Training in the Pet Grooming business is the one thing most salon owners underestimate, until it’s too late. Jennifer Oppel has seen it firsthand: outdated methods don’t just fail your groomers, they quietly hold your entire business back.
Pet grooming businesses don’t fail from lack of demand; they fall apart when training does.
Jennifer Oppel knows this better than most. With 35 years in grooming and 25 years running her own salon, she’s lived every version of that breakdown.
In this conversation, she gets straight to the point — outdated, informal training systems in the pet grooming space is still quietly running the industry, and it’s no longer good enough. But she doesn’t stop at the problem. She walks us through exactly how structured systems, clear milestones, and documented progress can pull a chaotic salon out of survival mode and into something that actually scales.
Let’s begin…
I’ve been a groomer for 35 years and a salon owner for 25. And, I came into the industry the same way a lot of people did back then: I was good with dogs, didn’t have a clear career path in front of me, and I was taken under the wing of an experienced groomer who helped me get a job in a salon. The good thing was that I learned by working alongside multiple groomers and picking things up as I went.
That was the industry’s culture at the time. It’s also exactly why I built Growing Groomers. I was trained in a way that was common then, but that model is no longer sustainable. Growing Groomers was built to solve the same problems I experienced as a learner and the same problems salon owners faced when trying to train people 35 years ago.
So what was the moment, or maybe a series of moments, that made you think, “I need to build something specifically for this industry”? What really sparked Growing Groomers into existence?
Yes, indeed, it wasn’t one single moment. It was a pattern I saw over and over again. As I kept training people the same way I had been trained, I started noticing patterns in who made a good groomer, who made a good learner, and who made a good employee. That pushed me to think more intentionally about how to choose the right candidates.
Then, with each new person I trained, I got clearer on the order, structure, and sequence that worked best for most learners. Eventually, I realized I was repeating the same explanations over and over, so I started documenting them online.
That changed everything. New trainees no longer had to rely on me standing next to them and repeating every task and every reason behind it. By the time they came to me for hands-on instruction, they already had the vocabulary, the foundation, and the context.
That started speeding up training in a meaningful way, and Growing Groomers grew organically from there.
You’ve spent a lot of time working side by side with pet grooming teams on the ground level. What were some of those early, defining experiences that changed the way you think about running and growing a salon?
One of the biggest turning points for me was seeing the power of written documentation.
Once I had clear records of what training an employee had received, I no longer had to rely on memory or guesswork. I could see progression, plateaus, and whether someone had been given the information — and whether they were actually applying it.
That changed how I made decisions as an employer. Instead of relying on feelings, assumptions, or frustration, I had something concrete to work from. That was a defining shift in how I viewed training, leadership, and business growth.
At some point, you clearly identified that training — not just talent — was the missing piece in the pet grooming space. When did that click for you, and what were you seeing in salons that made it so obvious?
It clicked when I saw that people who were trained inside a structured system were often more open to brand standards and more willing to follow them than people who simply came in with experience.
Experience alone was not the answer. The real difference was whether someone had been trained with intention, accountability, and consistency. That’s when it became obvious that training in the pet grooming segment was the missing piece.
Your background in education is a big part of what makes your approach distinctive. How has that shaped the way you think about training pet groomers compared to how the industry has traditionally done it?
I actually don’t come from a formal education background. In fact, I’m a groomer who got curious enough to build a better pet grooming training system because I refused to accept that outdated training was just “how this industry is.”
Yes, the problem is systemic in grooming, but building capable staff is not impossible. I approached training by asking better questions, looking for patterns, and creating a process that could be repeated. That mindset shaped everything I built.
Staffing is one of the biggest pain points we hear about across the grooming world. In your experience, why do so many salons struggle to build a stable, reliable team — even when the owner is doing everything they think is right?
Because most owners are doing what they were taught and how they were taught. They’re not wrong. Their training is just incomplete.
Over the last two decades, salon owners have taken on more responsibility, but the support, systems, and business infrastructure around this industry have not kept up. So now you have owners trying to lead teams with tools that were only designed to help them survive as individuals.
You talk a lot about “owner-dependent” salons. Paint us a picture of what that actually looks like day to day — what does life feel like for an owner who’s trapped in that cycle?
An owner-dependent salon feels fragile. The owner is carrying too much of the operation, and the margin for error is tiny.
Just think, if you have one employee and that person calls out, you’ve lost 50% of your workforce. And, if you have four employees and one calls out, you’ve lost 25%, which is still disruptive but much easier to absorb. The smaller the team and the more the business revolves around the owner, the harder the owner’s job becomes. Then, when they do start adding people, they run into a whole new layer of work: training, managing, accountability, and systems. That’s where many owners struggle to transition.
And when training in the pet grooming space is inconsistent or left to chance, how does that ripple outward? What does it do to the quality of service clients receive, and ultimately, to whether they come back?
Inconsistent training creates inconsistency everywhere.
