Charging for dog grooming: How much is enough?

Charging for dog grooming: How much is enough?

Are you working hard but never seem to be able to make enough money? Have you been told that groomers can’t make 6 figures?

I’m here to disprove this myth and teach you how to thrive in your business and personal life.

In my grooming and business coaching career, I’ve heard a lot of myths about how much money pet groomers should make:

Groomers can’t make much money. 

We’re not meant to be rich. 

We should just accept being poor.

I reject all of this.

Myth#1: Dog groomers can’t make 6 figures

To disprove this myth, let’s do a little exercise. 

Say you’re charging $50 per dog and want to make a gross income of $100,000 a year (before taxes, overhead, etc.). If you account for 2 weeks off (hopefully you’re taking at least that, if not more), you can make $100,000 by grooming 8 dogs per day 5 days a week. At this rate, you’ll only be taking in $2,000 a week, which may sound like a lot but probably is not enough once you factor in everything else.

I recommend to many of my clients to be charging closer to $100-$120 per dog. So let’s do this exercise again. At $100 per dog, 8 dogs per day 5 days a week, you’d be earning a gross $4000 a week or $200,000 a year. With this, you could have $100,000 of overhead and still be making a 6-figure income—without even needing to groom any additional dogs.

If you feel like charging $100-$120 per dog is impossible, I highly suggest you reach out to my students who have taken my price increase masterclass.  The average student raises their prices 20-30% and many of them have raised their prices by 50-100% while keeping their clients happy.  Want to know more about how to raise your prices and keep clients happy?  Check out my price increase masterclass: www.savvygroomer.com/pimc

Myth #2 You aren’t supposed to make money grooming, if you do it’s greedy.

As a proud greedy bitch with the podcast to support that, I want you to consider why you’ve decided earning money makes you greedy.  How much money can you earn before you are a greedy groomer?

Do you want to survive, live, or thrive?

At the Savvy Groomer, we teach our clients to use the survive, live, thrive method to help them answer the question: How much money is enough?

Survive

Surviving means keeping food on the table and paying your bills. Surviving means living paycheck to paycheck and just keeping your head above water. I’ll be honest—it is not fun to live here. You deserve more than this.

Live

Living means you have enough money to survive and you’re able to start getting comfortable. You can afford some creature comforts like going out to eat, signing up for Netflix and your favorite subscriptions, etc. Many people get stuck here because life is good enough. But there’s more than simply good enough.

Thrive

Thriving means you’re debt-free, have substantial savings, and can afford things like benefits. Thriving means not needing to worry about money. Instead, everything you do is a choice and you can do what makes you happy. 

So how much is enough?

Let’s do a little exercise.

Imagine how much money you need to just pay your bills. Write it down. This is how much you need to survive.

Then write down how much you need to live and be comfortable. This is how much you need to live.

Finally, write down how much you need to buy or pay off your house, pay off your debts, have benefits like health insurance and retirement, and have 6-12 months of personal expenses and business expenses in your account. This is how much you need to thrive.