Location: Oxnard, CA
Established: November 2007
Employees: 2

Dog and cat grooming, pet shop and pet grooming training

After working for 27 years in another industry and surviving a bout with cancer, Nancy decided she wanted to start over and do something more satisfying and more fun. She had done dog grooming for extra money during high school and college, and began to pursue opportunities starting with a job at a Burbank grooming business.

When an Oxnard shop came on the market, Nancy knew it was for her. She took over the 14 year old business in 2007 and started building it up from a distressed condition. When Nancy’s business started picking up, and she realized she didn’t have the equipment to keep up the pace, she applied to WEV for a loan. She is growing and has achieved a loyal following with her customers.

What has been your biggest business challenge?
Every company has a challenge—mine is finding the perfect employees. If you have a nice, warm place to work and are good to your employees, they’ll be here with you.

What does success mean to you?
My biggest business success I think is now having people book regularly: they come back month after month, you run into them at other stores, in the community, and they’re always saying, “Oh, my dog is just looking so great.”

Success to me means being able to retire one day – and be able to hand the business down to my sons. Meanwhile I would really like to have this up and running and eventually open another one. And I’m working on a line of products: my own dental line for dogs, creating a dental toothpaste—that’s already in the process. So hopefully I will be talking with WEV again.

The biggest reward that I get from my business is when customers bring in the dog, and say “Can you help us?” And when they come back, this dog has just been turned into this amazing, beautiful little dog. It’s so neat to have people come up to you in the community and say, “We just love you.” And I just love that. It’s so rewarding having this business.

Who is your ideal customer?
My ideal customer is the customer who rebooks every month, who doesn’t cancel on you, comes here rain or shine. When you’re doing a good job, and you’re sending out their dog in perfect form, and they love it, they’ll keep coming back to you every month.

What has been the biggest surprise about owning a business?

One thing about business is that you always have surprises that happen. You have to dedicate yourself to seven days a week in a business—almost eat, sleep, and breathe your business for the first year; that is the way you’re going to get to know your business.

How do you juggle all the pieces of your life and make it all come together?
You really have to try and start to be organized when you have your own business. Organization skills that you learn from WEV come in really big-time. You have your family, you’re still cooking, you’re still doing the laundry, but also you have the responsibilities of a business. It doesn’t just stop when you close the doors at 5 o’clock: then you’ve got to go home, and you’ve got to do the bookwork, the up-keeping, the banking, plus you have community events that you’re going to because you’re promoting, you’re advertising…so organization skills come in handy.

How did WEV help you achieve your goal or dream?
WEV gave me an opportunity to go for my dream. I had made a business plan, and they helped me perfect it. And so when I was able to go to the banks or able to talk to the people who were going to help me get into business, I had something professional to present. And they saw that I knew what I was doing -  it gave them more confidence in giving me the money to get started.

After I went through the program, and I was learning all these neat things,  I really needed the equipment—these scissors are $300! And with all I’d learned, I was ready to go back to WEV for a loan. What a difference having that loan money to get this equipment has made.

So I really want to give a big thanks to the WEV program. Anybody that’s thinking it’s a hard course, you just stick with it, and you don’t give up, and you just keep on going because the benefits that it does give are great. Whether you go into business or not, it is great to go through this program just so you have those skills for future uses.

Is there something that you learned from WEV that you use every day?
What I learned from the Self-Employment Training [course] was how to deal with customers. Your customers are very important, and right now good customer service is rare. So customer service, telephone skills, bookkeeping skills…these are things that I use almost every day in business.

What advice do you offer other women who might want to start their own company?
Go for it. You can’t be afraid of failure: if you fail, you just pick up the pieces, and you try again. You just go forward, you go with your dream. You always will say, “Well, what if?” Well, what if you did do it—you can always say well, I did do it, and it did work out. If you have a dream, you go after it.

Photography courtesy of Julie Callahan