The Madson Million Dollar Miracle
Cost Efficient Strategies without Lowering Wages or Quality

Note: In late 2006 Grooming Business in a Box will have a dedicated CD-ROM and User Guide on this subject making this subject as simple as A, B, C through easy step-by-step course studies. Hundreds of grooming business owners have been provided this training one-on-one consultations and workshops. Here is a short discussion.

The Million Dollar Miracle - Cost Efficient Strategies for Grooming Labor

Everyone knows that most grooming businesses cannot charge grooming fees that truly compensate groomers for the hard work of grooming pets. That should be the number one goal of a unified pet grooming industry, but we are not. In fact, many groomers don't even talk to other so-called "competitors" in their area. How often we forget as an industry that there are 5,000 dogs and cats for every grooming business. Perhaps if we were vocationally licensed as a profession we could justify better grooming fees to millions of pet owners. That's always been the premise of PetGroomer.com's founder, Madeline Bright Ogle, author of From Problems to Profits in Grooming. However, no state in the U.S. has yet to license pet groomers.

Under these circumstances it becomes all the more important for grooming business owners to maximize "the bottom line" of their financial performance by managing operating costs, especially labor. Most grooming businesses spend too much on gross payroll wages. Wait a moment! Don't leave this page because you think we are for lowering wage levels! We are NOT saying that your wage levels are too high! Indeed, we always offered above average wages in our market area, and many clients using our management consultation services offer very attractive wages. Currently some offer $800 a week to full-time productive groomers. In the example below we are paying $21 an hour to a highly-skilled full charge groomer, and that's a great wage rate today in most major metropolitan areas. Your hourly wage rates are relative to your average service fees depending upon the market area for your business. Therefore, in some areas the same groomer could conceivably earn $15 an hour and not $21 when average grooming fees are less than those shown in the example below. Let's get back to our point, most businesses simply spend too much on gross payroll wages, and go one step further.

The financial problem behind excessive gross payroll wages is how most owners assign grooming tasks every work day and the application and proper use of "assistant groomers." Madeline Bright Ogle was the inventor of the "Madson Assistant Pet Trimmer" position all the way back in 1961. Not all business owners use the assistant positions to their highest efficiency, but it's usually far better than having no assistant grooming at all. Keep in mind the Madson Assistant Pet Trimmer is the only one standardized in the pet grooming industry, and published. Therefore, most grooming businesses using other assistant positions do so in many different ways, and that means, the financial results vary as well. As consultants we observe our clients' business operations and re-assign the grooming tasks and add a "Madson Asst. Trimmer" position correctly. Without lowering wages one cent (we make that point often as many people have a hard time believing us until they see the proof) and profit rises up to 30% from reduced gross payroll wages. Now we are looking at results that allow more grooming businesses to afford the provision of more employee benefits to full-time groomers, and making the grooming career more attractive to thousands. We know that there are thousands of open full-time positions for groomers, but can we expect them to be filled when most owners cannot afford benefits that help to keep career employees?

It's time to offer you some proof of our financial genius. For the first time we are publishing in the public domain excerpts of our financial planning offered previously only to our consultation clients. If you really want to learn more, and who wouldn't since we are often talking savings of $10,000 to $75,000 a year for medium to large salons, we can personally teach you to master our system, and add your genius as well. What would you pay to save that much a year? It's amazes our clients that more groomers are not beating on our doors to learn our system, but enough do and they break all the so called rules for running stable profitable grooming businesses. Who knows what excuses owners find to maintain the "old school" ways, but they do. We believe it is a result of our industry not being required to be certified or licensed to operate and wherein education is required to meet the standards of approval. If you are personally motivated to advance your management skills and master finance for grooming, start by reading From Problems to Profits and The Madson Pet Reporter publications, and consider a 2 day private consult on the West Coast for one-on-one training, or we can come to your business. You can even get a group together and share the costs.

We have had veteran grooming business owners tell us that in a 20 to 30 year career they could have saved $1 million dollars in their large salon using Madson Team Trimming and The Madson Management System. We tell them, "Don't look back. Get on the system now!" So we are going to call this illustration "The Madson Million Dollar Miracle."

In the example below your goal is to evaluate the "adjusted gross revenue" for 4 different staffing strategies to groom 24 complete trims and 8 bath only dogs in one work day. The bottom line varies from a low of $558 after paying gross payroll costs to the most efficient bottom line using Madson Team Trimming at $752. Imagine that! Can you believe it! No tricks, no favoritism, no lowering wages. Just by assigning grooming tasks more efficiently and using the Madson Asst. Trimmer position correctly, the owner earning $558 after paying gross wages could have earned $752. That's $194 a day more gross profit before other operating expenses. If the business is open 260 days a year, the owner could save $50,440 without lowering wages. In 20 years of operation the savings exceeds $1 million. We did it! We found groomers who wanted the good wages (relative to the market area). You can do it!