You Don’t Have to Do It All On Your Own

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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.

Hi, everyone and welcome back to this next podcast Trust. It's just me today. Thank you for listening. I hope you're enjoying the the show. If you are, then please go and leave us a review. Just some leave some stars. And obviously tell your grooming friends about us as well. You can also vote for us. We're nominated for the Liz Paul Awards this year at the World Grooming Conference. So go to the Total Grooming magazine site and you'll see how you can vote for us. It'd be great to win the award once again and it shows me that people are obviously listening and then they're enjoying the content.

So thank you for that and thank you for the nomination as well. So today I just wanted to pop in and talk about a email that I read the other day. So I read an email from a guy called Daniel Priestley. He's a very famous business coach out there and actually his father, Andrew Priestley was one of our, one of our coaches when we first started getting going. And the email we resignated, the email really made me think, I can't remember what the word is, but made me think about how in business we often believe that we have to do everything as a business owner.

And I was actually having this thought the other day when I was driving home from school drop off thinking I need to issue this invoice and I need to sort out this direct debit and I need to do this, I need to do that. And I was like, hold on, I've got, I've got a virtual assistant that I use. I need to delegate that out. But also I sometimes sit here and think, oh, I need, how do I do my next bit of marketing? How what can I do to attract more clients, you know, and stuff like that.

And again, we sit here and we sort of try and think up the solutions, we try and solve the problems ourselves. And I think this is quite indicative of how we are raised as children and how quite often we think that we have to do everything. I find I'm the same with DIY as well. I've somehow I feel I should be born with all the skills on how to cut a 45 inch, a 45 angle on a piece of wood and stuff like that. This is all stuff that none of Us are actually taught.

And I love the saying, you don't know what you don't know. So the email, what Daniel Priestley was saying in his email and what made me think was when we, when we were at school and you know, as we're growing up and when we're at school, I don't know whether you remember sitting at your school desk and you had to answer some questions and used to put your arm around your piece of paper and with your pen so that your neighbor, the person next to you, couldn't copy you.

And school was very much encouraging us to be independent, obviously, but obviously there was classwork. But when it came to doing our own homework and our own answers to questions and doing exams, we were not allowed to actually ask anyone else for the answers or allowed to ask for help to find the answers. And I think this is actually, if you're coming into entrepreneurship and you're coming into business ownership, I think that's quite damaging because we see it a lot in with the, with pet groomers. You know, you go and do your pet groomer training, then all of a sudden you're trained pet groomer.

You know, you know how to do your haircuts, your nail trims, you're brushing out your washing and stuff like that. But all of a sudden you're given this hat that says if you go out to run your own business, you're given this hat saying, I am now a pet groomer and a business owner. You know, and all of a sudden you kind of like the whole weight of the world is put on your shoulders. You're now expected to be your website designer, your salesperson, your marketing person, your graphic designer, your, you know, your pricing person, your accountant, your bookkeeper.

You, you, you've just gotten done a course on learning how to be a pet groomer and all of a sudden you've got to be everything to your business. And I think, you know, a lot of people have a barrier here where they struggle to, to reach out and ask for help because we are taught, you know, growing up, we're taught that we have to be self sufficient and self reliant. And if we ask for help in school, you know, we can be accused of cheating, we can have our grades reduced if it's during an exam, we can be ex.

I don't think people get expelled anymore for this sort of stuff. But you, you get into trouble, go on to detentions and stuff like that. So school teaches us to be very insular and you know, not reach out for help. And not ask for for help because it teaches us that if we ask for help, we get into trouble. This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Low pay is half the price of sum up and zettle so you keep more the money that you earn rate. Starts at 0.79% now you do get into trouble in business if you don't ask for help.

That's definitely, you know, I would not be sitting here, I would not be in business, I would not be sitting here helping other pet grooming businesses if I did not have mentors. You might. My mentors are a critical friend to my business. I reach out to them. You know, I try and attend a coaching call or a mentor session every week. Even if, you know, even if things are going great, even if I don't have any questions for them or there's nothing that I really need to work on.

