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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.
Welcome, welcome. And we are gel. We are team. We are joined here today by El Hack. Welcome, El. How are you doing? I'm so good, thank you. We're talking to each other in a very exciting week. Yeah, we bumped into each other at Groomfest. You came and found me at groomfest and made your announcement, so we wanted to get you onto the podcast as soon as we could so we could talk about it. But before we go into that. And now I've got my teeth put back in.
It is early. It is an early start. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your pet grooming as a place to start. Absolutely, yeah. So I started my journey, my career in pets at home back in the day when Julie Harris did the sitting guilds training with us. So I was so blessed. Like, I was. How old was I? 20 when I was learning? No, 18. I became qualified dog groom at 18. I was a manager by 21, and I ran one of the most successful businesses in pets at home.
So, you know, I had great training around me, and it's only since moving on from that and training and working in businesses and helping businesses develop that I've learned how clever pets at home are when it comes to business structure. A few challenges have come up throughout the years of, like, you know, and one of the reasons why I moved away was there was a bit of pressure of churning through dogs, which none of us groomers want, and that was to their detriment. And they changed it now.
They. They. Yeah, their whole approach to grooming has changed, but I was so. I loved it. I had the best team. A lot of the girls I trained up went on to run. In fact, every girl that I trained up went on to run very successful businesses. One in particular was Kayla Harrison, who was on Pooch Perfect. She's got phenomenal, and she's like the Christie's ambassador. And, you know, she couldn't hold a pair of scissors before she came into my salon. So for me to learn from Julie Harris and be around people like Belinda Morris and Michelle Barnes, when I was training, like, oh, like, I am so lucky.
I always feel like I landed in the right place at the right time in my life, and I look at that time with a lot of love, and I grew and learned. So much about dog grooming and managing a business and becoming a manager at 21. Like there's not many people that you would put into responsibility at 21 and go, yeah, they done a good job. But it seems that instinctively some of the things that I put in place, like knowing our numbers and breaking that down on a weekly basis and how does that work out groom wise?
I just did that before I learned that that's actually a really wise thing to do in business. Weekly meeting so we can check in and make sure we're all good and we have lots of socials together and you know, actually morale was fantastic. It was a brilliant place to be. But I stepped away to travel. Australia.
Yeah. So I got a little bit sick of the pressure and you know, how many dogs can we get done in a day? And I was like, you know what, I'm going to take a career break, I'm off to Australia. And at that time my salon was the number two top producing salon in Pets at home. And Belinda Morrison Morris's, who's in Newbury, was number ones. And I started in the Newbury salon, moved across and within six months under Michelle, you know, qualified was the salon manager.
And so we're a little bit rivals and she doesn't mind me saying this, I've talked about her before, we're very, very close and she's mentioned in, in, in the thing we're going to talk about soon.
And one day I just phoned her and said, yeah, you know what, you know, our targets are doubled, her targets have tripled. And I was like, rather than thinking what she's thinking, let me pick up the phone and ask her. So I picked up the phone, we had a human to human conversation and I said, you know what, I think I'm going to take a career break. I think I'm going to go to Australia. And she's like, oh, I love Australia, you have to come over to my house, I'll show you all the pictures, where to go and yeah, I'll tell, you know, I'll tell you all about it.
I was like, I love that. And I hung up and I said to the team, I just invite myself over to Belinda's house. And that was a pinnacle move in my career and it's a real big life lesson, you know, you should never assume what other people are thinking and if you've got, if you want to ask a question, just pick up the phone or go and speak to them and ask the question. Because it was from going to her that she put me into a business called Creative Fitness Marketing in Australia.
So you move every six weeks and you help gyms market and grow their business in six weeks. So I physically lived on the road out of a suitcase for three and a half years thanks to the introduction that Belinda made me to the director of this business who actually worked under her when he worked in the uk. So it's so weird how this world is connected.
Did you, did you think that, you know, going from pet grooming into a gym business, obviously you're helping the business grow, their businesses grow. Did you. Do you quite quickly realize that, you know, business advice and business is the same whatever you do? Absolutely. It's so imperative to look at how different industries run. And then you realize actually it's almost the same formula. Yeah. Like really looking after your team, really looking after your clients that are coming in and knowing who you want to come in and being very selective and being very driven and have it like clearly written down and know where you're going with that makes such a big difference.
Like the gym campaigns, I did the biggest one. I did a six week launch. I got 300 new members in six weeks. I did like the biggest open day, 58 people in one day. And I loved it because all I was doing was helping people into exercise and it was a massive passion for me. And to be. Not only did I learn that, you know, what could happen in real business can happen in different niches. It works in different countries too. Yeah. So oftentimes challenges I come up against with clients is, oh, that might work for X person, but it won't work for me here in this place.
It's different around here. There's eight other groomers. There's no way I could put my prices up, for example. And it just works. When it works, if you follow the steps, it works and it will help you grow. That's it. It's identifying those sort of limiting beliefs within people and then sort of showing them why they're limiting and how it's not. How it's not working for them. But it's interesting, like you were saying about looking at other businesses, if we want to look at systemization of our business, you know, we've got to look at McDonald's or something like that because they've got everything down to a fine art, haven't they?
