Kristian Maris is the co-owner of Just Barking in Kensal Rise, London. He is chairperson of the newly-formed British Isles Grooming Association (BIGA), a speaker at pet industry events, an Amazon UK No. 1 best-selling author in dog care, and creator of The Dog Grooming Business Course: How to Set Up and Run Your Own Dog Grooming Business. You can watch his series of video on this very subject, for free.
Just like the increased demand for good quality dog food, more and more pet owners regard regular grooming as beneficial to their dog’s health and welfare.
“Dog grooming is, essentially, recession-proof,” Maris said, who opened his business in London in 2009, during the severe global economic downturn.
“So many people are looking for opportunities to work for themselves” Maris adds. “But they want to do something meaningful, at a community level. If they have a passion for dogs – and they’re not afraid of hard work – dog grooming could be an ideal career or business.”
But before you start, Maris recommends looking at these big questions:
- Am I willing to undergo professional training?
- Can I be patient with dogs AND their owners?
- Do I have the stamina for tough physical work?
- Am I comfortable with Risk: business risk, risk of injury (to me or a dog I am treating), the risks of having dogs in my care?
- Am I driven by a higher purpose? Dog grooming is immensely rewarding, but it is not a path to fame and fortune. It is a Lifestyle Business (but, yes, it’s still up to you what level of success you want to achieve within the industry and there are plenty of examples of groomers who have done extremely well in this profession)
In the first of his free video series, Maris identifies the three critical factors you’ll need to know before you even think about running a dog grooming business. You don’t need to be a dog groomer to run the business, but you need to appreciate what dog grooming involves.
In the second video he identifies the five steps you’ll need to take to get started. In following videos he lists the seven critical marketing strategies for your business and reveals the number one most powerful marketing strategy for a dog grooming business.
“In my experience, businesses fail because they don’t properly plan,” Maris told iHeartDogs.com “Which is why I wrote my book and created this series of free videos. According to Forbes Magazine, 8 out of 10 new business fail within 18 months.” (Fact source: Eric T. Wagner, “Five Reasons 8 out of 10 Businesses Fail” Forbes.com 12 Sep 2013)
For example, he says many new business owners are terrible at keep track of the budget, which can easily cause a business to buckle.
“Planning means working out your revenue versus your expenses and making sure you’ve actually got a profit,” he explained. “Too many people over-estimate their revenue and under-estimate their expenses. They might have a pot of money to start with, but they burn through it faster than they could imagine because they lose control of their spending”
The following video is a teaser to give you more of an idea about his series, which gives you the reality of dog grooming before you invest your time and money:
Rather than just telling you how well everyone else does without telling you how they did it, Maris’s series gets into the “nitty gritty” of what it takes to make a dog grooming business successful.
This is good news for anybody who has ever dreamt of being their own boss and running their own dog grooming business.
The free video series is available here. And, if you are attending Master Groom, the international dog grooming competition being held on April 23-24 at Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry, England, he will be speaking at the event.