It's just really nice to sit there and listen to other business owners, other entrepreneurs talk about the ideas that they're coming up with, the, the problems that they're coming up against, or even just listening to a bit of thought leadership from our coach.

And it inspires you and it helps you and it prevents that procrastination and stops you from stalling in your business. And, and trust me, when you get those mindset wobbles, and they do come in business, you know, we all have mindset wobbles. We all worry, we all sort of get concerned. There's nothing nicer than sharing those mindset wobbles, those concerns, those worries with someone else. Problem shared is a problem. Half. Hopefully you've heard of that, that saying and the relief that you have when you then just unloading onto someone else who just says, yeah, I hear you.

Yeah, I've been there. I get you. Okay, let's think about what we can do. Why don't we do X, Y and Z. And it gives you some action to go and take, take away and, and start implementing in your business. Sometimes there's not a magic bullet. Sometimes, you know, the Titanic or the, the ship is a very big ship to start turning around. But having those, those sessions with the mentors and coaches and discussing what the issues are and then having someone else look at them from the outside and show you the answers that you just can't understand or get because you're too busy in the weeds, you're too busy in the trenches fighting for your business.

And then your coach and mentor comes along and says why haven't you done this? Or have you thought of that? And why, why Are you doing it that way when you could do it? Be looking at it this way, you know, and it's just like, oh my God, it's like an epiphany at times. So school really screws us up, I suppose. When it comes to entrepreneurship and business ownership, quite often we're taught not to ask for help. Maybe we're also taught by our parents not to ask for help, you know, not to whinge and, and don't moan and figure out yourself and stuff like that.

Facebook groups, are they helpful? Obviously I have a very big Facebook group and, you know, I try and impart advice, but when people ask a question, actually like a pricing question, I'm sure you see like the ranges of prices that you get. A Labrador price could range from like 35 pounds all the way up to 70, 75. And I had a client yesterday do a Labrador for 75, 70 pounds. So the ranges can like range vastly. And, and you asking the question, how does that help you?

You know, are you going to be brave and go for that 70 pound Labrador or are you going to sort of go in the middle and go, well, maybe I'll ask for 45, 50 at a real push. So is that Facebook group really helping you? You know, and there are some people out there that do get their advice from Facebook groups and can sort of weed out the advice they don't want and, you know, implement the advice that they do want. I certainly have experience of groomers doing that where they've used the advice on the podcast here and the Facebook group to grow their business, like a lot in the last two years.

So, you know, some people can definitely do that. But Facebook groups are very difficult when it comes to getting advice because it's very conflicting. We are as human beings, we do have a negative bias. So we quite often air on negativity or on, you know, we, we do air our fears when it comes to pricing and stuff. So sometimes it's just nice having that coach or that mentor or that positive community around you to reach out to and get guidance, advice, sympathy at times, and celebration as well.

So, you know, let's think back to our past and let's think about our schooling and how we were brought up. You know, have we been conditioned not to ask for help? And is your business flatlining or is it stalling or are you just generally unhappy with having to do the daily grind and not really seeing the returns on it? Well, maybe reaching out to and asking for some help might just turn that dial and start moving your business in a different direction. So have a think about that.

And obviously you know, if you need help with your green business, I'm here. The Pet Grooming business program is here to help you as well. But business is truly a team game. So the quicker we get our heads around that, the quicker we start moving forwards, the quicker we start getting rid of this disappointment disillusion and start working on our mindset. So yeah, I just wanted to give you these sort of thoughts that I had following reading that email about how school doesn't really set us up for success when it comes to business.

Hope you enjoyed that very quick one. A quick sort of quick podcast for you to ponder on. Let me know your your thoughts. Drop me a DM if you want to. You can leave comments on the podcast. Again, thank you very much for nominating me for the Liz Paul Awards. Please go and vote for the podcast if you're enjoying it. Please subscribe so you get the updates. And please tell your groomer friends as well. Let's help as many people as we possibly can. All right, Take care.

Have a good day. See you all 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.blowpay.com to find out more about their payments solution.