And people might say, well, how can we compare like pet grooming to McDonald's? But it's just, you got to kind of think outside the box and take out the systemization side of things and why it's important and making your business efficient and writing everything down so that you can have someone else come in one day and just pick up your manual and see how you run your business. Absolutely, yeah. And also knowing your own strengths in business. Like typically business owners get into business because they're fantastic at what they do, getting their hands on dogs and then they end business because they're overwhelmed and burnt out.
Because actually running a business and managing teams that then that, I mean, that's what happened to Nate Burnout. I'm off to Australia. See ya. Yeah, I had a great team. I was very blessed. But you know, it's hard and without a coach or without someone that you can lean on or a community that you can lean on, it can consume you. And that's a shame because really we're all got into it because we're passionate about the pets that we look after. I say, I'm always saying to people, you know, we're not.
If you're a pet groomer, then you're not an accountant. You know, if you're a pet groomer then maybe you're not a web designer. But I think we quite often come into the, into the world of business as, you know, as a startup and we obviously want to save some money within our business but quite often it leads us to procrastinate or it holds our business back because it's taking us, takes us years to get the website up and running. Whereas if we invest a bit of money it could take six months and then that, you know, that investment then goes on to fuel more investments within your business.
We, we just can't wear all the hats. Like you said, you, you burn out. It's impossible, isn't it? This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Low pay is half the price of Sumup and Zettle. So you keep more of the money that you earn. Rates start at 0.79%. Yeah. And from learning the six week marketing to get, you know, you in front of a lot of people in a short space of time, that impact is local and the ripple lasts for years afterwards. I've still got, I mean it was nearly 10 years ago that I was doing the fitness marketing.
Now I still got business sayings reaching out to me with the community going, oh, do you remember when, you know, Elle was here dressed as a minion? Like what we're on the side of the road? Or when you had that giant balloon on top of your building? Like it. In this day and age with AI now as well, everyone wants to Go digital. Everyone wants their ad to be the best ad on Facebook. But I am very passionate and I have proven that if you get back to that local heart to heart, actually physically meeting people, you can make a huge difference for your business because you don't need to be an international hit for your local grooming salon.
You need to be the number one person or front of mind when people need your service within the 5 to 10 mile radius of your clinic, which is what I've studied approving across different niches, different countries that it's the 5 to 10. Like it's so mad even, you know, I've. I instilled what I learned from the gyms in chiropractic clinics. So I ended up wanting to stay in Australia studying marketing to get a study visa basically and landed randomly a job in a chiropractic clinic because I started under care with them.
I then took over the full marketing campaign for that chiropractic clinic. And very similar to dog grooming, he literally had three others on the same row of where his business was. However, when you can market effectively, you can grow and be the person that you attract people to. I then started rolling that out to say he was the president of the chiropractic association in South Australia. He's like, this girl's great, you should do this with my friends. So I started marketing for other chiropractors in South Australia and it works, the formula works.
And you know, I've been a business coach for small independent businesses, helping them with things like this collectively for about 10 years. And now I'm really, really excited because I am bringing it all back to the canine world. Canine Care Hub is my coaching business and I am so excited that I'm now helping mainly vet physios seem to be drawn into me, even though I'm a dog groomer, even though I've done a little bit of dog training, it seems to be veterinary level people that are attracted to me probably from, I don't know that Cairo mindset.
But what I've learned is every business, if you can get the mindset right, if you can get the templates right and if you can get the marketing right and attracting the people that light them up. Just because you as a groomer go, oh, there are other groomers around me, you might love double coated breeds, you might love poodles doodle crosses, there's things that light you up that another groomer won't be lit up by and you should absolutely hone in on what it is that you do well, because I don't personally believe in competition.
There's not enough doctors to go around. There's plenty out there, isn't there? Yeah, there's more than enough businesses to go around. So it's like, how can we support each other to bring in and attract the people that make us light up when we open the diary and go, yes, hobby's in today. I love him. Like, that's how I want you to feel every day in business. I'm all about joy, profit and fulfillment in geshe net. It'd be quite interesting, wouldn't it, to see, like a survey how many people have opened their diary this week and gone, oh, no, why did I.
Why did I put that dog in? Why have I put that combination of dogs in? You know, and this isn't, you know, I'm a great believer as well. Like, we, we open our businesses, there's a reason why we've gone into a business for ourselves, isn't there? And that's probably because we've had experience of bad bosses or bad jobs, you know, and like you, we want that freedom, we want that flexibility. We want to be able to be our. Choose our own destination. But quite often we, we just fall into this trap of, as my wife sort of says, building our own prison, you know, and all of a sudden you start looking at your diary and going, why is Millie in this week?
Really don't have to do. I have to do Millie. Or maybe they'll. Maybe they'll know show or maybe they'll be like, sick or how can I get out of it? And it's like, that's not what it's about, is it? That's. That's taking all the, all the joy out of your business, all the fun out of your business. Absolutely. Oh, I put a whole day spaniels. Why now? I want to see the dog room and rock. We have, like, we sometimes put notes in the diary because, you know, we run a busy salon, so we do have multiple dogs in.
And sometimes you just get that combination of dogs wrong. You got the noisy ones, the ones that pool over the floor, you know, and then ones maybe that the owner is a bit difficult and you're like. And then another noisy one comes in and you just like, why have we done this to ourselves, Please? Next time when they rebook, don't rebook them all for the same day. Yeah.
