Finding good groomers is one of the biggest challenges facing salon owners today.

In this episode, Bill is joined by entrepreneur and multi-salon owner David Charlton to talk about the recruitment crisis in the grooming industry – and a brand new platform designed to help solve it.

David shares his journey from working as a police officer to running four successful grooming salons, and the hiring challenges that pushed him to create Dog Groomer Jobs, a platform built specifically to connect grooming businesses with groomers looking for work.

In this conversation they discuss:

1. Why it’s so difficult for salons to find experienced groomers
2. The difference between hiring for skill and hiring for culture
3. The reality of running multiple grooming salons
4. Why fair pay is essential if the industry wants to attract better talent
5. How a dedicated job platform could make recruitment easier for both salons and groomers

The episode also touches on the wider issues facing the industry, including the growing gap between home-based groomers and traditional salons.

If you’re a salon owner struggling to recruit – or a groomer wondering what opportunities exist in the industry – this conversation will give you a fresh perspective on the future of grooming employment.

You can explore the platform here: doggroomerjobs.com

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

Listeners of this podcast get £2500 of fee-free transactions.

And if you’d like support building a stronger, more profitable grooming business, visit:

https://petpassiontoprofit.com/

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and share it with another groomer or salon owner who’s navigating the same recruitment challenges. 🐾

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.

Right.

Welcome everyone.

Welcome back to this next episode.

Today is going to be an exciting episode because we're going to be introducing something a little bit new to the grooming industry.

And I'm joined by David and David is an entrepreneur and pet groomer salon owner.

Welcome David, how are you?

I'm good, thank you.

How are you?

So we were introduced, weren't we, by a pet groomer and thankfully she, she put us in touch with each other because you wanted to discuss a, a new idea, a new product that you want to bring to the industry.

And we're going to get into that.

But first, first of all, perhaps you can just tell us a little bit of how you got into becoming a, a salon owner.

But not just one salon owner.

You own four salons, don't you?

Do own four.

Yeah, it was a complete accident.

And yeah, so my background really is, I spent several years working as a police officer when I came out of school.

Yeah, that's the bit we have in common.

And then after several years of doing that, I've decided that I became a miserable, unhappy person.

I want to do something different.

And so I went into the world of hospitality technology.

And so my background really for the last 20 years has been technology in restaurants and pubs and bars and I've run a few companies doing, you know, selling technology to restaurant groups.

But my husband is a dog breeder.

Sorry, I've got a cat that wants to join every meeting is a dog breeder.

And we, we bred dogs for about 20 years with Five Star Council licensed.

And about three years ago we, we were having, you know, barbecue in the garden and our dog groomer had been around to groom the dogs and she just said, look, I'm getting really busy now.

I've got, I've started my own salon, I just can't come to your house anymore and get through these dogs.

And we thought we're gonna have to come up with a solution, right?

We have to find somebody else maybe locally or whatever.

And so it was my mother in law actually that said I used to open a dog groomers.

You've got enough dogs to keep it busy.

And we looked at each other and laughed and went, well actually that's not a bad idea.

The only downside is I don't groom and Tim doesn't groom.

And so we'd have to find a groomer.

And so we started looking for a groomer.

We found a really very experienced lovely lady who worked for us to help us get the business off the ground.

But the main purpose was we'd have our dogs groom for free and any money that we made out of it on top would pay the groomer.

And, and we live in a little village in Staffordshire and we don't have a dog groomers.

And so it was a perfect solution and so that's what we did.

And within a very short period of time, six months, my local competitor in the next village wanted to sell and so I bought her salon.

And that's a really busy salon, very different, bigger population in that, that town.

And then after that we kind of worked out that we had a really good model and we got our pricing right and we've got our, you know, the way our salon looks and our promotions and etc, right.

So we opened another two last year, one in Stoke and one in Newcastle.

Underline.

So we've got four salons.

But the biggest problem we've always faced was finding good staff like, and not just good, I mean there's lots of good people and good groomers out there.

But every, every time you need a groomer or you're looking for, looking for a groomer, you have a different criteria.

So what I might be looking for in my salon was somebody with five years plus experience, used to managing and running a salon, can work on their own or manage people, deal with challenging customer situations, all those things.

And maybe I got, when I put a job post up on Indeed or wherever it was I'd get somebody who was just fresh out of college, didn't understand, grew into a certain time frame or the fact that you kind of need to do four, four, four or five dogs a day to make some money.

And so I just was getting the wrong type of groomers.

And it's frustrating because, you know, I'm not a groomer, you know, I'm not somebody who can step in and go, you know, I'll do five dogs today instead, don't worry about it, the business will survive.

