Talking Teeth with The Dog Tooth Fairy

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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 everyone. Welcome to this next episode of this podcast. I'm joined by friend Anastasia the dog Tooth Fairy. How are you? I'm very good, thanks for having me, Bill. Well, how's it all going with the Emmy Pet sales then? Did you have a good Crufts? Oh yeah, Cruft was fantastic. I worked on the Emmy Petrid stand at Cruft and we had the best year sales wise that we've ever had. So every year Tuna, our MD of Emmy Pet, he takes the stand a little bit bigger each year.

Like they get a bigger stand, but this year we had more staff on the stand, but we sold more than we've ever sold. So it just seems to be getting more and more popular. The brand. I think more and more pet professionals, dog groomers are learning about it, but I think a lot more clients are asking for the service as well and becoming more mindful of pet dental health. Really? Yeah, it does help with all the, the sort of Pet dental health month and the, the marketing that goes on during crafts and they last the year before last maybe longer.

You had the vet talking about me pet. He did a little session with the vet on the, on tv, didn't you? And stuff. So doesn't it. And obviously a lot of pet groomers are now offering it. Yeah, there, there are a lot of pet groomers offering me pet now. A lot more than when I first got started with the Emmypet because it wasn't really as well known back then. But I think a lot more clients are aware that groomers offer this service and they're actually going to the groomers and asking can they have the dog's teeth cleaned at the groomers?

And I get a lot of groomers that come to me and they ask me about buying an EMI pet toothbrush because their clients have come to them first. And the clients keep pecking away at them saying like, do you offer teeth cleaning? Are you going to be offering teeth cleaning soon? And the, the customers are really wanting it. Yeah, it's like buying signals. We, we certainly get. People come to our groomers who, they have their pet groomed elsewhere, that's not a problem. But they come to us for the teeth cleaning because they can't groomer don't offer it.

So your, your Your business is the dog tooth fairy. I've got that right.

I always get these mixed up. So you don't actually groom dogs anymore, do you? You just sell the. The Me pet system and training. Yeah. So I was a dog groomer and I was a dog groomer for seven years. And then I discovered the Emipet toothbrush while I was grooming. And I just stumbled across it really, at Master Groom. And I looked at this toothbrush and I thought, oh, I'd really like to try this. But I didn't. I didn't end up getting it anyway for about, I think it was about a year before I took the plunge and I bought it and I got my toothbrush.

I think it was 2018 when I finally took the plunge and bought the brush.

And I used the brush. I thought it was absolutely incredible. I'd been using it in my salon to get good results on my client's teeth. Really loved the results. Really loved the extra money that it was bringing into my business. In my first month, I made £750 off the toothbrush. And that for me was incredible. And I was going through a lot of toothpaste and brush heads and spending quite a lot of money on Emmy supplies at the time. So I decided to become a distributor so I could get discount off the product.

The distribution that was my little side hustle seemed to kind of organically turn into my full time hustle. And it was never my intention for the Dogtooth Fairy to be my full time thing, but through a pandemic and getting pregnant and having a baby into the mix and then it all just intuitively, organically seemed like the right thing for me to do at that time. And we were talking about this for me before doing the podcast, and we're talking about how, you know, the, the fundamentals of business is to give you that freedom.

And. And this is something that you're really sort of focusing on now, isn't it? Now Scarlett's a bit older, like looking at your freedom. Yeah. And I, I really think that, like, motherhood does change everything. And women do give up such a lot when they become mothers, you know, were the natural caregivers. And, you know, you're trying to balance your business, you're trying to balance baby and balance all these plates, and sometimes it becomes so difficult that something has to give. And for me, it was that thing because I was on my own and I was a single parent.

I did the maths and I did the sums. And for me to keep my grooming salon open and Me to go and sit on my grooming table and groom dogs and put Scarlet in a nursery.

The sums didn't add up for me. I would have been running my grooming salon into a minus figure to sit there at the table for eight hours grooming dogs. And I thought, this just isn't right. So at that point I actually let my salon go round about the time that I did my original video podcast with you. So it would have been the summer of 2021. Um, and it was just that, that thing. I let my salon go, but it went to really good hands because it went to my employee that I'd employed for four years.

So she took it. She took it off my hands and she's still running the place, which is fantastic. That's nice. And so you then branched out into distributing the Me Pet products, but also training. What gave you the idea to go into training?

