This podcast episode elucidates the imperative of adopting a proactive approach in the management of one's pet grooming enterprise. I expound upon the concept of operating from the "front foot", which entails taking deliberate actions to assert control over one's business operations rather than passively allowing circumstances to dictate outcomes. This episode also delves into the significance of efficient task management, particularly concerning administrative duties that can often overwhelm business owners. By systematising and outsourcing these tasks, we can liberate ourselves to focus on our core competencies and enhance overall business performance. Ultimately, we aim to inspire pet grooming professionals to embrace a mindset of empowerment and strategic foresight in their endeavours.

Takeaways:

• Bill emphasises the importance of proactively managing your pet grooming business to ensure success.
• Understanding the various administrative tasks involved can help streamline operations and reduce stress.
• Systemising tasks and automating processes can greatly enhance efficiency within your grooming business.
• It is crucial to evaluate and adjust your pricing strategy to reflect the value of your services.
• Engaging in regular financial reviews allows for better decision-making and control over your business's performance.
• Outsourcing certain tasks can free up valuable time, allowing you to focus on pet grooming and client satisfaction.

As always, I'd like to thank the podcast sponsor, Lopay, the low-cost payment platform that helps you keep more of the money you earn! You can find out more and sign up for Lopay here: https://merchant.lopay.app/ref/PETPASSION2500, where listeners of this podcast get £2500 of fee-free transactions!

And of course, if you feel like you could benefit from Bill's business programs for the Pet Grooming industry, visit our website: https://petpassiontoprofit.com/

Welcome to the Pet Grooming Business Podcast with me, Bill Betts, where we give practical business advice to help you grow your pet grooming business.

This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay, the low rate payment app that gives you more.

So without further ado, let's get going.

Hi there and welcome, everyone.

Welcome back to this episode of this podcast.

Podcast is nice to be back and chatting to you.

This one is going to be about running your business on the front foot, getting ahead of the game, being in the driver's seat.

I'm trying to think of any other sort of analogies that I could give you for this, but it's about, it's about running your business, being in control of your business, working on your business and, and not allowing things to happen to you, if that makes sense.

So it's being in control.

But before I do that, before we get into that, I just wanted to say a really, really, really big thank you to all of those that nominated this podcast, Dog Grooming Business Help and Support podcast, for the Liz Paul Podcast of the Year.

Maybe you nominated me, I don't know, but let's just say you nominated the podcast and I'm just really thankful for that because it shows that you're enj.

Doing what I'm doing.

It helps.

It motivates me to get behind the microphone and create space in my diary and, and come and do these podcasts.

I go out there looking for guests and so asking if they'd come and join us on this podcast as well.

So I'm really, really tells me that you're enjoying it and I'm really, really pleased for that.

So thank you.

There's a lot of reallys in there, isn't there?

So, so thank you so much.

Nominations have taken place.

I think it's down to a public vote.

So you've done the, you've done the first part of the hard work is nominating me.

Next part is to go out and, and vote for it.

But, you know, congratulations to all the nominees.

Congratulations to all of you that are out there running your business day in, day out.

You know, you don't need to get a mention to be special you.

If you're a business owner, you're getting out of bed every day, opening your shop doors, talking to your clients, looking after the pets.

Then, you know, you're all winners in my eyes because business is tough, it's hard work.

And, and I'm sure many of you are probably even shaking your heads to that.

So hats off to all of you who are running a Business.

And for those that want to run a business, you know, yes, you, you may be put off by what you see on the, on the socials and in the Facebook groups, but trust me, it is also extremely rewarding.

And if you're listening to this on your lunch break and maybe you've got an office job and you're, you're staring out the window like I used to thinking, I really want to be out there.

I just don't want to be in this, stuck in this office anymore.

I don't want to be like fighting other people for to take time off during the school holidays and stuff.

I want a bit more flexible and freedom then, you know, I'm a true, true convert to business.

Maybe go back and listen to some of the previous episodes because you'll see that when I was growing up, I was a true, true like company man.

I was like, I'm not.

I wanted security.

I didn't want to go into business.

I wanted a pension.

I wanted to pay that land in my bank every, every 25 days.

You know, I didn't want the responsibility of generating sales and, and stuff like that.