I'm a business person who needs, you know, good people who can do the job.

And so the pressure and the need to find the right people was, is like really prevalent.

And so after many years of being fed up of not being able to find the right people, I've decided to launch this new platform called bell groomerjobs.com to help other salon owners find good staff, but more so help groomers find their jobs.

Jobs, yeah.

Good jobs, yeah.

Excellent.

So, you know, and you.

This is the epitome of an entrepreneur, isn't it?

You see a problem and you're like, right, how do I solve this?

How can I.

What can I do to make this better and how can I move this forward and then not only help myself, but also help the wider.

The wider community as well?

Yeah.

I mean, I work full time still in hospitality technology.

Tim's running his dogs.

We're busy people.

We know we haven't got huge amounts of time.

You know, we're having.

We run our grooming businesses on top and we employ about 15 people and we know that we need to be involved in that process as the owners.

We need to make sure that we've got the right staff, the right culture, the right people, the right fit.

And so we take a very active role in our people and our teams.

And so finding the right people and, and the.

And the right roles is imperative.

But.

But more so I. I thought to myself, if I got this problem, there's got to be other people out there that have got the same problem.

And when I look to advice to some of my friends who run salons and things like that, I say, well, where do you find staff?

And I think if you're in busy locations, busy cities, perhaps it's a bit easier.

If you've got lots of competition around you, perhaps it might be a bit easier, but, you know, if you're not in those places or you're in rural areas or, you know, you're in smaller towns, villages, it can be particularly difficult to get people to want to travel to that particular place.

And so I thought to myself, there's got to be other people with this problem.

And so started hunting around.

And I know there's some Facebook pages that you can post and that I've joined them.

And I can just see the problem is bigger than what I thought.

People are looking for a job in this area, anonymous post, because they don't want their existing employer to find out.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

There's people posting that I really need a groomer because my groomers walked out.

Can't discuss it on here, but I need somebody tomorrow because my diary is full.

And I looked at it and, and I said to my co founder, Connor, who I've started the business with, I said, this problem is much bigger than what we realize.

You know, what started off as a pain for me in my business is actually much Much bigger.

And it, and it goes way beyond the uk.

When I started to scratch the surface and go, actually, does America have this problem?

Does Europe have this problem?

Does Australia have it?

They've all got it.

The industry has not been provided the tools.

Yeah.

In the same way as other industries have.

If we, you know, if I always work in hospitality, I always thought that the hospitality sector was way behind the curve.

And we used to look at like retail and we used to look at airlines and see all the technology that they were using and thinking, wow, they're, they're, they're smashing it.

If only hospitality could do the same.

And now I look at dog grooming and I think, wow, dog grooming is even further behind hospitality.

So how can I take some of the experience I've got from working in hospitality technology and put it into the industry to help other people really solve the problems?

Because if I can solve it for me, I definitely can solve it for everybody else.

Yeah.

Do you think that there's, like, there's this a cultural, I don't know if cultural issue is the right word, but a lot of dog groomers, I suppose they go to college, but the, the drive is kind of like, go and sit up on your own, isn't it?

Whereas hospitality, you don't go to college and then go and set up a big pub or a restauran or unless you've got a lot of money behind you.

But it's quite easy for a pet groomer to come out of college and set up at home or.

So so is it the, the, the, the norm that people come out and set up on their own and that causes a shortage?

Or is there just a lot of people looking for jobs that we just don't know about?

I think first of all, I think that you're right.

People come out of a college qualified, they need to start somewhere.

They do one of two things.

They either try and find a job in a salon but struggle because perhaps they haven't got the right experience or whatever and the salon owner just can't deal with somebody so new to the industry and can't invest that time, or they think, well, sod it, I'm gonna set up from home and I'm gonna learn and groom.

And it was very interesting when I did the research into the size of the market and the opportunity.

Like in the UK we have around about 10,000 qualified groomers, but we have only about two and a half thousand high street salons to walk into.

So that tells you that seven and a half Thousand people are grooming from home or doing or mobile or something else.

Yeah.

And.

But if you look into the European market and look at Europe as a whole, there's about 70,000 grooming establishments, of which 50,000 are high street salons and 20,000 are home groomers.

So quite the opposite.

And so I think home grooming, I think, is a great place to start.

I think if, if it's a place that, if it makes you enough money to stay as a home groomer, then amazing, fantastic.

But I think if you want to really scale your business and want to grow into making over a hundred thousand pounds a year, then you need either help, so somebody to come into your home grooming environment and work with you to be able to increase the amount of dogs that you can do, or you step foot into, you know, opening a salon and.