So before I was a dog groomer, I was actually a lecturer. So I've always wanted to work with animals my whole life and I did all my animal qualifications when I left school and then I landed my dream job as a lecturer at the college that I trained at. So I worked there for 12 years. That was Newton Rigg College in the Lake District, and I taught animal management and I also ran and managed the dog grooming section at the college and trained the adult learners. So, yeah, I did that first and then it's just an amalgamation really.

So as soon as I found this toothbrush, the Me Pet in my grooming business, I just amalgamated those two worlds together. So it was the teaching background and the passion and the love for the toothbrush and those just merged together. And I actually built my training course during my maternity leave with Scarlett. So that was my plan during maternity leave because I knew I couldn't go back to grooming full time. And what's. So what's the initial training course all about? What do you cover?

Oh, now then, off the top of my head, you wouldn't think I've been delivering this for the last four years. It being basically covers everything that you need to get started with Me pet. So that is basics of canine dental health. What is signs of good health in a dog's mouth? What are signs of poor health in a dog's mouth? Also looking at the when to refer to the vets and when it would be suitable to allow that client to have the mepet teeth treatment. Looking at the toothbrush in closer detail, how does it work?

How do we use it, how do we spot faults in it? How do we use it safely on the dogs? How do we use those extra pieces of equipment safely? So the rosewood sticks, the tartar eraser tools, the Orazyme gel.

Then we look at, like, pricing, marketing, how to space your appointments out and how to have conversations with the clients about how often they should bring their dog in. Quite comprehensive, isn't it? Yeah. And it does come with an aftercare support group. So that is a private group on Facebook for anyone that's done the training. There's no membership fee to that group, so it's not like a membership or anything like that. But anyone who's done the training, that is included in the price of the calls. So it's just to make sure that anyone that does the training, it doesn't feel lost afterwards, they can go in that group.

It's a nice, safe space. They can ask questions, they can get answers from myself and from other community members. And it's a really strong community. We've got a lot of knowledge in there. You know, there's. There's. Myself, there's a lot of vet nurses in the group, you know, so there's such a wide range of knowledge in there. 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. Rate starts at 0.79%.

That's really good, actually. And I think it's only right to sort of touch on the. The sort of vet nurse, the vet sort of side of things, because I think there's a lot of people that see negativity around the new pet. There's obviously, I know you've had personal pushback from vets and vet nurses when it comes to social media and when you've had clients go to vets and stuff. We've. I can't as a groomers, I can't think we've have. We've had negativity from vets. We've certainly had vets refer clients to us, so it's been quite positive for us.

We have had the odd client put off by their vets from having me pet being done. Even though the client could physically see the gun gum health and the teeth were, were good from it. But then we also get quite a lot of compliments from vets saying, oh, you know, I've just done fluffy jabs and their teeth look fantastic. How do you look after them? They're like, oh, take them to the, to the groomers. But I've. I personally find that a lot of the negativity that's coming out of the veterinary world is due to Ms.

Non. No. Not understanding the system, having no knowledge of the system and misunderstanding what, what groomers are doing do. Would you say that's right?

Yeah. And I do think there's like a time and a place for both methods. You know, veterinary dentals are so invaluable when dogs really need those. You know, when dogs teeth are too far gone to offer the me pet and me pet definitely has a place for preventative treatment and for the cases that aren't bad enough to warrant putting the dog under anesthetic. So I think that if vets, just more vets got on board with it and I think it is getting a lot more like you say, there's positivity from vets in your local area where they're sort of, you know, commending the dog's teeth and things.

If we see more of that, I think groomers can work in conjunction with the local vet. Groomers can be sending dogs to the vets where the teeth are too far gone and vets can be sending dogs to the groomers where the teeth aren't bad enough to warrant having veterinary dental. And it can work like that. It doesn't have to be a competition. Yeah, it's, it's obviously, you know, I don't get me started on the veterinary industry, I could go on for days. But you know, we, we employed a vet and we ran a vaccination clinic and this vet was 28, 29 years into her career, never heard of me pet had no understanding of me pet had no knowledge around what it did or how it worked.

And so Emma took some time with her and showed her the system, showed her how it worked, showed her the sort of the results that we can get, how we work with the dogs. The owners vet loved it and she's like, right, I'm definitely going to be recommending this to people I speak to who, whose teeth don't, like you said, aren't necessarily need a general anesthetic and a descale and polish, just need that extra bit of help. And the way we position teeth cleaning within our pet grooming business is that we're the hygienist, we're not dentists.

