Home Based Business Opportunities

How to Start a Home-Based Pet Care Business (Home-Based Business Series) Do you love animals? Have you ever dreamed of making them your life’s work? Have you ever imagined yourself as a groomer, a dog walker/pet sitter, or an obedience trainer? This comprehensive book contains all the necessary tools and success strategies you will need to launch and grow your own home-based pet care business. Author Kathy Salzberg, a successful home-based groomer, shares her experience and down-to-earth advice on every aspect of setting up and running a thriving home-based business. Throughout these pages she will show you how to develop a business plan, estimate your start-up costs, price your services, and stay profitable once you’re in business. From painless record keeping to savvy marketing techniques, her step-by-step methods are realistic, innovative, and easy to understand. From advice on zoning and insurance to pet grooming and health issues, this guide can help you experience the satisfaction of building your won home-based business. Learn all about: what it takes to be a professional groomer, dog walker/pet sitter, or obedience trainer; attracting clients and gaining their trust; equipping your home office and shop; pricing competitively; setting your daily schedule; building your reputation; managing growth. The following special features as well as workbook pages are included: business registration form; sample business plan; sample client card; sample grooming menu; pet sitter’s service contract; obedience trainer’s contract; business opening press release; advertising and promotion checklist. (7 x 10, 288 pages, business forms, charts)
Customer Review: Very Informative, Well Written Book.
There are two main aspects to a home-based Pet Care business, or in fact to just about any business. First is the part of the business that is special to the particular business. For a pet care business this includes such things as grooming equipment that is unique to this business as opposed say to starting a car repair shop. Second is the standard rules fo business. For instance, what do you need in the way of business licenses, will you be a corporation, what about insurance — all that stuff. This book draws a nice balance between the two requirements.

There’s only one point I would do differently, not so much differently as with a greater emphasis. That is: Get a Computer. You don’t need the latest and fastest, I bought quite an acceptable computer at a thrift shop for $75. Then get some accounting software. When they get around to questioning you, the IRS will look at computer generated reports with a lot more acceptance than they will at any manual system. QuickBooks is a good package (there are others). The latest version will cost you two or three hundred dollars. Or you can buy last year’s version on eBay for about a hundred, or the year before that for about $65. Each year buy an income tax package, about $20. Do your own taxes and then have an accountant go over them. You can type stuff into the package just as well as he can and he will charge you a bunch.

All in all the book is very well written, the authors clearly understand the business. The writing style is clear and informative. Highly recommended.