What, I don't know what has happened to me, but last five years has completely converted me into like the business.

Business can really give you freedom.

So don't be obviously be mindful of what you see and hear on the Facebook groups, but don't let from running your own race.

And obviously there's people like myself who are here to support you and to help you in your business journey.

So to make sure you, if you want to do it, make sure you can do it, you will do it.

So yeah, a massive thank you for nominating me.

That's the, that's part one.

The next part is to go out and vote.

So that would be great.

And then I'll obviously book my tickets for the grooming conference and I think it's in October.

I have to speak to Colin and see whether I get a stand or whether I just come along for the evening to see if I've won as usual.

You know, if you're enjoying this and obviously you've nominated me for a podcast of the year, but if you are enjoying these podcasts, then please go and leave us a little review.

I love reading the reviews.

I love watch looking at your comments.

I love receiving the DMS in my, in my messenger box saying, you know, I really listen to this podcast.

It's been really inspiring.

It's really helped me.

Or I've got a question about this.

It's Quite a busy inbox at times.

So if I don't get back to you sometimes because messages have been pushed down the, down the list and I just don't see them.

So I do apologize, but I do scan my, my inbox as best as I can, when I can.

So let's talk about getting you on the front foot, putting you in the driver's seat.

You know, being taking charge of your business.

Business is really, it can be really overwhelming.

And I think, you know, as, as we, we started our business, our dog grooming business, 22 years ago.

And yeah, we had websites then.

We didn't have red website, maybe not to start with, but we had the yellow pages, many of you might remember those.

Or a directory.

That's why we named ourselves A to Z Animal Care so we could be in the front.

We had local magazines, we had adverts in the local notice board, stuff like that.

So, you know, there just wasn't as much work to do.

We had support and help as well with family members.

We grew the business quite big, quite quickly.

To be fair.

We've never been without a receptionist or sort of front of house and we always felt that was a very important sort of USP to our business to have someone looking after the customers at the front of house.

Some of you might sort of say, well that's a bit of a waste of money.

But yeah, I can see the view.

But actually I think it's a great investment and I think it does bring value to your business and they can, they can do a lot in your business as well.

But obviously it's not for everyone.

We, we opened up in a, in a salon very quickly which meant we had a higher, you know, we had bills to pay rent and stuff.

So we took on, and we were quite busy so we took on staff really quickly as well.

So we have receptionists, groomers, apprentices and stuff like that.

So that was our model.

But you know, as the years have gone part, as the years have gone on, yes, technology has improved, but I think also the number of tasks that we have to do or the number of stuff that we have to do has kind of increased as well.

And you know, maybe it's a sign of successful business if you're like knee deep in, in admin because it means your business.

But, but again, like everything that happens in life, in business and stuff, no one teaches us, no one really teaches us, do they?

We don't go to business school.

You don't get taught at school how to run a business, how to do admin, how to reply to emails and automate and stuff like that.

We have to teach ourselves.

And many of you might just be thinking, yeah, I just don't have time for this stuff.

And then the admin gets on top of us.

We get to the point where we are overwhelmed with it.

We start to ignore things like our accounts.

You know, business is so important, money is so important in business.

We can't ignore stuff like that.

And we bury our head in the sands and it all gets a bit hectic and stressful.

So, you know, and you're no different to, to the people I work with.

My clients report the same.

You know, it can be very overwhelming at times, very busy.

So the other night we did a, we did a coaching call with my, with my clients who are on the business program and I designed a form to look at and I'm very aware that everyone is different, everyone learns different, everyone has different styles.

So I try and introduce stuff that try and help them just to see if they, if it helps them.

And, and this form they could either print off or they can download and fill in the computer.

Perhaps you might say, well, it's giving them more admin to do, but hopefully it's like a one time sort of form that you can kind of keep on top of.

So I wanted to break down, because people sort of stress about admin and become overwhelmed by admin, but I wanted to sort of break down the term admin and start to understand or how, or enable my clients and yourselves to have an understanding of what is admin.

So if we can start to understand what admin is, because admin is a very general term, isn't it?

Then we can start systemizing it.

And I don't mean like invest in a computer system to generate the admin, but there are obviously things that you can use but systemize it in the fact that, let's take an example.