How did you come back from Australia? What brought you back to the uk? I mean, some people might be going, why would you, why would you come Back. Yeah. I mean, on paper, I was living the dream, you know, marketing, growing, living in the Sunshine. Adelaide has 300 days of sunshine a year. Do you know how they measure Sunshine in the UK? Sunshine? 20 hours. Yeah. It's hours of sunshine, not days or sunshine.
So to be raw and real, it was heartbreak. I had had met someone, they ended up actually being very, very toxic.
A lot of heartache, a lot of learnings. Life. I've grown so much from that experience. But, yeah, paint. Paint brought me home. But it is not from a bad side and it's not a. Oh, woe is me because my love of my life, my wonderful man, here we have been.
Our secret love story started when we were 21. We didn't let our families or anyone know a bit like Montague Capillet style. His dad's family and my dad's family used to live opposite each other when they were growing up. And when we started hanging out a lot more, at one point, a family member told me I was, like, taking a free branch. We took some friends and then, so, yeah, we had this whole, like, love story. And it's gorgeous. And he. You know, there's always that person.
It feels like when you end up marrying that person, it's. He was always there for me. He was always that friend. I was in Australia and he was sending me Vampire Diaries. Somebody could watch it and the world and the universe always looked after us. They felt like whenever we got back together in the same country, I was single, he was single. And so when I came home, I needed my friend, I needed to heal. Went through therapy. Can highly recommend it for anyone that's ever been through any kind of toxic relationship.
And so I wouldn't date him until I felt good and ready in myself.
And it's been the best journey ever. Lockdown was the best thing that ever happened to us because I was sitting on the fence deciding whether I was good enough for him. And then lockdown happened. I was like, oh, need him. And then we literally. We didn't rent together, we just bought this house together. Oh, wow, that's brave. Yeah. In October 2020. So we've been here four years now, and since then we're engaged. We have a baby, he's two in December. It's been the best life journey. So sometimes when you're in the middle of your pain and you have to quit on your dreams, you know, I felt like a complete failure.
I'd spent ten grand trying to stay in Australia, so I'd gone through that partnership visa with this horrible guy. Then I was trying to stay on a visa for work under the chiropractors and it just all crumbled and fell through for me. But it was for a reason. Because if I got that visa, I would been locked into the country for two years, which would have put me slap bang in the middle of COVID lockdown, which hope we don't get canceled because I said the word which.
Which would have meant I wouldn't see my family for like five years. Yeah, yeah. Stay locked down for a lot longer. Yeah, I love it. I love the fact that. So although you probably didn't realize it at the time, it was pretty, pretty horrible. You know, there was opportunities there wasn't there when you came back. There's always, there's always, I try and explain this to people is there's, there's always an opportunity. Even when things are like crashing around you, there's always going to be some kind of opportunity that comes out, comes out of it.
And it's always looking back that you can see the stepping stones of how that happened, why that happened at that point. And I really landed on my feet again because it was the president of the UK Chiropractic association that Mario reached out to and went, this amazing girl is coming back to the uk. Make sure she stays in the chiropractic industry. And so I landed a really amazing opportunity with a chiropractic coach. So I've been a chiropractic coach and I've been helping chiropractors get six figure differences in their business for the last four or five years.
So it's phenomenal. It's, you know, all of the training, you know, just to start off as a groomer and you know, I was a manager at 21, like that's a pretty, pretty cool achievement. And then it's like, oh, now I'm just going to go do this. And then I landed this opportunity, now I'm just going to go do this. Oh, and it's landed me with someone of influence that's now put me into another person of influence that's allowed me to serve and grow businesses across the world.
And I'm so passionate about it because I, I've gone from helping the dogs directly to then helping people that help people. And now I'm back to helping the people that help the dogs. Oh, full circle.
So your passions, your passion has driven you to write a book. Let's talk about your book.
So it comes out on Thursday. It's called Fetch More Clients Effectively Market and grow your business in six weeks. Obviously I talk about the six week campaigns that I've been running and growing. I'm really excited to. My nails match it. All the women out there, it's all. On brand with the little paw prints. Yeah. So branding's really important. You know, it's all branded in alignment with Kine Care Hub and these dogs on the front are real dogs. So I reached out to people and asked them to send me photos of their dogs running towards the camera.
So this is little Lenny. This is Belinda Morris's Lenny. This is a Cavalier King Charles called Gracie that I've groomed since she was a Puppy. She's now 11, very gray and I just had to have her on there. We're really proud. We were gonna get a giant schnauzer at one point because, you know, perfect people have time flaw. And my partner's flaw is that he's allergic to dog and asthmatic. Oh. So we need to find a dog that he will be able to breathe with. But instead we had a baby instead.
So one day we'll be ours. So what inspired you to write the book? Oh, so for a long time in our coaching, we were inspiring the business owners to write a book because by having, by being an author, it gives you authority in your area. It proves that you know what you're speaking about and helps drive business. But ultimately it was. I go to a lot of business seminars and Chloe Bisson, who runs Inspired by Publishing, who's my publisher for this book, and I want to talk about publishing if we can, because it's really important.
Some of the lessons I've learned are really important. Um, she just said, you know, people stay and say, oh, look, it's a really expensive business card. And this, that and the other. And in truth, the book is not going to make your business work. It's. It's what you can give and deliver. But what a book can do and what I believe my book will do for people that buy it is it can fill them with confidence. It can make them feel something and take action. That's going to help and improve their lives.