But not everybody's got the confidence and I guess that's why people like you are around, you know, to help them take those steps.

And so, yeah, I think that's, that's a challenge.

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I think we've got to also admit that not everyone is a business owner, are they?

Not everyone, like you said, have the confidence or the mindset or the resilience to run a business, but they still want to work with pets and apply their skills.

So that's, you know, that's where jobs can help them.

Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate to be able to open, you know, four salons.

My ambition was to actually open 50 and compete with pets at home and see whether I can really show pets at home how you should do dog grooming and how amazing, like, important, like, the look of your salon is and all that kind of stuff.

And I really felt like I couldn't achieve that goal because I couldn't comfortably invest money if I didn't have a flow of groomers that, that wants to come in.

And I've, I'd like to think, I mean, because I don't groom, I like to think I've given, you know, the people that work for me a great opportunity to run their own businesses without having the burden of making sure the payroll's there at the end of the month and making sure the rent's paid and all the bills etc, and deal with the customer problems.

So, you know, everyone in my salons have got a salon manager that I just Leave to it.

And they just say, come to me if you've got a problem or you want some help.

You're right.

Not everybody is a business owner.

I was talking to one of my salon managers at the weekend and she said, you know, I would never ever want to go and run my own business but like being in this lovely position where I've got my own salon, I'm left alone.

I run the everything day to day but I don't have to worry about whether I'm getting paid at the end of the month.

It's a really nice position to be in.

And so I do think there is, there's going to be lots of people out there that want the security blanket of a, you know, bringing home a couple thousand pounds a month at the end, end of the month guaranteed, having done all of their paye, but want to, you know, work in the salon, want that experience of dealing with customers coming in, dealing with all the elements of the weather all year round, etc.

Etc.

And, and so yeah, I definitely think there's a jobs market out there.

Yeah, I just think we, we don't know about it.

I think there's definitely.

I, I know there is that.

There's definitely a very ambitious pet groomer.

Business owners out there as well that want to grow.

They have this, they have this like need to, to fulfill a dream like you, like you said, you know, fulfill your dream and, and build and scale their business and become, build a little mini empire and, and have that buzz around doing it because that's what we enjoy is that building.

But it's certainly something without.

When we had our salon, I remember turning around to my wife and saying, oh, we could, we could copy this and go to the next town, you know, five members of staff, copy the branding and just pick it up, move it.

And Emma was like, hell no, we are not doing that.

And the main, main issue was it was staff because, you know, we're not Tesco's, we're not McDonald's.

You know, I've never worked in Tesco's but I always assume that if someone was to leave tomorrow who runs a till or does the shelves and stuff like that, if they were to leave, they could probably be replaced and trained probably within a couple of weeks, I would have thought at a job like that.

I agree.

The biggest thing that I have learned in the last three years of running a dog grooming salons is that dog grooming is a very highly skilled job.

It takes a long time to perfect and it is not Given the credit it deserves.

You know, my, I, I think we had a long chat last time when we, when we first met, you know, and my staff are not paid minimum wage.

I pay them 14, 15 pounds an hour.

Do you know why?

Because they bloody deserve it.

They deal with all dog shapes and sizes, they have to deal with their customers on top.

The dogs can be quite challenging.

They come in all different conditions.

They deserve to be.

We need to raise the bar in this industry so dog groomers are paid a fair and right wage.

And so many times I see it, especially when I'm like looking at cvs, people are being paid minimum wage and it's fundamentally wrong.

But you can understand, you know, if you are a groomer that's just come out of college, just qualified, you starting up on your own because you can't get a job, you're doing grooms quite cheap because you need the experience.

Therefore your cost know per hour is really, really low.

You don't want to up your prices because you're scared you're going to lose your customers.

All of these things contribute to keeping the wage growth in this industry really low.

What we have to do is find a way to increase that to a fair and livable wage.

And so yes, that will include salon owners and people having to increase their price at some stage.

But dog groomer jobs has been designed to provide transparency on things like salary.

And so as a groomer I could go on and build a profile on dog groomer jobs and say this is what I'm on now, this is the hours that I do, this is where, this is my benefits, this is where I am, but this is where I want to be, this is what I'm willing to do, this is what I need in terms of benefits.

And we then need salon owners to put their jobs on the platform and say, this is what I'm looking for.

We have this unique proposition on the platform where it's, and we'll go into it I guess a little later on about a matching service, about how we match groomers to jobs.

But we fundamentally think that that is the best way to a meet the needs of the salons but also educate like both salon and groomers about what's out there.

You know, if you don't get a match for your job.