So for us we've got four or five employees.

So an admin task that comes with that is payroll.

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So we've, so there, we've identified the task.

So payroll is the task.

So when, what do we have to do with that?

Well, we have to identify that that's a monthly task.

So we do payroll once a month.

So we identify as a monthly task.

Now I spoke to our payroll provider, the accountant and asked them when do you need to have the information if our Payday is the 20th for directors and the 28th for staff, when what is the cutoff dates for you to have the information that you need.

And so I know the dates that I need to get any information over to them and I put those into my electronic diary.

So by putting it into my electronic diary it gets it out of my head.

So although yes, I've got admin to do, I've got tasks that I have to do and they are non negotiable, they are a must.

You, I must do payroll, otherwise my mortgage won't get paid and my staff mortgages won't get paid.

So I must do payroll.

So it's a must task.

I've outsourced most of it to an accountant, which is good because we always like to outsource as and when we can.

But I've also put an electronic entry in the diary so that it's out of my head and I can just deal with it as and when it comes to that diary entry.

And then when the payroll comes in, obviously the next task is to pay the wages when the payroll comes in there.

And then I will get onto the banking app.

So we use Starling and I will.

Although the, the pay might come in for the staff around the 25th, as in the, the pay slips and stuff might come in on the 25th, I don't wait until the 28th to pay them.

The pay comes into the email.

I see the email open up.

Starling, allocate the various payments to the various people and schedule them.

So again I'm getting that task done, I'm scheduling it electronically and I'm getting it out of my head.

It's done.

So then all I need to worry about is on the 28th and when the staff need paying, I just need to check the bank account on the 27th, move the money from my salary savings pot into the main account so it gets paid.

And I'm sure there's other banking systems out there where you can do it differently.

So what I've done there, hopefully you've followed that.

What I've done there is actually I've, I've identified, I've identified the task, I've systemized.

So I've put electronic notes in my diary.

When that task needs doing, I've kind of automated it a little bit and outsourced it to the payroll person.

And then again when it comes to paying the, the salaries, I've automated it again using Starling bank and scheduling the payment.

So I think we have 101 tasks to do admin tasks within our business for what we need to do is that we need to recognize what is an admin task, understand when well and understand whether it is a would like to do, should be doing, must do task, identify whether we can outsource that to anyone else.

Do we need to be doing that task and yes, other people can do those tasks as well, if not better than you.

And then seeing if there is a system in place to automate it or something that might help you.

And then is there a way to get that task out of your head so you don't have such a busy brain thinking about everything you need to do when you know it's the task might not be doing until the end of the month, end of the year, end of the quarter.

So I hope that's helpful.

And then I think also if I went one step further with payroll, if I actually had a booked in a conversation with our payroll person, I reckon I could probably hand over 95% of payroll to them and then I could even.

I'm even sort of looking at outsourcing it to our receptionist to do the, the, the hours to send to payroll.

So we've got most of it automated.

The directors pay.

Our, our accountant payroll provider does that automatically.

He just assumes that we take the same amount of money every month, which we do.

So the directors payer don't even send them any information.

They pay.

The pay slips just come in already done.

So you know, again, when we look at these tasks that we have to do in our business, can we automate or can we get rid of, can we outsource?

I think that's a really important thing to do because you're, you know, yes, you're business owners but your, your, your main skill is pet grooming.

And I sometimes feel like you get a bit distracted and, and taken away because of admin roles or we bury our head in the sand in the ad with the admin task, especially when it comes around to and everything just goes really wrong and it gets all messy and horrible.

So what I did was I've designed a form and it basically looks at these tasks and I've broken them into daily, weekly, bi month, bi weekly.

So every other week, monthly, quarterly, six monthly and yearly.

And I sat down with my clients and I got some really good insights, actually some really interesting insights from them.

I sat down with our clients one evening and we looked at this and asked them to throw some tasks at me that they have to do.

Within their business.

And so we wrote down sort of the daily tasks and we looked at what those were and we looked at, you know, is there a better way of doing them?

Can we outsource them?

Can we automate them?

Can we systemize them?

So we kind of looked at that and then we looked at also, obviously, daily, weekly, bi weekly, monthly tasks.