If the owner keeps everything in their head, there’s no real way to know who was taught what, when they were taught it, or whether they understood it. That means expectations become blurry, performance becomes uneven, and quality becomes harder to maintain.
In addition, it also leaves the owner without the documentation needed to make sound business decisions. When you can’t reliably develop people inside a specific timeline, it becomes almost impossible to build a dependable employee pipeline, and that affects the client experience too.
Owner burnout is something you bring up often, and it’s clearly something you’ve witnessed up close. What are the patterns you keep seeing — the signs that tell you an owner has hit a wall, even if they haven’t admitted it to themselves yet?
The worst burnout creeps up slowly. It’s like the frog-in-a-pot analogy.
At first, it feels like a busy week and normal exhaustion. Over time, it turns into mental and physical fatigue that takes days to recover from, and even that recovery is never enough. One of the clearest signs is when owners keep reaching out for help with one employee after another but never address the bigger pattern.
Another big sign is when they say, “I can’t let this person go because they do too many dogs.” That usually tells me the team is too small, the operation is too owner-dependent, and the owner is stuck in survival mode.
Many owners instinctively respond to team problems by hiring more people in their grooming salons. Why doesn’t that solve the underlying issue, and what does it sometimes make worse?
Because more people do not fix a broken system. If a manager is already overwhelmed, adding employees who are unsafe, inconsistent, or unproductive only increases the strain. Hiring more people into a weak training environment is like adding more salt to a recipe that already has too much salt. It doesn’t solve the problem but amplifies it.
Let’s talk about what you’ve actually built. For someone hearing about Growing Groomers for the first time, how would you describe it — and what’s the core problem it was designed to solve?
Growing Groomers is a business support system to help salon owners train people from the ground up in a more consistent, credible, and repeatable way. It helps salons train for their brand. It creates structure around what new hires are learning, when they are learning it, and how progress is being measured.
However, the end goal is not just to train one person. It is to create a pipeline of employees and, eventually, a mentorship culture where previous trainees can reinforce the same process for the next group. It was built to help pet grooming salons get out of the struggle cycle caused by poor-quality, inconsistent training.
Your pet grooming Salon Success System gets a lot of attention. How is it genuinely different from the grooming education or business courses that already exist out there?
The Salon Success System is different because it does not just teach information. It documents training, tracks employee progress, and ties development to clear expectations and milestones. In addition, it gives the salon owner written evidence of whether someone is progressing or not.
That means employment decisions can be based on fact instead of emotion. It also removes the need for owners to document everything after the fact. The system keeps the owner accountable to continue training and keeps the trainee accountable to learn specific skills within a defined timeframe. That clears up a huge amount of the gray area that normally exists in pet grooming education.
Traditional pet grooming training has always been around shadowing — watching and picking things up over time. Why does structured training outperform that model, especially for long-term results?
Structured training works better because the learner knows exactly what skills they need, what the expectations are, and how progress connects to growth and wages. When those skill sets are documented, everyone is on the same page. That makes the process easier to repeat, easier to manage, and easier to scale.
And once several employees have come through the same system, you create internal mentors. Those employees still have room to grow, but now they also have the opportunity to reinforce the training process for others, which increases engagement and job satisfaction. That’s how long-term results become a routine matter.
Who tends to benefit the most from your system? Is it the solo owner just getting started, the mid-size salon trying to scale, or someone else entirely?
There are several ways my system can fit.
For example, it can help the salon owner who has just hired their first employee and needs structure immediately. It can also help a mid-size salon that is trying to scale enough for the owner to step back and take a paycheck. And it can support larger salons that want to bolt on a reliable training program to build a talent pipeline, create stronger mentorship, and add credibility through apprenticeship models.
What do the first few months actually look like for a salon owner who commits to implementing your system, and what kind of shifts do they start to notice?
One of the first things they should notice is a higher quality of applicants. When an owner can clearly explain what a trainee will go through, what the milestones are, and how the process works, it changes who is attracted to the role. People who are not serious often self-select out early. People who are accountable and committed tend to stay, ask questions, and engage with the process. That alone changes the tone of hiring and early-stage training.
Your apprenticeship program holds state registration, which is uncommon in this industry. What led you down that path, and why did it matter to you to pursue that level of legitimacy?
Pursuing apprenticeship registration mattered because I wanted this work to stand on stronger ground. The registration process has connected me with a higher level of colleagues and support, and it moves the industry closer to legitimate funding opportunities that could help support pet grooming training in a field that has long been underserved. It also brings credibility and accountability to the work.
Walk us through how a structured progression model changes the experience for a new groomer. What does that journey look like when it’s done right?
At Growing Groomers, a new groomer moves through a deliberate process.
They are shown exactly what skills they need to learn, and the right candidate is excited by that because it makes the path tangible. The right learner wants to see the list. They want deadlines and want to know what they are working toward. When training is done right, they are not just learning how to hold clippers or use shears. Instead, they are developing skills that make them employable in the workforce.