But I can tell you that actually if you increased your hourly pay by £2 an hour, you'd get 10 matches, you'd probably go, yeah, I'm going to increase it.

But yes, that has a knock on effect on your prices.

But if it means you can get the staff and you can guarantee that, that you can get the staff, then brilliant.

You're gonna, you're gonna do that.

It's not just skin, there's not just getting the staff, is it?

It's.

I suppose it's.

And this is what many employee employers don't understand, but recruitment and turnover staff is really expensive.

So you're paying a little bit more and you get a more invested member of staff who then stays with you for a lot longer, like five years, 10 years plus.

You're getting your value for money.

You're getting.

Your money's like you're getting your return on investment on you.

I've got a groomer now in my business.

She joined as a trainee.

Um, she's been with me a year and a half now.

She's now grooming.

She's been taught she will, she'll stay with me.

The loyalty's there.

I've just taken, you know, another apprentice student on who has been with me about eight months, but needs a lot of work.

You know, typically as a salon owner, I might go, actually, I can't do that.

I haven't got time.

I need to move on, I need somebody.

But I'm working with it because if I invest in those people, they will stay in with me.

And I'm very lucky that, you know, Touchwood, my team have stayed with me a while and I've not got a high volume of turnover.

I did at the beginning.

I went through groomer here and I took this groomer there because I was like, oh, I need, I need somebody tomorrow.

I'm stuck.

So I went through a lot of groomers, but I realized that actually, if I pay a lot more and I deliver the best package, so my groomers get Sunday to Monday off every week, two days together.

They didn't do that when they went work for somewhere else.

They get 15 pound an hour, you know, which is way above minimum wage.

They get pension, they get all sorts of nice little perks that we have on our, on our package.

But we do all of that because we know how important it is to keep groomers for the long term.

And if we invest in them, they will invest in us.

I mean, we've got to trust that process, right?

Yeah.

And I was talking to a guru the other day who'd lost a member of staff, like, like you said, they'd walked out and she could see, she could see it herself, but she was trapped in this cycle because the diary, there's so much pressure on the diary because customers were booked in and you know, we get booked up in advance and for many months she was just like, right, I just need to get someone and was worth.

And to see if she's got any spare capacity.

Because I said what if you could just get some for like six months whilst you slowed your process down, worked out who you want to get, go out there for CVs, do an interview process, you know, and you might actually end up with someone that you know, you said there's a bit more longevity within that person.

Whereas if we go out and we know, don't we when we go out and we rush to recruitment process as in you'll do coming, coming off the street or we rush the recruitment process, we don't understand who we want, we don't understand why we want them, we don't understand what their role is.

We don't do any interviews or any checks and they just kind of, they, they, they trample we, we trample over our boundaries and then wonder why we're having such disconnect with these staff members and they just leave and this carries on, doesn't it?

Yeah, you've touched on a lot of things there.

Just to pick up on a couple of things you touched on like number one is how does dog groomer, how can dog groomer jobs help with immediate short term problems and solve the medium term challenge?

So your groomers walked out tomorrow, sorry, today.

You need a groomer tomorrow.

But you also need time to recruit.

One of the things that Connor and I, who's my co founder have discussed is like in the same way as vets have locum vets could we have locum groomers where a locum groomer would be able to just go to this salon one day, that time of the day and just get a day rate.

How do we facilitate that so grooming salons can pull on locum groomers to fill a short term gap for tomorrow, the next couple of days, whatever the second thing is.

Like how do we solve the problem around time?

Nobody has time to do interviews, nobody has time to do checks.

Some people don't know how to do those things.

Somebody doesn't know what the right processes are because perhaps they're not business orientated.

All of those things need to be solved by the process.

And so to go into the detail of Doug Grimmer jobs we, what we want to do is we, we've built this matching service where when a salon posts a job we, our technology algorithm looks at all the people, all the candidates that we have on our database and tries to provide a match to the job specification.

If, and that specification might be, this is the hourly pay, this is the location, this is the number of hours a week, this is the benefits, whatever the case may be, number of years, experience, capabilities, can they hand strip, can they do cats, whatever the case may be.

And we'll match the job to the candidates and we'll put a percentage match level.

So we can go back to the salon owner and say, we checked our database of people based on your criteria that you're looking for.

We found you four matches.

And these four matches are 100% match.

But we found you 10 more matches that are 70% match.

Okay.

And a bit like if we don't get a match, then obviously we can tell you why you've not got a match.

Maybe your salary is too low, maybe you're expecting the hours, maybe you're not giving them any benefits, whatever the case may be.

So we want to educate and improve the, you know, the, the, the, the, the job specifications and we automate all that.