But one member really sort of stood out for me and, and she's been with us for quite some time now.

I say that probably a year and a bit.

She does listen to the podcast.

So I went, I won't embarrass her, but I will be asking her to come onto the podcast.

And the insights that I got from this member really sort of inspired me because she'd seen the difference.

Now it's really weird, like when you took, when you, when, when I asked pet groomers, how much do you want to earn from your business?

Many people often say, I don't know.

But if I said to pet groomers, like, if you're going to, indeed, and you're applying for a job, what's the first thing that you'd look at?

And everyone sort of says, oh, salary.

Obviously you look for salary.

So why aren't we looking at that in our own business?

That's, that's probably a podcast for another day.

But this particular pet groomer used to work in a corporate company and she was a manager supervisor, and she had to look after the numbers.

She was looking at sales, she was looking at, you know, stock and everything like that.

And I think it kind of like a bit of a light bulb moment with her over the last few months where she had all this training and skills as a manager within this, within this corporate company, but she hadn't actually brought this over to her own business.

And that's a really funny thing because quite often this happens a lot where we have the skills and knowledge, but we just don't allocate it to our business.

So she talked us through her monthly routine of, you know, writing down, like, the figures, looking at the bookings in the next month, looking at how much money is on the, on the diary over next month, identifying gaps in her diary, identifying places where she could potentially make some more income in upsells and stuff like that.

And I said to the, I said to her, you know what, you know, you know, this is, this is business on the front foot.

This is getting ahead of the game.

We are no longer waiting for business to happen to us.

She is definitely in control of that business and she knows that at the end of each month, she will sit down and look at the figures and understand her income, understand why the income's gone up, understand why the income's been the same.

Look at how much she spent on, you know, expenditure and products and stuff like that.

Understand how many teeth clean she's done that month.

Look at the diary to see whether there's any sort of seasonal spas coming up.

Is it Easter?

Is it Halloween, Is it Christmas and stuff.

But this is business on the front foot.

This is a proactive approach to, to running your business.

And hopefully we'll get her on the podcast and she can tell you how much her mindset has changed because now she is in control of that business.

That business is not controlling her anymore.

And it was so lovely to hear and it was really insightful and I hope, I think other members sort of like took a lot from that, from that session and understanding how she kind of like gets onto the front foot, allocates some time to do these analysis and then making sure that her business is performing the way that she is, that she wants it to.

So have a think about that.

There's quite a lot in this episode to digest, so maybe you might, might want to just go back and review it, maybe with a pen and paper, make some notes about diary management, as in task management.

There may be, like, there'll be some of you going, you know, Bill, I really love what you've said, but I really don't have the time to allocate an hour or two in my diary.

Customers are phoning me left, right, and center.

I'm working my days off.

I'm, you know, I'm going above and beyond for my customers.

And this is where I really, really do feel like a stuck record.

And I do apologize.

Maybe I don't apologize, but I am a stuck record when it comes to this.

Now, many of my clients are able to do this because they are charging more for their time.

Okay?

Time is so important, and you're trading your time for money.

So when you're pushing back to me saying, bill, you know, I don't have time to pick up the phone, speak to someone.

I don't have time to do these tasks, okay?

I'm bending over backwards.

I'm working my days off.

It's because you're not charging enough, okay?

It might be that you're, you're saying yes to all your bookings because you're like, oh, I want the money.

I understand that, but you're not potentially, you're not tracking the money.

You're not understanding the money.

You know, if we can charge more for our time and we can then remove a dog or two from our diary a day, that can be admin day, which means we get our weekends back.

You know, I am a stock record when it comes to this, so it's another thing to have a look at and maybe go and listen to the episode that I did the other week about indications that your prices may be too low.

But on that note, on that start record, put your prices up.

I'll.

I'll bid you goodbye.

Thank you once again for nominating me for Podcast of the Year or nominating this podcast for Podcast of the Year.

I hope you start to enjoy some nice warm weather if you're in the uk.

If you're elsewhere, I don't know what it's like, but make sure you leave a review.

Love to hear your comments and I'll see you on the next episode.

Take care everyone.

I hope you have enjoyed this podcast.

Please make sure you give us a like or a review to help people find it.

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