Like, never have you had a business card and gone, wow, that's changed my life. There's been so many books that I've read that I've recommended that I've helped teams train on. I do training and lean on the books.
It can make such an impact. One book and you put that into practice in your business, like can help your business explode, could help your business with structure. Like, I know you're an avid reader. Thank you so much for the book gift you gave me at Groomfest. And I know you're fully on board with book writing yourself and authors.
I just know that I've got good to share and if, if I. You never know the reach a book can have. I was listening to Simon Sinek the other day and he was saying one of his books, you know, on Amazon, it said one sale, but what that person had done and given it round to their 20 team members. So it's like you never know the ripple, the impact that you can make. And I've purposely made my book so that it's not overwhelming because typically when we're in business, we're overwhelmed.
We don't want a massive, chunky book that we're going to open. It's going to be tiny writing and go, okay, that's who overwhelming. I can shut it down. The point of this is, even if you don't want to read the whole thing, you could read one chapter, go and implement it in your business and move the needle. That's it. There's plenty of space probably to write some notes in the notes in the margins. And that's what, when, when it comes to reading these kind of books, that's what it's about, isn't it?
Writing some notes, like putting down your ideas when you're reading through it. I once spoke to a coach and he obviously, he's an author himself, but also reads a lot of books and he always challenges himself when he gets a new business book is like, how can I make. How can I get this book? Or how can this book make me £10,000? And he reads the book and probably, you know, he's got all these books on his shelves with all his notes in them. They're probably quite valuable themselves because, you know, getting all his ideas and his notes from the book.
But that's his challenge whenever he picks up a business book. How can I make this? How can this book make me, like, money? How can I use this book to make me money? That's quite a good way to start thinking about it. Like, how can this, if I read this book, this business book, how can it improve my business or improve my mindset or take me on my further, my journey within my business? Yeah. And I'm even because all of this in here comes from trainings and summits that I've done.
So I've got all the worksheets that go with it as well. So you can have the book, download the worksheet and do the work. And I actively encourage throughout the book to do the work while you're reading it. Like, I don't want you to read this in the day and go, yeah, that was cool. Thanks, Elle. Like, I want you to take it, do the lessons and apply it to your business. I said nothing, nothing happens to Osmosis, does it? We can absorb. We can absorb the book and everyone, Everyone sort of learns differently, don't they?
And everyone has different learning styles. And that's just. That's why. Well, hope, hopefully you might put this on Audible as well or on audio. That's good. That's a plan. Absolutely. I've got to record it. You've got to listen to my lovely voice. But yeah, so everyone learns differently, don't they? But the thing about getting these books and taking these classes and watching these webinars and listening to these podcasts, you know, it's the final part that you need to do is take that action, isn't it? If you're not taking action, nothing's going to actually change in your business.
Your mindset might start changing, but you still need to take action. And that's where, like you said, the worksheets, the margins are there for writing in, but then taking some action from. From what they read and learn. Yeah. And so originally the book was going to be called L Hacks, Business Hacks, because having the surname hack was not very helpful in grooming. Doesn't sound like great, does it? But I've got. You've got to lean into what you've got. And actually, another secret reason why this book is out now is I wanted to write it before I got married, before I changed my surname.
I know in business you can just keep your original surname, but throughout the book. So even if you don't want to read the book, you could scan to a page and find an ELS hack.
And so it's count words in bold. Also assists in reader's ease in consuming information. Okay, cool. The next advert I do, I might do a couple of things in bold. Done. That's my work done for the day. Sorry, I talked over you a little bit. So perhaps go back over that. Go back over that. That L hack. So this L hack was about. When you're writing an advert, people skim read. So if you highlight and bold certain words, the key information, then people will take that. People love bullet point, make it short and snappy.
People. Typically, what I see, people send me an advert and they go, what do you think? I'm like make it shorter. Like the owners don't care. They want to know how it will help them, how it helped their dog and what to do.
Yeah. And is this like when you say an advert, is this something like an advert that they're running on Facebook or a Facebook post or something like that? So yeah, social media marketing has an absolute place. Use it in your business. It's phenomenal. I'm not a social media marketing expert. I used to do it a lot. But you know, I think if you're not doing it regularly, you're not the expert anymore. You have to, I think every month they change algorithm so everything is implementable and I highly recommend, you know, using a social media coach if using that.
But this going back to grassroots flyers, leaflets, posters, how can you make a local impact and how can you communicate with like. So something I do is a fruit basket campaign. So you go into your local fruits grocers and say, oh, I'm going to get all this fresh fruit that's local from my village to go and give to a couple of businesses so they can know that I'm here and to serve them and if they need any help and support. Yeah, I get that, I get that.
So I often get a bit of pushback on this actually. And you know, I think with the digital age, we're being as a business, as businesses, we're being pushed down the digital route and you know, online booking, text reminders, email marketing and stuff like that. But what I try and get across to my clients is that don't ignore this traditional kind of like classic good customer service, you know, picking up the phone when it rings and speaking to people instead of just messaging back and stuff like that.
I get a lot of pushback from that sometimes because as we know, groomers are quite time poor, don't always want to talk to people because they love dogs and don't really enjoy the people that come with them or have this limiting belief. And I think this is a limiting belief that just because they've received a text message, that's how the person wants to be communicated with you. Talk about standing out from the crowd. Could it be no better for a good customer service to stand your business out from the crowd?