The vet is the dentist. The vet will go and sort out your teeth and deal with the rot, take teeth out, deal with the gums and stuff. But we're the hygienist and we can keep on top of that and ensure good dental health. Yeah, definitely. That's a really good analogy to compare it to. I think that is how I see me pet as well. Being like the hygienist, not the dentist.

Yeah. And I think some people, you know, going into the actual use of me pit within the, within the dog groomers. I think groomers understand the benefits but they get a bit bamboozled by the social media posts and like a lot of people get, a lot of groomers get put off it because they tell me they, they don't get good results. So I wanted to drill down to that phrase getting good results for your, for your clients. What would you say is a good result when using me pep?

I think that the gums are the most important factor to consider because the gums are the foundations of, of the tooth. So your gums have to be healthy. I think that I'm not saying this for, for everyone that practices mepep, but there's good, there's the good, the bad and the ugly. And unfortunately in some there has been dog groomers where they're like just using tools that they shouldn't be using metal scrapers and then just taking loads of hulks of tartar off from the get go and disrupting the dog's gum line and causing problems.

And it's those sorts of practices that I think have possibly triggered the veterinary industry as well.

And unfortunately, you know, that isn't the way that we should be doing things. So I would say a good result is happy, healthy gums and that the results might not happen in the first session in every case. Some dogs will take longer and I would always explain to a client that the mepet journey is completely different from a veterinary dental. The dog is conscious, it's not under anesthetic. So you may be not going to be able to achieve like the same level of results as the vets would achieve in one session.

It's progressive, it's gentle, littleistic and the results will take time based on the individual dog and its needs. So I would say a good result. Everybody wants the aesthetic result, don't they? But I would say always look at the positives at the end of each session. I would say a good result on a nervous dog if it came in a little bit apprehensive of the me pet. But if all you'd achieved in that session was getting that dog to let you put a toothbrush in its mouth, I would say that's a good result.

So good results are different, like client by client based on what you can achieve in the session, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so I suppose the aesthetics, the picture afterwards, but it could be that you're helping that gum, you know, you're helping the gingivitis to start to recede, that's starting to remove some pain from the, from the dog, you know, using the me pet to then start working on the gums and then obviously the tartar and the plaque can come off at some point. Yeah. And I would always focus on the positives of the session.

So if you haven't got the aesthetic result that you want in session one, there will always be something happening under the gum line. So you might notice an improvement in the dog's breath in session one. The ultrasonic waves will still be working under the gum line and around the gums to stimulate the circulation and the blood flow to the gums, which will be heat healing the gums. So even in that first session, if you don't notice that something major has changed, even if you're noticing that the dog has an improvement of its breath, that the gums, the gums are a lot healthier.

And if the dog has had a session where it's allowed you to use the toothbrush on its mouth, but it came in quite nervous, then I would say all of them things are positive and it's still a success. So I would always report those successes back to the owner. Yeah. And I suppose it's like you, like we were talking about earlier, it's that managing that expectation, isn't it? I suppose first of all is managing our expectation and making sure that we understand as the groomer, you know, what's achievable, what's not achievable, what's referral and what's not, and then obviously making sure we spend some time with the client, managing their expectations.

Yeah. And managing client expectations is really, really important because I know that people always want to get the results for the client, but it's making sure that the client's right for you as well. So if you're going to have a really pushy client that's like, well, I want these results in the first session and if they're making you feel awkward because you haven't got those results in the first session, I would always have a conversation with the client and tell them that me pet works differently and if they're wanting that really quick result, then they should maybe consider going to the vets and having a scale and polish done.

Yeah. And then we can pick that up afterwards and look after them. Yeah, yeah, cool. With, with the people you speak to around teeth cleaning, what kind of fears come up for them? When, when you've got a dog groomer that's looking to introduce teeth cleaning services to their business.

I get some people that are fearful around, will it work? You know, will it work? Will I get results?

Am I going to make any money out of this? How do I know that my risk is going to pay off? So those, those are the kinds of fears that are typically here.

And my response to anybody with those fears, I mean, I would never push the MEPET system onto anybody that wasn't ready to implement it. So it's got to be right for them and it's got to feel like the right time. But those people that are worried whether their investment will pay off, they're only going to know by doing it. And if you don't do it, then you're just going to stay the same. So it is personal and people have like, I'm repeating myself now. But you've got to do it when the time's right for you.