So, you know, salons don't need to write job descriptions or post things.

We, our tool will automatically build the job description.

We use AI to, to be able to craft the wording so you don't need to worry about any of that.

But if you do get those matches, like the first job is to get those candidates to look at the jobs.

And so we've tried to pull in some gamification, a bit like Tinder, you know, swipe left if you want the job or swipe right if you don't want the job.

And so when the job match comes up, they can have a look at it, they can look at the picture of the salon, they can see all the benefits, they can look how far it is from their home, they can look at how many hours, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And if they like it, they can swipe left, and if they don't like it, they can switch.

But whatever the, whatever it is, I don't know if it's left or right.

It's really awkward.

If you're working in a salon, all of a sudden your phone goes off and it's like, ping, we've got a job for you.

We're not, we're not an app, which is a good thing.

We are a web page that you can use on your phone.

So we send the matches via email to, to the candidates, and then the candidates open their profile and then they can have a look at the jobs.

And then if the candidate looks at the job and goes, yes, I'm interested in that, then that becomes a match.

And once a match occurs, that's where both parties can see each other's details in full.

And what we want to try and do is we want to keep it anonymous to start off with, so people who are looking for jobs can look quietly, you know, without worrying about existing employers or previous employees or anything like that.

But when a match is made and they both say, yes, we want to talk, we would then want to facilitate that.

So what we want to do is we want to enable the two sides to be able to talk, even if that's in a WhatsApp format.

We want to be able to set up a time to interview or a trial groom.

And then we want to know whether they've got the job.

And if they have got the job, we'll provide the salon with a guarantee, which is, if that candidate doesn't work out within four weeks, we'll find you a new candidate for free.

And so is better than what the jobs boards can offer you.

There's no paper sifting, there's no going through CVs, there's no ringing loads of people, there's none of that.

We'll do all that hard work for you.

And on the candidate side, if you are a groomer, you build a profile in our platform, you can hide your current employer and remove them.

So if your current employer will never see that, you know, if that.

If your current employee is recruiting somebody, they'll never see you looking for a job.

And you can also hide your previous employers.

So if you left a company that you didn't actually ever want to go back to, you can remove them as well.

So if they're advertising a job, you'll never be asked to match with them.

And so it's a very discreet service.

For obvious reasons.

We know that groomers move around, it can be industry.

They talk a lot.

Yeah.

So we want to provide that level of discreet service until both parties want to talk and then we want to automate as much of that as we possibly can.

So we want to make sure that before a candidate can even accept a job, that we've got the candidate's National Insurance number, we've got their photo id, we know that they've got the right to work in the uk, so you'll never come across the government challenges around.

Right to work.

Yeah, we'll do all that work for you.

And we want to integrate into other platforms as well to automate, you know, the.

The contractual process.

And all of that kind of stuff.

So we're on a journey.

It's exciting, but definitely there's opportunity for both candidates and salons to really find it easier to.

This is what I was just thinking like we were saying about.

Well, it's really hard to find groomers but I'd like to, I'd like to understand actually is it hard for groomers that are looking for jobs to find jobs?

Because all the, all the things that you described there and our experience from running a salon, there might be a lot of groomers listening to this, thinking, yeah, I really could do with an extra pair of hands or a member of staff.

It's time to grow.

But actually the process of growing is so overwhelming and so daunting.

I don't know where to start.

I don't know what to do, I don't know what the process is.

I don't know the legality of it.

So I'm just not gonna, you know,

and I'm gonna do it.

Yeah, it's so easy, isn't it?

The path of least resistance is to just carry on doing the same thing.

You're absolutely right.

And I think what we've, what we've tried to do is two things.

Number one, we've tried to make the platform accessible not just for people who are looking for groomers at a full time role, but we have got things like do you want to find somebody self employed to rent a table?

Do you want to find somebody who is self employed or, and can do locan or we all we thought about, you know, or we have enabled people who've got level two but not level three to get assistant roles.

So if you are somebody that perhaps is currently, you know, working from home, your diary's full, you're thinking about growing and you think actually I could do with an assistant two days a week.

Let's make it easy for you to find an assistant who can come in bath prep, do all that work so you can find a way to slot in an extra two, three dogs that day and go from five to eight because that's where you go really going to shift the revenue needle.

And so dog groomer jobs is not just about finding qualified groomers on a paye employed basis.

It's about finding assistance short term help self employed people for rent a table.

It is for everybody.

Yeah.

There's gonna be people like screaming like where do I sign up?

How do I, how do I get going?

Because where we are.

Yeah.

So people aren't they, they're desperate for Groomers.