Yeah. And it's about efficiency as well. I can see it from all sides, which is what I'm really blessed in. Having worked in the business, running the business and now as the coach, like I can see every layer to every reason and this is where I think time boxing is really important. So when you put a dog on the table. No, this is absolutely my focus. Yeah, but when it comes to connections, be logical, be like, be focused. This is my time to make those human to human connections.
Because just like how my story has been, you never know what speaking to that one person could lead onto for the rest of your life. You know, I, as a business coach myself, I could go, oh, Bill Betts, he's amazing. He gives out fantastic advice. I'm threatened, I'm not going to go speak to him. But that's not how life works. There is more than enough. There's abundance for everyone and everyone serves and helps people in a different way. And even if you feel touch awkward, you know, if you don't want to talk to people, having that person to person interaction, you never know what you could do for that person in that interaction.
Just by you being present and actually answering the phone.
That's one of our big things. And you know, three rings is the number we set on phones because oftentimes if you're looking for business, if you're struggling to fetch more clients, then people were looking through Google and they've gone, oh, there's a dog groomer in my local area. Ring, ring, ring. I didn't answer. Hang up. What's the next one? Ring, ring, ring. You've lost them. Like if you, if it's important to you that you grow and you bring in those new clusters that might be your perfect person, they might be the Fido that lights you up rather than the Millie that you're like, get out.
We, I mean, we've gone a little bit further than that. And on the days that we're not open or if the phone's busy, we've actually, we pay for a phone answering service now so that we can't, so we take a message. You know, they can't deal with the phone call, they can't book someone in. But again, it's like a human, it's a person answering the phone, valuing, you know, the person's problem or concern or question and then saying, we'll get, we'll come back and we'll speak to you about it.
You know, so we've gone a little bit one step further and again, you know, this comes back to looking at other, other businesses outside of, sort of outside of the pet grooming world and looking at other businesses and how do they, how do they perform, what do they do? It's thinking, thinking like a big business, isn't it? And that's exactly it. A lot of People get into these animal businesses and go and qualify and spend a lot of time qualifying to do them and then go, oh, why is this not working?
Like that is absolute. That's, you know, the phone service is something that chiropractors do. That's something that dentists do. And again, you can stand out by simply answering the phone these days by not having a robot doing it, how not having an autoresponder like that makes you stand out. And yes, there's more effort to that, but when you're doing that effort in alignment with bringing in the right people that are paying you the right amount, that is where the joy, profit, fulfillment comes in, because you're making a real difference in the area that you want to make a difference in.
You got into grooming because you're passionate about dogs that. Yeah, I'm with you. A lot of groomers don't care for people. However, when we care for the people, you don't know who that person may know, that may know a person that's got a plethora of dogs that are all your perfect breeds that you love grooming. I love, I love these conversations because I know that there'll be people that listen to this podcast or watching it on the Facebook group. And I know I have people message me saying, you know, even though it's free advice, it's a free group.
You know, people are saying, you're, you're really helping my business. And, and so we'll just listen to that last bit of chat and we'll join the dots and they'll try something different and they'll, they'll go and speak to people and they'll answer the phone and they'll be like, oh, my God, this is, this is really changing things, you know, and I love the fact that we're able to just put that message across and help people. Absolutely. Your advice is so valuable. Like, I love being on the group listening, listening to you.
And it's just so lovely to hear there being valuable coaches in industries like every other industry has got coaches that love and support on them to help raise the industry as a whole. And that's what I see us doing. Yeah, yeah. So going back to the book, because we kind of strayed away a bit and now your book's coming out in a few days time, so we need to talk about it. We do. So underneath this post, I'll do the priority list link because on Thursday it's going to be half price.
It also comes with, you can get an ebook version of it. So you can read it before it physically shows up. And also free access to my 5 day summit profit booster summit to help grow your business. But yeah, within the book I focus on a few different areas, some of which I know that you also speak on very well. Chapter one, setting your vision, knowing where you're going and how actually sitting down every 90 days and going, this is what we're going to focus on. This is how you build momentum.
There's a fantastic book called Traction which teaches all of us. Have you ever read it? I haven't known, no. So yeah, they teach the entrepreneurial's operating system and it works. This is what you know we're talking about. You read one book and go and apply it like it works.
It's not the same as that at all. But the start of that is every 90 days knowing where you're going, what you're going to focus on. This helps with burnout because if you as humans we literally trying to think further ahead than 90 days causes that stress and overwhelm. But you know what you're doing in the next three months. So for now, you know, we're recording this in September, like what are you doing before Christmas? Like don't worry about the new year yet. Like what can we get done that can move the needle in our business right now?
So setting your vision and knowing where you're going ultimately to be able to set those short term goals to help move you, your business and your team on the way with you, kind of setting your vision, sharing it with your team is a bit like going from trying to herd cats to suddenly all like a sled dog, husky pull forwards. That's when we know where we're going. Have you ever worked with someone where you show up every day, why am I here? What am I doing? Like I'm just doing my job and going home.
But you don't stay very motivated. Whereas if you can share with your team, this is where we're going, this is the ultimate destination and this is how it's going to benefit you. That's how you have longevity of business, clients and team. I think this is really important for solo business owners as well. And I often ask people like what do they want or how much do they want to earn or what their goals are. And so many people just struggle to answer that. And that's that vision, isn't it?