But if you don't take these chances, then you never, you never know, dear. So those are the fears. But fear holds us back in life.

I got a load of am I allowed to swear shit from my local veterinary practice. When I first started offering me Peter, I was headhunted and they made me feel really anxious. You know, they were quite horrible to me when I started offering Emmy Pet. I don't often speak about this, but if I'd have let them knock my confidence, I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't have built up a successful Emmy Pet distributing business. I wouldn't be able to single handedly support my daughter and us live in a nice house and, you know, I can look after her and I can support her because I took the risk with the amipat, I took the chance on it and when there was bumps in the road I just carried on.

So I think you haven't got to let fear hold you back. That's it. And just to put some context around this, this wasn't social media messages or comments, was it? They actually wrote to you. There are physical letters to you and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Letters from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and like ringing my phone continuously through the day. It was, it was very harassive. Really? Yeah. And it's really interesting that you say that, you know, you've got to push past those fears. But I can put a little bit more of a reframe around this as well.

And the fear from the business owner might be that, okay, I'm investing a bit of money in this product. Is it going to work? Am I going to get the customers? What? Well, that, you know, we can, we can own that fear and we can actually take action around that and make sure that it does work very. By having good marketing, you know, making sure that we're talking to our customers about it. But the overarching part of this for me is, and as I say to some of my clients, is you have a skill and a, a tool at your disposal that can benefit the dogs in your career.

And that really, if we have that as our overarching sort of value, we are looking to provide the best service and the best help for the dogs in our care when it's, you know, when it's appropriate to use, then we can help get over our fears by focusing on helping the dogs in our care. And I sometimes say to my clients or people that have the Me Pet system sitting on their shelf, having done the training and not actually used it, I'm like, well, think about the, the dogs.

You could be really helping the dogs right now with this. So, you know, you have a, maybe a duty to, to go and go forth and use those toothbrushes to help your cries and help their dogs. That's the, that's the overarching value, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. Because by you leaving your toothbrush sitting on the, the shelf getting dusty, I always say it's just an expensive ornament. If you're doing that, there could be clients that teeth and gums are just at that tipping point. And by you not implementing your service and having the toothbrush readily available for your customers to come and take advantage of that service, those dogs might then go beyond the tipping point and they might have to go to the vets and, you know, need extractions and things.

So it is for anyone who's got a toothbrush sitting on the shelf getting dusty, you can reach out to me. You know, if you've got any struggles at all. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming because you start on something new. I know when I first started with the Me pet, I had all these questions and all this anticipation, nervous anticipation about it. But once you find your feet with it and you get going, it's not rocket science.

I always teach Emmy Pet as being as simplistic as possible. That's why I used to have a Facebook group and it was called Emmy Pet Made simple with the dog Tooth Fairy, because I don't want to complicate it for people. So, yeah, anyone can Reach out to me if they're struggling and you just want a little bit of advice, that's it. And something that I also teach, you know, and people say they want to, how to get confident. We as humans, we only get confident really through repetition.

You know, we need to go out there, we need to practice, we need to use the equipment, we need to practice on the dogs. We have to also acknowledge that not every dog is going to suit, not every dog is suitable for it and not every dog's going to behave for it. So we can't. You've got to manage, like we were saying earlier, we've got to manage our own expectations around it as well, don't we? Yeah. And practice does make perfect. So it is one of them skills that you have to work at.

So when I first started with the emipat, I practiced on my two little guinea pigs, guinea dogs, Rocco and Winnie, and a good two weeks every day at their teeth, and then got my before and after pictures and used those on my social media. But it doesn't, you don't always get it right first time. That's why my support group is really, really useful because sometimes people can feel disheartened if they're not getting the results in the first one to two sessions. But you know, you can put pictures in the group, you can ask questions and the community are always there to help.

And myself just to put people's mind at ease that they're not doing anything wrong. It's just a process. Yeah. And you've gone a bit further than that as well, haven't you? You've kind of identified the, the worries and the fears that pet groomers have and put together a series of webinars that sit on and, and, and sort of take part in and, and watch. Yeah. So I've brought, I've brought five new webinars to the table. Now these are mini webinars and the reason that I brought these out was because there was a lot of questions that kept coming up around the same sort of topics.

