groom so fast and it is important to take that into consideration.

Should you be fortunate to find a shop that's willing to pay you an hourly base-pay be appreciative as it may be helpful assistance for getting you on your feet.

Don't be greedy. You must look at the days you did NOT do as many appointments as well as the days you did do many appointments. You can have a day that's excellent totally full with appointments and a day where you did almost nothing. You can't expect to receive the same level of pay on days you don't perform.

The average ticket price of a groom is $60.00-$75.00. A groomer should be performing appointments in 60-120 minutes (1 to 1.5hrs).

You will not succeed in performing a groom in 60 minutes unless your are keeping up with grooming. An average is 1.5-2.5hrs total groom time. If you average 2 hrs per groom you can physically do 4 dogs in an 8hr day. $75 X 4 = $300 / 50% = $150 a day.

A quality groomer can do up to 8 dogs in an 8hr day $75 x 8 = $600 / 50% = $300 a day.

We want you to be successful as a groomer and this is meant to help with expectations around pay.