That why the why, why are we doing it? Where are we going? Like you said, it starts to, starts to give you a bit of organization, prevents a bit of Procrastination, but also helps with the overwhelming burnout because you can gain more focus on what you want to do and you can see things moving. And I think if you're a solo business owner, having a coach is more important than ever. Because when you're on your own going, oh, I'm just going to sit down and do this, you just don't do it.
There's other things you need to do. You're wearing all the other hats. There's always another to do to get on with. Yeah. Or second guessing it or unfortunately. And you know, this happens for everyone. Well, not as we can say, it can happen to people. Like either second guessing your decision, second guessing what you want to do and humming and arriving over it, or sharing it with family or friends that don't understand your business. Yeah. Or have like major fears and anxiety themselves about your business. And then you, all you get is all of that fear and anxiety coming back at you and all of this great idea that you've had.
All of a sudden it's like, oh, that's, that's just sounds really scary. I'm not going to do it. You're spot on. Yeah. You need to be speaking to people on the same path or have achieved that path or helped other people on that path already. Like, because you need to be bold. You need to be bold in business. So chapter two, I dive into knowing your worth. I know, Bill, you already speak about this highly. And I honestly, like, whenever I see something you post or you hear, I'm like, yes, Bill.
Like, yes. So I know that we're on the same mindset. Sorry, same chapter.
I love it. I love it. I love a tap on.
You know, it's such a difficult topic knowing your worth, isn't it? So it's good that you dive into that. Absolutely. Like, to be honest, it makes me sick that I qualified when I was 18 and I see on these groups people go, oh, how much do you charge for this? And people are charging the same amount as we were charging when I qualified when I was 18, I'm 33 now. Like, that's a long time. Like hairdressers have, you know, up their prices, restaurants have upped their prices.
Why are we stuck it? As you can tell, I'm very. That's one thing that I just, I'm really powerful. And it's important because if you're not earning what you need to earn to keep the lights on and to, you know, look after your own family, why are you in business? You're in charity, you should go and work for a charity, you get paid more. This, this is it. And this, this is where having done some, you know, some work around mindset and going off and doing some, some research around mindset, I knew that if I just, if I created a program, my business program and I just said to people, you know, up your prices, up your prices, up your prices.
It's like the mindset side of things. The fear, the overwhelm, the worry, the anxiety is such a powerful emotion when we talk about price increases. The path of least resistance is just to carry on doing what you're doing, you know, and try and manage and try and cut things at home instead of having that difficult but valuable conversation in your business about putting your prices up with your customers. But I know if we didn't get our mindset side of things correct or right or help on the mindset side of things, the price increases would never come because it's just too, too strong an emotion feels.
And the big thing I've done here in the book is I've given some people some different strategies on how to tackle that. Like if that is just overwhelming, if you just think, if I've just got to tell everyone that my price is going up by five pound ten, that's too much for me, I'm not going to do it again. It just hit, we hit a wall, we hit overwhelm. So what strategies could you do? Could you, every new person gets that price increase. Could it be that we started introducing packages so that people can get a discount and it's a cash injection for the business?
There's a few different ways of how you can approach this which keeps you comfortable, working your mindset. Absolutely. But is there something that we can do today to make a step to move that needle to get you in that right direction whilst you build that confidence and work on your mindset? Because I actually share the story in the book and I had to, had to tell the dog groomer owners that this is coming, my book's coming out and I mentioned your dog in here, so I hope you don't mind, but one day a neighbor of ours said, oh, blah, blah down the road just got a springer poodle and they want a groomer and they thought they could use you at the time.
So I still dog groomer, I've still got a luxury spa home to home dog grooming business. I am very selective on who I work with and I charge very well for it because I get it's again, back to that mindset. Thing, I'm like, I don't need it, but it's, you know, I love doing it. And so I was like, I don't know if I want to do it. Like poodle cross, poodle got you say this dick. And, and so I just said, I said to my partner, I really don't know if I want to do this.
And he said, well, how much money would you need to charge for it to be worth your while, your happy price? Yeah. Oh, I double it. Go on then. So I doubled my price on the spot without hesitation. Yeah, no worries. And then they gave me a 20 pound tip. It was my first hundred pound groom. Exactly. And I went into that groom with such a different energy. I was like, I'm earning some decent money today. Or you know, on top of my full time, what I'm doing, I'm now earning some decent money and I'm.
And that dog is still a regular client for me and I adore her and I adore the owners and I should have never prejudged them, which is, you know, a life lesson in itself. But if I had groomed her for the £40 I was doing poodle crosses for at that time, I would have not felt that way. I would have been miserable. It would have not annoyed me and I probably would have stopped. But instead I'm earning decent money. Ah, recently they turn around to me, are you doing a price increase?
I was like, yes, I am, without hesitation. I hadn't thought about it. Well, it was really. What's really interesting actually in that story, in that case particularly and I don't know whether you, you, you examine this in your book or whether it's something to look to speak to them about. They could probably go anywhere in your town and get that same or similar, very similar groom, you know, for half. Absolutely. A lot, lot cheaper. Yeah. And this is, and this is what I suppose people don't actually think about is, you know, let's examine the why they don't do that.
The why they don't do that is because they buy into you, don't they? And they buy into your, your service. They buy into how you treat the dog. They buy into how you, you know, maybe you give them a little bow or something at the end of it or, or how you communicate with them and how reliable you are and you know, how responsive you are and how much the dog wags its tail when it comes out. That's what they're buying. It doesn't this, people get so price blind, but it just everyone's using their businesses because of the price.