So while I went to Bologna to zoomark for a week and I was child free, I'd been meaning to do these webinars for the longest time and the child free time and the crap weather that I had while I was in Bologna was just the perfect, the perfect storm to create these webinars. So yeah, I've brought one out already and the other ones are being launched this week. So there's a webinar about when and when not to use emipets. This was coming up a lot.

People do the training, they get the equipment, they start using it. But those clients are coming in with, sorry, my computer's doing funny things. That's right. It's wanting to do a system restart. I'm like, yeah. So when clients come in with the teeth, some of them are a bit of a gray area or might be borderline where the groom is thinking, should I really be doing any pet on this dog's teeth or should I not? So that webinar just really simplifies it all and it makes it really clear of those cases that you should and you shouldn't be working on and the reasons why.

And the webinars are all, you know, they're pretty short in length, they're easy to digest. You can put them in your ears when you're on your dog walk.

So I have another webinar. It's just like 50 questions that you've always wanted to ask about me pet and just me answering those questions. There is a webinar about managing your clients expectations because that's something that comes up a lot. How to have those difficult conversations with your clients and how to assert yourself with your clients so that you're in charge with your clients and not the other way around. I love the way when you said assert, you sat up straight. Yeah, I did straight. And put your hat puff out my chest.

See it? Put your shit up. So myself there. Yeah, yeah. And then there is another webinar, how to Succeed with Me Pets, that is particularly designed for anyone who has just started. So it's to help them succeed in that first month so that they're not feeling as lost where they're all.

And then there is a one called Canine Dental Health in more detail. So that's going to focus on different aspects of canine dental health conditions and how to identify those. Nice. And how do. How can we get hold of these webinars? Where are they based? You will be able to find them on my website. So it's www.dogtoothfairy.co.uk and I have got a little cheeky discount code for Bill's community. So if you use Bill 10, you will get 10% off your webinars. Nice. So is Dog Tooth Fairy.

Not the Dog Tooth Fairy. I always say the Dog Tooth fairy. It is dogtoothfairy.co.uk for the website. You have to think about that. Don't ever put that website in. Do you like. Oh, what is it? No, I did. What's that? A thing where you. Oh, you buy your business name. Yeah. Your domain. Yeah. No, when you do your thing to the government, so you own your name. Did you do that for pet? Oh, I see. Trademark sort of thing. Trademark, Yeah, I did trademark and I thought about it for the longest time.

I was like, am I dog tooth fairy or the dog tooth fairy? And it was all a bit.

I was overthinking it, I think. Yeah, we often do, don't we? So five new webinars to address the fears or the common. The common questions that you get from clients with a nice cheeky 10% off with Bill. 10 as your code. Yeah, brilliant. I know you don't, you don't do in person stuff and I understand that you're very focused on your freedom. I take it you'll be Crufts Crofts next year. I will be at Crofts. And never say never about the in person stuff. You know, if somebody wanted me to go and do something in person, if, if the offer was there and if somebody wanted me to do a seminar at a bigger salon or anything, I am always open to, to persuasion.

Yeah, yeah, I am. I am. So, yeah. Have you got a camper van now who is. Can you like, go on your travels with your camper van and. No, I, I got a caravan, Bill, and I had to, I had to give it up because I just, I wasn't confident of towing. You've got to try these things to see. See if they're for you or not. But no, I did end up selling the caravan because I just wasn't. It wasn't for me. Campervan in the, on the vision board.

Oh, I don't know. We'll. We'll see. Oh, visions of you. Like a pink caravan, you know, going around the UK providing in person seminars.

I could do. I think a pink Dog Tooth Fairy campervan would be awesome. That'd be great, wouldn't it? Well, obviously people can catch up with you online. Do you say you had a Facebook group? Do you still have a Facebook presence? Yes, there's my Facebook. You'll just find me Facebook Dogtooth Fairy on, on social media. But anybody who purchases a webinar, you will get into my private Facebook support group anyway, so it's, it's worthwhile getting a webinar even just to get access to the support. Yeah, yeah, brilliant.

Well, thanks for coming on and telling us about any bet for those that haven't come across it and then updating us with your, with your webinar. Thank you so much, Bill. You're welcome. See you soon. I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. Please make sure you give us a like or a review to help people find it. The podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Head over to www.lopay.com to find out more about their payment solution.