And in the case of our apprenticeship model, they can complete a program that leads to a certificate of completion that can be validated through the state of Missouri. That is very different from a certificate of attendance from a trade show class, which does not verify consistent skill or demonstrated competence.
Milestones and tracking systems can sound administrative, but you clearly see them as essential. What role do they play in actually developing a groomer’s confidence and skill?
Milestones matter because they give people something visible to aim at. Every time a trainee reaches one, they have earned confidence. They have earned the right to say, “I can do this skill.” Without milestones, training is like bowling without being able to see the pins. No one wants to play that game. Tracking progress is not pointless paperwork. It is what makes growth real, visible, and measurable.
A lot of owners feel like finding experienced pet groomers is nearly impossible right now. Is building talent from within a realistic alternative — and what does that require from an owner?
Yes, building talent from within is a realistic alternative, but it requires structure.
In a survey I conducted, the issue was not simply the lack of experienced pet groomers. It was the lack of experienced groomers who met the owner’s quality expectations. That tells me the industry needs clearer standards for what different levels of groomers should be able to do. We have to start somewhere, and that is why I began defining levels and building structured progression.
What are the most common mistakes you see salon owners make when they try to train someone on their own, without a system in place?
The most common mistake is not putting a time limit on skill development. Without a timeframe, employees can stay unproductive far too long. When both the trainer and the trainee know there is a deadline for learning and development, things get real. Expectations become clear, accountability improves, and progress becomes easier to measure.
Beyond the individual pet groomers, what does consistent training do for the business itself — for revenue, for growth, for the owner’s ability to eventually step back?
Consistent training strengthens the business. It allows owners to plan hiring with more confidence, develop new hires on a more predictable timeline, and build toward future goals instead of constantly reacting. That creates more stability, more growth potential, and a better path for the owner to step back from being the only person holding everything together.
When a salon installs real systems and structure, what tends to happen to the culture of the team? How do the dynamics shift?
Team culture usually gets stronger. When people are trained through a clear system, they tend to be more loyal because the business has invested in them in a meaningful way. They also tend to carry less entitlement because they have earned their role rather than simply being handed a title. The people who make it through the process know what it took to get there, and that changes the culture.
There’s a big difference between an owner who runs their salon and a leader who grows it. How does an owner begin making that transition — and what has to change in the way they think, not just in what they do?
An owner who is just running a salon is still focused mostly on tasks: grooming, clients, payroll, hiring, and putting out fires. A leader has to start thinking in systems. Systems are what control chaos.
Once an owner starts leading through systems, policies, and standards instead of personal opinion or memory, they become a true representative of the business rather than just the person carrying it. That shift is what allows them to see the bigger ecosystem of staff, clients, growth, and operations, and that is what sustains growth long-term.
For the owner reading this who feels completely buried in the day-to-day — juggling appointments, covering shifts, answering every question — what would you want them to hear from you right now?
Get help from someone who can help pull you out of the pit, not just someone who will hand you one more Band-Aid. If you are constantly asking one-off questions like whether to fire someone or reprimand someone, you are probably treating symptoms instead of solving the real problem. Long-term solutions require perspective, structure, and guidance from people who have already found a sustainable way through.
25. As we wrap up, we’d love to hear your bigger vision. Where do you see structured grooming education taking this industry in the years ahead — and what role do you hope Growing Groomers plays in that future?
I would like to see structured grooming education bring real relief to metropolitan areas and eventually to the industry as a whole. Whether that comes through strong salon-based training programs, dedicated training facilities, or multiple salons training in a similar way, I believe it can create a stronger talent ecosystem. I see Growing Groomers and apprenticeship models as part of that path.
It will not be easy. It will be rocky, and there will be big hills to climb. But this industry has to start somewhere, and I believe Growing Groomers can help create continuity and credibility as that future takes shape.
Finally, Jennifer, for anyone who wants to learn more about your work or explore what Growing Groomers offers, where’s the best place for them to find you and get started?
Anyone who wants to learn more can visit GrowingGroomers.com or PetGroomingApprenticeship.com. And if they have questions, they can reach out to me directly at [email protected].
Jennifer, thank you sincerely for your time, your candor, and the depth of insight you brought to this conversation. It has been a genuine pleasure.
Readers, Jennifer Oppel is not simply teaching grooming — she is reshaping the way business owners think about their craft and their future. Through her work with Growing Groomers, one principle becomes unmistakably clear: sustainable growth begins the moment an owner transitions from relying on memory to building systems that function independently of their presence.
The grooming industry is not lacking in talent. What it has long been missing is structure — and that is precisely the gap Jennifer is committed to closing. With a focus on accountability, operational clarity, and purposeful direction, she is helping business owners build something that does not just survive but scales.
We wish Jennifer continued success in her mission, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to share her story.
