When Phoebe started dog grooming, she didn’t have a grand business plan.
She had reached a point where she knew she wanted something different.
She was tired of working around somebody else’s schedule, missing school drop-offs, school plays and the everyday moments that mattered to her.
So, in 2017, she left her job and decided to build something of her own.
Dog grooming felt like a natural fit. She had always loved animals, had grown up around dogs and wanted a business that could give her more flexibility.
What she didn’t realise at the time was just how much there was to learn beyond the grooming itself.
Starting Without Really Knowing the Numbers
Like many groomers, Phoebe started by focusing on getting customers through the door.
She began as a mobile groomer and, in her own words, was largely “winging it”.
She underestimated how long dogs would take, how much travelling between appointments would eat into the day and how important the quality of her equipment would become.
But when you’re starting out, every booking feels like a win.
So she took almost anyone.
Dogs miles apart from each other.
Jobs that took longer than expected.
Difficult dogs.
Matted dogs.
Whatever came in, she tried to make it work.
The diary started filling.
But a busy diary and a healthy business aren’t always the same thing.
From Mobile Grooming to Owning a Salon
Not long after starting, an opportunity came up to buy an existing grooming salon close to home.
Phoebe went for it.
At first, she planned to run both the salon and the mobile business at the same time.
She employed another groomer to work in the salon while she split her time between the two.
But once again, there wasn’t really a financial plan behind the decision.
Phoebe admits that she didn’t calculate the true cost of employing somebody. She simply paid the wage she thought was reasonable and tried to make sure enough dogs came through the salon to cover it.
At the time, that felt like enough.
But simply covering somebody’s wage isn’t the same as making the business profitable.
There are taxes, insurance, overheads, holiday pay, products, equipment and all the other costs attached to running a business.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the business owner needs to get paid too.
When Being Busy Still Isn’t Enough
Eventually, Phoebe found herself doing around eight dogs a day between two groomers.
A typical medium Cockapoo might have been around £40 to £45.
She could see what money was coming in, but she wasn’t really using those numbers to make decisions.
If the business earned a certain amount that week, she simply accepted that was what she had to work with.
There wasn’t a clear target.
There wasn’t a plan for what the business needed to generate.
And there certainly wasn’t much room for things going wrong.
Then life changed.
Phoebe separated from her partner and suddenly became responsible for the household bills herself.
At the same time, her employee went on maternity leave and the salon’s capacity dropped.
Customers drifted away.
Income fell.
The financial pressure increased very quickly.
Phoebe found herself using credit cards for everyday essentials such as fuel.
She wasn’t really paying herself.
The business was surviving, but it wasn’t giving her security.
Her solution at the time?
Do more dogs.
That was the only answer she could see.
Sometimes More Work Is Not the Answer
This is something we see regularly with grooming businesses.
When there isn’t enough money left at the end of the month, the immediate reaction is often:
I need more clients.
I need more dogs.
I need to work another day.
But there is a limit to how many dogs one person can physically groom.
And for Phoebe, that volume was already taking its toll.
Her wrists began causing problems.
Her back hurt.
She was working through dog after dog because she felt she had no other choice.
She was trying to solve a financial problem by increasing the amount of physical work she did.
And that can only go so far.
The Hard Part Wasn’t Knowing She Needed to Charge More
By the time Phoebe joined the Pet Groomer Business Programme in September 2023, she knew something had to change.
Increasing prices was part of the answer.
But knowing you should put your prices up and actually looking a client in the eye and asking for more money are two very different things.
For Phoebe, pricing brought up a huge amount of fear.
She worried about what clients would think.
She worried about confrontation.
She worried they would leave.
At one point, even asking an existing client whether they wanted to add teeth cleaning and a mud treatment to their dogs’ appointment felt overwhelming.
But she made the call.
The client said yes.
What had felt terrifying became a turning point.
It helped reinforce something important:
Offering an additional service isn’t about trying to squeeze money out of someone.
It is about recognising when you have something genuinely useful to offer and confidently giving the client the choice.
Making the Price Easier to Say
Another breakthrough came from something surprisingly simple.
An invoice.
Phoebe found it incredibly difficult to tell a customer that their groom was £70.
The number felt huge when she said it out loud.
So we tried breaking the service down.
Instead of one intimidating total, the invoice showed what had actually been provided.
The bath.
The groom.
The nails.
Any additional services.
Suddenly, Phoebe could see the value more clearly herself.
And if a client questioned the price, she had something in front of her that demonstrated exactly what had gone into the appointment.
The invoice wasn’t really about convincing the customer.
It helped Phoebe believe in her own pricing.
Fewer Dogs, Better Prices
Over time, things began to change.
Where many of Phoebe’s grooms had once been around the £40 to £50 mark, her prices have moved considerably.
Her Cockapoos are now around £70.
Shih Tzus and Lhasa Apsos are around £58.