I looked, these are job posts on, on the Facebook pages and my heart sinks a little bit because I want to help now.

And so where we are today.

So we, we actually launched the pre registrations a month ago.

So far we've had a hundred groomers Sign up and 50 salons sign up.

That's just through me posting underneath people's posts on Facebook saying register here.

So what we're looking for right now more than anything is for groomers to register on the platform whether you are interested in finding a new job or not register, because at least then we have your details, you have a profile and we are currently in the process of building out the platform.

So we built the, the groomer side already.

We're now building the, the salon side and the, the job posting and the ability to pay for the listing, etc, which we'll talk about in a minute.

And we expect to be live by June of this year.

So we want to invite people who are pre registered with us to join our beta testing phase.

And in that beta testing phase we'll want to prove that our technology works.

And so we'll be giving salons the opportunity to post any jobs that they've got at a significantly reduced price to allow us to test our product that it works.

And then once we're happy that it works, we'll switch it live for as many people that want to use it as we can.

So how does the pricing work for it?

So unlike Indeed or any other job.

I'm not picking on Indeed, I'm not available.

Lots of other ones out there.

But unlike traditional job posts, you either pay for a listing or you pay for a period of time.

What we want to do is we want to take the hassle out of all of that hard work.

I've put jobs up on jobs board before.

I've got 50 applicants, 45 of them have been absolutely not applicable.

No, found two great groomers but they're abroad and they've not got the right to work in the uk.

All of that time is like taking you away from running your business.

It puts you up, doesn't it?

It does put you off doing that CV sift and obviously there's pressures on people to apply for jobs so that they can carry on, you know, with government support and stuff like that.

So again, they might not be matching the criteria and you're having to sift through all these CVs.

Absolutely.

Now I'm not saying we finalized our pricing process yet.

If anybody thinks they've got a better idea that's listening to this.

If you go to dogroomerjobs.com at the bottom right hand corner is the feedback button.

If you press the feedback button, tell us what you want to tell us what you think.

We would love to hear it but the way that we are thinking about this is to split this into three areas.

I need, I'm happy to take a junior member of staff who's got limited experience and train them up and keep them, they're already a level three as an example and I want to put a job post up for an inexperienced person that I'm willing to invest time in low cost or I've got a need for highly experienced multiple years of experience, which is the other end of the scale.

Ability to run the salon, ability to do this, ability to do that, maybe at a higher price point, they'll be at the other end of the spectrum.

And our, our aim is to put a job post up for a four to six week period.

We think that in that four to six week period we should be able to find you enough candidate matches or provide you with advice.

And so our pricing, we don't know yet.

We expect it to range something.

It could range between £100 for listing, up to £1,000 for listening.

I know personally, you know, I said to our joint friend who introduced us as she actually said to me, I really need a groomer.

I said what are you looking for?

She said I need somebody with five years experience who can run the salon because I'm not there anymore because I've got little one, this is this.

And I said how much would you pay for that knowing that your diary is absolutely full.

And she says well I've got £2,000 with the bookings this week, you know, I'm not going to generate £2,000 with the revenue if I don't have somebody, I'll pay £1,000 or I'll pay £500 to get that person start tomorrow.

And so the scale of the pricing will depend upon how urgent this is, you know, and we ask the candidates like how quickly can you start, you know.

And the alternative to all of this obviously is our, our plans for locum, right, locum groomers.

So if you want to solve the problem because your groomer is walked out and you need somebody for the rest of this week and you're willing to pay a day rate, then that's going to be small but you're still going to have to find somebody at some point.

So we've not settled on pricing but it will be a one time fee for that job post that will last four to six weeks and come with a guarantee that says if you're not happy within the first four weeks and that person goes, then we'll replace for free.

And I think that's really fair because nobody wants to spend, you know, £300 on a job post listing.

Find somebody, get them in and then if they leave in four weeks because they're not a culture fit or whatever the case may be, to have to pay again.

We don't want that and that's not fair.

No, that's it.

And it's a really good way to look at it.

And I, I have the same analogy for a lot of things in business.

Like if you're, if your books are a nightmare, how much would you pay to have your accounts done for you there every month?

You know, you have to pay sometimes to get all this stress out the way.

What we know is that there are many different types of grooming salons in the country.

Like you said, we've got these home groomers that want an assistant.

That shouldn't cost them a lot of money to find the right person.

But we have big salons in London or, or someone's like, like one of my songs, extremely busy, that can do 15, 20 dogs a day.

You know, those types of salons have got the pressure of not if they don't have a groomer tomorrow or in the next couple of days, they've got major revenue challenges and who are willing to pay at the top end of the spectrum.

