3 Business Principles I Learned the Hard Way (Part Two)

All right. So number two, trust but verify. I thought this was a great aha moment. And basically what I realized was that yes, I should trust what my clients are saying. Yes, I should trust what other groomers are telling me. Yes, I should trust what the vet is saying, but I need to verify that. And what ends up happening is a lot of times we just trust someone's word or we trust someone's integrity.

For instance, if you get a check from a client, you know you're trusting that they are going to cash that, you know, make sure it's for the right amount. Make sure when you get money, it's for the right amount. Yes, trust, but make sure you verify what they're doing.

I can't tell you how many times I see in posts on Facebook groups talking about how someone shorted them some money, how someone wrote money out for the wrong amount. And this of course could be just a mistake, but it also could be someone seeing what they can get away with. Another great example of trust but verify is in vet notes. Recently I was talking to one of my cat groomer friends and she mentioned that she had one of the most matted cats she's ever done.

She's done thousands and thousands and thousands of cats. Like she's groomed thousands of cats. And this is one of the most matted cats she's ever groomed. Now, when she got the vet notes, the cat had been to the vet within the last couple of weeks, it mentioned nothing about the matting. And to me that's really weird.

If I'm a veterinarian and I get a cat in and the cat is basically a turtle shell, you'd think that I would put some notes in or something. But they didn't put any notes on the cat's health. They mentioned the cat had a little bit of dry skin, but mostly healthy. Well, that dry skin was a pelt and lots of dead skin cells.

So again, she got a vet report saying a cat was mostly healthy except a little dry skin, which she instead got was this incredible turtle shell. So again, trust what the vet says, but verify. Now, if she had just promised that customer, based on those vet notes, said, oh, the vet is saying the cat's not matted, no big deal, well then she could've gotten herself in a lot of trouble because she would've had this cat and it's a much more expensive groom because it's pelted versus if the cat was just a little bit dry skin, right?

Same thing with your employees. You want to make sure that they are doing what you say, but double check their work. One of the biggest things I see happening with you guys with employees is that you just trust them implicitly, which is great until something goes wrong. For instance, even when I'm grooming, I like to take before and afters.

If I had somebody in the van with me, I would love to see them double check my work. Why? Because I'm not perfect. And they're going to notice something that I didn't see. Because I've been looking at it too long, right? One of my favorite things about when I had my shop was that we would have the receptionist who would verify or double check the dogs.

It was so nice because what would happen is when you're a groomer and you're done, you're on the fence of like, am I done? Am I not done? Like when's good enough? They could go ahead, put the dog away, the receptionist would come out, look at the dog and say, you know what? Can you just soften this line?

Or, you know what? This hair had fluffed out. Can you fix this? And it allowed her, the receptionist to both trust that groomer and know that she's not going to do something outrageous. She's not going to forget a whole leg, although I have done that on Thanksgiving. But she's going to go ahead and look at what's going on. And the same thing with our customers, right? You want to trust them, you want to verify.