Yeah. It's not true. And plus these dog owners, you know, luxury spa, home to home, first of all, it's, it's convenience because they can still work from home while their dog's getting groove downstairs and they can keep their eye on it. They know that nothing's like nasty is going to happen with it. Dogs fall asleep on the table. That's kind of one of my top dog statements that I share. But also people, these dogs are their babies. No. As a parent or as a dog owner yourself, do you want to go and take your baby to someone that's mediocre or do you want the best of the best for your dog?
And that's where pricing sets you apart. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's just, you know, and, but this comes back to the self worth, the confidence. You know, people just use me because I'm, because of, I'm, because I'm 45 pounds. It's, it's not this. What I'm saying is like groomers got so much more about them and so much more to give. It's not about the money, it's. There's so much more to it that they could explore and expand on. Health checking we do for the dogs, you know, for someone like myself, you know, that spent all those years studying and has got the qualification and has stayed in the industry, carried on learning, you know, it's, it's such a high quality level that they're getting.
Yeah. When they come to me. So why, why be mediocre? Yeah. And I, I do, I do wonder if what I do be really interesting again was to find us a groomer in your town or where you are and say to them, how much do you charge for a poodle? And why didn't you put that up and see what the, see what the reply would be? And I bet some of the replies would be, people won't pay that round here. And you'll be like, I do. Here's the person that does.
You know, it's so, it's so interesting to look at all of this. So what else can people discover in your book? Yeah. So we talk about messaging. Messaging made easy. So knowing who you're talking to. This helps with your vision. We know exactly who we're going to talk to. We know why we're worth doing it. We can position ourselves as that expert and why we stand out because nobody acts as our competition. We're all perfect in the way that we are and we all love different things.
And we all treat things in different ways which attract one person that won't attract another person. But you need to proceed. You need to share that in your messaging. Nice and easy, clear communication to your target market that you actually want to attract. In messaging made easy, I talk about, like, the way that people read a page and unfortunately, I'm sorry, when you read chapter three, I'm going to ruin advertising for you because you're going to notice it once you sit. Once you've been taught it, you can't unsee it.
So, apologies. But it's going to really help you convert and get your message to the right person. I talk about connections, why it's important to make the connections for both the canine community, the local community, and the industry. Things like this. Being in communities such as Bill's community, we're leveling up the industry just by being in communities like these, supporting one another, seeing how we can grow, how we can learn, sharing those learnings with each other. Like, it's just ripple effect after ripple effect. What connections can we make?
And when we. Oh, God, this is going to go. And Dick, when we leave the earth, like, have we made good ripples? Yeah. Have we tore each other down? I watched a bit of a confession here. I'm a bit of a Taylor Swift fan now. There's an exclusive. But I watched the documentary about Taylor Swift, and actually the documentary was all about how as an artist, she has managed to stand out above many other artists in the same field. You know, I mean, there's thousands of artists and in the world, like, vying for the same space, but she really stands out.
And they saying that there was a marketing expert on here saying, you know, the difference that she's done is that she's created that community around her. You know, I don't know whether to believe this or not, but they said, you know, she does actually read the Facebook posts of hopefully not negative ones, but she does read the Instagram messages, you know, and she does reply to them. I'm sure she's got a team as well that replies to them. But the. The difference with her is that she actually has created that community around her so that everyone feels like they belong, don't they?
They feel that they know, they know her well. They. They understand her and she understands the fans and understands. Understands them, and that's how she's become so successful. And like you're saying she will leave a ripple effect when she leaves. Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's to bring it back to like your dog grooming business, like, you love spaniels, go and connect with a spaniel group locally because then you know that's a community of people. And even if you are someone that's an introvert, that doesn't really want to be around a load of people, like we do need community to survive, it's quite a natural state of being.
So just feeling like you belong somewhere and that you're giving value to a community somewhere really helps with your confidence. And then it also brings it, you know, that can also help with your business accumulate when you're, you know, when you go for those big bold statements.
Chapter five is where we start digging into the six weeks, the power of six weeks. Why would you do a six week marketing campaign then dribs and drabs throughout the year and the impact it can make is phenomenal. And honestly, if you take this book, but you, I don't hold anything back. I'm not, I didn't write this book to be like, oh no, you have to come work with me to get all the secrets like they're in here.
If you go and apply the six weeks I've even given you, like what you do on each week, you will make such an impact to your business. And some of the results we've had is like a year's worth of clients in six weeks, which can be pretty overwhelming. So that's why after that point, chapter on chapter, you can just go and implement. If you just need to turn that tap on and bring in those new clients, go and go and do this strategy, go and do that strategy.
And on top of that, six weeks, if you do social media, I'd recommend doing social media on top of it. However, if you are not a tech whiz and you don't want to learn or you don't want to invest in someone to do it for you, you don't have to with this, you can go and do these strategies and it will make an impact for your business, full stop. So just to make this clear, this isn't a social media strategy, but it's not about Facebook posts, Instagrams, Reels, TikToks, YouTube, Snapchat, all those platforms.