So what we want to find is a happy medium for everybody in the grooming world.

So the platform is accessible to everybody.

How we do that may depend upon turnover of the business.

It might depend on how many employees you've got.

Don't know.

I'm open to hearing feedback.

So whatever people think, I think we will go through the testing phase which will be very low cost for everybody.

But once we get to a point where it works and we all believe that this is the right thing for the grooming industry moving forward, then the, it's important to find a place that means that grooming salons get the very best experience from the platform and we charge the right amount.

But we'll see how that works out.

And what I love about this is like it's not an entrepreneur looking at the industry thinking, oh, that industry is easy pickings.

This is how it should be done.

We'll force them into a box, we'll make them do what we think they should be doing.

You're coming at it from a point of like pain in the fact that you really struggled yourself with this, with your salons and it's just like, right, I've got a problem, I'm going to go and fix it.

And I like that, that how you're able to connect with other agreements because you just know what they're going through.

I've got a groomer at the moment who came to me and she said she's very, she's young, she's, she's ambitious, she's a fantastic groomer.

She runs one of my salons.

She said I want to go traveling for three months.

And I, and like I want to support that.

Yeah, go traveling, go experience life.

But I'm not in a position where I've got an overstaffed situation where I can just pull a groomer from another salon and pop him in there.

So I need to find a short term fix and there'll be, there'll be people that listen to this going.

I really resonate with that.

My groomer went on maternity leave for nine months.

I need to find somebody to, you know, fill that period.

And so sickness as well, long term sickness,

absolutely.

And all of these things are at the forefront of my mind because I don't groom.

It would be very different if I could groom.

They have a good go here but you know, I'd be nowhere.

I think my staff would have a good giggle but.

And I'm not in a position to be able to go, well, don't worry, I'll step in for today or tomorrow whilst you're sick.

I need, I never want to disappoint customers.

A lot of my salons are in places where customer expectation is particularly high and you know, and so we have to give that tip top service and experience every single time.

And so I can't afford to have groomers off sick or going away for a long period of time.

And I really feel that this solution solves that problem.

And you're right, I am.

The business would pay, you know, if I could find, if I could find agreement to cover this, you know, this lady, first three months while she goes, enjoys the time of her life, then brilliant.

You know, I've got somebody and I haven't got the worry, the stress.

My customers are happy and you know, the person that's coming in to do that job is getting a good day rate and is a locum for three months.

Fantastic.

Yeah, we all, you know, it's that old saying, we don't need bad jobs.

We need bad, bad bosses.

So you're also providing a bit of, a bit of coaching.

So, you know, it's easy, probably easier for the groomers that are looking for a job, but the, the barriers are really big for the, for the salons that are trying to offer a job because of all the hoops and hurdles that you have to go through and you're coaching them through that, you're taking them by the hand and so guiding them through that journey, which I love because that's really going to break down the barriers for them.

We also want to, we all also want to get to a stage where dog groomer jobs can provide insight to groomers.

Right.

So if you're going to take on an assistant who is going to be bathing for you, we want to be able to say you're proposing 12 pound 21, but realistically, the average across all the jobs is 13 pound 10.

You know, equally if you're looking for a groomer that is.

Got 10 years worth of experience and they're, they're commanding an hourly pay of 17 pounds, 18 pounds an hour.

You know, we want to be able to share the reality across the country of what this means so salon owners and groomers don't have to work in the dark.

And at the moment we're all working in the dark.

We don't know what people are being paid, we don't know what the average is, we don't know what good is, we don't know what bad is.

You know, all we know is that minimum wage is going up.

You know, we're frightened of putting our costs up because we don't want to lose customers.

But the reality is, if we all work together and there was a clear place to go where everybody could see the data, I think we would all be comfortable putting our prices up if it meant that we could get the right groomers for the right price.

Where groomers were happy, salon owners were happy.

Yeah, blind, blind, happier businesses, isn't it?

So it could be like an.

Overseas jobs as well.

So if like groomers in New Zealand, like a salon in New Zealand is looking for overseas groomers, they could come.

I've got a client in New Zealand that used her grooming qualifications to get her a visa and get her entry into, into New Zealand.

So there's shortages all, like you said, all around the world.

Yeah.

So we're looking right now to, for the, for the rest of.

So by June, we want to be ready.

Product launch.

We need to get as many candidates onto the platform as we Possibly can.

Whether they're interested in a job or not, whether they've got loads of experience, home groomers, whatever, just register because that'll give insight.

We want to spend the rest of this year sort of proving our product works.

Our ambition is to go into America next year.

We know that in Australia and New Zealand there are about six and a half thousand salons.