She is also able to build additional services such as teeth cleaning into her diary.
Most importantly, she doesn’t need to cram as many full grooms into every day.
On shorter days she might groom four dogs.
On longer days, five or six depending on the mix of services.
She also deliberately tries to make her final appointment something lighter, such as a bath, nail appointment or teeth clean.
That means she can still generate good income without ending every day completely exhausted.
A £48 Puppy Package Became a £150 Service
One of the clearest examples of how much Phoebe’s thinking has changed is her puppy package.
She recently found an old notebook from the early days of the business.
In it, she had written down an idea for four puppy sessions for £48.
Today, the puppy package is £150.
And it sells.
Why?
Because clients aren’t simply buying four appointments.
They are buying the reassurance that somebody is going to take the time to help their puppy become comfortable with grooming.
Phoebe’s first puppy session may involve very little traditional grooming at all.
The puppy gets to explore.
They meet her.
They experience the salon.
They start building positive associations.
For a dog that could potentially need grooming for the next 10 or 15 years, that early experience matters.
Clients see the value in that.
One new customer even travelled past other groomers specifically because of the way Phoebe communicated with her.
She felt that Phoebe actually cared about her dog, rather than simply sending back a price.
That is the difference between selling a haircut and providing a professional service.
The Bigger Change Happened Outside the Salon
Increasing prices helped.
But Phoebe is very clear that earning more money was only part of the change.
The other part was learning what to do with it.
Previously, money simply came into her account and went back out again.
Now, every pound has a purpose.
Money is allocated for specific things.
There is money for the car.
Money for food.
Money being put towards future expenses.
Money being used to build a buffer.
Instead of waiting until something breaks and then putting it on a credit card, she is gradually planning ahead.
When she needed a new laptop, she saved for it.
The same thinking has applied to household items such as washing machines and fridge freezers.
Rather than assuming she could never afford them, she chose the next thing she wanted to buy and steadily saved towards it.
It sounds simple.
But when you have spent years reacting to financial emergencies, being able to plan for something can feel incredibly freeing.
Paying Off Debt and Taking Back Control
Phoebe is still working through the financial consequences of those harder years.
But now she has a plan.
She has already cleared one debt of around £900.
She has saved enough to clear an overdraft she had been living in for years.
She is working through the rest using a debt snowball approach.
And because her business now generates more without requiring endless extra dogs, progress is happening much faster than she expected.
The goal isn’t simply to become “rich”.
It is to have options.
To know that a broken washing machine doesn’t automatically mean another credit card.
To know you can take a day off.
To know you can reduce your hours without immediately panicking about money.
That is a very different kind of wealth.
Building the Business Around Your Life
Perhaps the biggest change of all is that Phoebe is beginning to redesign the business around the life she actually wants.
She owns a horse.
She has a daughter.
She has a dog.
And during winter, she found herself finishing work only to realise she still needed to walk the dog and sort the horse in the dark.
Her first instinct was dramatic.
Maybe she should close the salon.
Maybe grooming simply wasn’t flexible enough.
But instead of jumping into another big decision, she stopped and worked through the problem.
The answer was a split shift.
During winter, she can take a longer break in the middle of the day.
She can walk the dog.
Ride the horse.
Do the jobs that need daylight.
Then she can return to the salon later and finish the working day.
The income remains.
The dogs still get groomed.
But her life fits around the business much better.
That is one of the greatest benefits of understanding your numbers.
When you know what your business needs to generate, you can start making informed decisions about how you generate it.
Your Business, Your Rules
There is no perfect grooming business model.
One groomer might want a large salon and a team.
Another might want to work four short days each week.
Someone else might want to maximise income now so they can reduce their hours later.
The important thing is knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing.
For Phoebe, the journey has been about moving away from reacting.
Reacting to bills.
Reacting to customers.
Reacting to debt.
Reacting to a quiet week by squeezing more dogs into the diary.
Today, she is far more proactive.
She knows what she needs to earn.
She knows what she charges.
She understands why she charges it.
She is building financial buffers.
And she is beginning to make choices based on what she wants her life to look like.
Fear Keeps You Where You Are
When Bill asked Phoebe what the biggest thing she had learned was, her answer was simple:
Fear doesn’t get you anywhere.
Fear of putting your prices up.
Fear of talking about money.
Fear of changing the way you work.
Fear of trying something different.
Those fears can keep you trapped in exactly the same cycle.
Knowledge helps.
Support helps.
Having people around you who understand the industry helps.
But eventually, something still has to change.
For Phoebe, those changes didn’t happen overnight.
They happened one decision at a time.
One price increase.
One difficult conversation.
One debt payment.
One new system.
One boundary.
And gradually, the business started giving her something she hadn’t had for a long time.
Freedom.
Not freedom to stop working altogether.
Freedom to choose.
And ultimately, isn’t that one of the reasons so many of us start our own businesses in the first place?