This is about good traditional marketing. So like leaflets, brochures or things like. That, posters, running open days. I talk about the art of a successful open day where you've made a huge impact in your local area. Because TikTok, Facebook Reels, all of this, they can go viral. But do you need to go viral? No, you need to see the dogs that are within the 5 to 10 mile radius, people will travel further for you of course. But this is, this is working within your communities to bring your presence up, your presence within your communities.
Absolutely. To be the local expert. Excellent. Because when it comes to services for your pets, it can sometimes be like the marching parade of interest. Like today they're desperate and want a groomer but in a week's time they might not think about it. But. Or when you're doing a six week campaign, you people might go, oh no, I'm not ready for that. Like when I used to do this in gym world, people were like, I'm not ready to go start fitness. No, no, no, that's not for me.
But in six months time they go, maybe I will get on that journey. I want to lose a couple of pounds. Oh my God, that gym did that massive camp. I'll go speak to them, whereas there's 16 others in their town. But they'll go to you because you made that impact, you made that feeling. It's about creating emotion and drawing people to you and drawing the right people to you as well. Yeah, definitely. So how long did it take you to write? So I was very lucky.
I had a. Inspired by publishing, held my hand throughout it. So I actually wrote the book in 11 weeks. A lot of the chapters I delivered as trainings and then transcribed and then re edited it from there. But from concept to this launch in two days on Thursday, it's been seven months. Wow. I have done it all with a. So I'm with a 2 year old. I think you were about to say that. Yeah. With a toddler in tow. So I am very grateful for my family for the time.
But there's a saying about a project will take as much time as you give it. Like I knew I wanted to launch in two days and I made it happen. And you need to have a coach. It's really valuable whenever you're going into something new to have someone as a guide by your side. I think that's how you win. If I had just gone, Elle wants to do this. Elle's going to do this by September. Okay. I would do it like I needed that external pressure by having a coach that was going to check in with me every weekend.
Where's that chapter? What's going on? How are you getting? On some accounts, the good is in me. I just needed to get it out and on paper. So I needed that support. And I think that's the same in business as well, isn't it? Yeah. Definitely accountability, you know, and also, again, procrastination often comes about because we're stuck on a, on a question or we're stuck on a thought that needs exploring. And then so having someone like a coach or, you know, accountability buddy or something like that gives you ability to, to get your questions out your head and get the answer to what you're getting stuck on moves you forward, doesn't it?
And there's always a burst of activity right before the accountability, which is another reason I don't talk about this in this book. And I say this, I'm never doing it again. It was so much pressure. Maybe a future book. I'm going to talk about the power of meetings as a team and having that done and not done mindset because people don't want to say that they have a. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be messaging them going, I haven't done my chapter. I'm going to make sure my chapter's done.
You know, I think again, something that's lacking within the, within the pet grooming industry and there's no fault of the pet groomers, it's just being a business owner, being a manager, you know, a team leader, an employer. Again, no one teaches you this stuff. So like learning how to lead a team would be, you know, really interesting, wouldn't it, for people to find out. Yeah. And I had a coach when I became a speaker, I had a speaker coach. Like I'm a big advocate for having multiple coaches in your life to help you with different areas because for all the money I've invested, the amount of growth and learning I've been able to take away, I've been now been able to share with more people like it's all been worthwhile.
That's it. And most coaches have a community around them as well, which you can learn from as well. So what I've always tried to do, coaches is make sure that they're all of a similar, you know, but they all come from similar places, so the message is always similar. So I don't get told one thing by one coach, then completely different from another. That can lead a bit of confusion, can't it? But making sure we all sing off the same hymn sheet, as they say. Absolutely. Certainly helps.
So when's your book out? Thursday, 26th September. So we'll post a priority link underneath this live and then on Thursday I will post the link where you can go to buy.
So Amazon have changed the way that people become bestsellers. So back in the day there might be some famous people that you know that are like Amazon bestsellers, but they just bought thousands of their own books and stored it in a warehouse and it's really unethical. So they've changed all of their formulas, they've changed all of their categories. They used to be able to put your book into like 30 different categories. So you know, you can go like micro niche. Now they've done away with it. There's like 11 categories.
They track every book sale. So the book sales needs come from lots of different people buying off different Amazon accounts. So like genuine people buying books is how people become best sellers. Which is why I've used inspired by publishing because they know how this works and so on pushing and asking very kindly, you know, if you think that this book will help you or someone else in business. If on Thursday you can spare me six pounds, I will help your business and I'll give you lots of lovely benefits and perks for doing so as well.
Excellent. Excellent. Well, it's been, it's been great having you on and, and chatting to you about your, your, your career so far and then your, your book. Good luck for your book launch on Thursday. Make sure you send over those links so that we can share them with our community and hopefully we'll catch up in six months maybe see if you'll see if you top the charts. And I'm looking forward to seeing yours next year though. Yes. Yeah, you better be. I've actually, I have put finger to typewriter and done a little bit so far.
So again, it's just like the topic's so big, isn't it? It's just thinking like you said, concept, what do I want to write about? There's so much to write about. Yes, but your book will be phenomenal and we can't wait for yours to come out as well. As you can tell, I'm a big supporter of helping people up level. So yeah, thank you very much and Els Hacks. Just let us know what your book's called again. Fetch more clients effectively market and grow your canine business in six weeks.
Excellent. Thank you very much. We'll see you soon. Thanks Bill. Take care. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. Please make sure you give us a like or a review to help people find find it. The podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Head over to www.lopay.com to find out more about their payment solution.
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