So there's lots of.

There's lots of salons across the world.

And you're absolutely right.

People who have qualified over here, why couldn't they find a job over in New Zealand if that's what they want to do?

The platform we have ambition to be able to facilitate that.

I think we've got our feet firmly on the ground and say one step at a time.

But this thing could move quite fast.

Right.

We don't know we're is really interested in that.

We are getting interest from lots of different places.

So we've already had a big organization in Australia come to us and say, oh, we see what you're doing and we've got 30 sites.

How do we get involved?

So we know the demand is there.

It's just about making sure that we've put the right tools in, in the right hands at the right time.

Yeah.

Will you be getting out and about this year at the grooming shows, Grooming fest, crafts, places like that.

So you'll.

So at the moment Connor and I have got heads down with our teams trying to focus on delivering the product on time.

You know, if people are joining and expecting June, we've got to deliver it at some point in June.

We'll miss.

We'll miss some of the shows like Crufts.

We won't have an exhibition at Cruffs this year, unfortunately.

And we will be at Groomfest, we will be at some other shows and we'll be talking to lots of groomers and try and get groomers to just sign up and register.

Same goes for salons.

You know, we're also taking registration for salons.

We're not putting.

Even if you haven't got a job to post yet, if you are thinking that in the next six months you might want to hire somebody then it's worth just registering now because you will get the insight into what we're doing and be the first to try it out.

But yeah, I think once we get to the middle of this year we probably need to raise some money.

So we're looking for some investors who invest in the pet Tech world and there are hopefully a few of them.

If we can raise some money this, this side of Christmas, it will help us accelerate into new markets.

That's what we possibly need the investment for, to grow out the team from, from where we are now to probably about 20, 20 people.

So yeah, it's, it's an exciting time, it's exciting journey.

We, we definitely want to, we definitely want to build a product that is for the industry specifically by people who have experienced the pain of the industry.

So yeah, so put them all out of their misery.

How do they get, where do they go and how do they contact you?

So if you go to www.doggroomerjobs.com on that website you will see all of the detail about how it works, whether you are a groomer or whether you're a salon.

We've split the website into half so you can see all the benefits, what it means.

And at the very, the top right hand corner is the join the waiting list button.

If you click on that, it'll take you to the bottom of the screen and you can toggle.

If you are a groomer, select one side, if you are a salon, select the other and it will ask you for all of your details.

At this stage we're just taking the very basic details.

So who you are, if you're a groomer, where do you live postcode wise, how many years experience, what qualifications have you got and whether you are actively looking or whether you are passively interested.

If you're a salon, we want a bit more information.

So what's your business name?

Are you a registered company?

Are you looking for a tech, you know, a self employed person or are you looking to employ people?

How many people work for you?

And that's the basic that we need right now.

I think what we will do towards June is we will ask all the people that registered with us to create a profile and that's where you'll go into detail around perhaps a bit more about your salon, a bit more about you as a groomer, your previous employment, etc.

So that will come later on.

But right now we're just taking the basic details of people just so we can capture who you are, know where you are in the country and at least then we can send you communication.

One of the other good things about the platform is if you do register and join on the waiting list.

Now we are working to bring industry suppliers to us to send unique offers to our database.

So we only want unique offers.

So if you are a groomer we'll send you grooming specific offers and if you are a salon, we'll send you salon specific offers.

But we're working on that at the moment just to drive some partnerships.

So yeah, love it.

Well, we're going to be watching this and David, you're always welcome to come back onto the podcast.

Maybe not June, July perhaps I'll be

a bit scarce then.

But yeah, certainly I'd love to.

Yeah, we always want to know.

Absolutely.

And if there's anybody out there that's listening to this things, actually I want to give some feedback, I want to share it.

Please click on the bottom right hand corner of the website and give us that feedback.

And secondly, it is anybody out there that's listening to this that is an organization that supplies the industry and wants to explore partnerships.

There is a partnerships button on our website.

You fill out a quick form that'll come to one of the team and we'll get in touch with you because we're very keen on making sure that as a technology company supplying this industry, we have a responsibility to work with other suppliers of this industry collaboratively to get the very best solutions to sell on owners.

So one of the things that, you know, we, we've been thinking of lately is how do we work with insurance companies to automate the insurance renewal process?

Can that be done in our platform or you think actually if you did this, that would make my life a lot easier.

Regarding people, come and let me know.

I'd love to.

I'd love to chat.

Excellent.

Well, thanks for your time and good luck for your deadline and I'll see you in Groomfest, hopefully.

Have a beer.

Brilliant.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Take care.

See you soon.

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