How LinkedIn Can Help Your Business

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Splash and Dash’s Story of Opening and the Ways We Use and Will Continue to Use LinkedIn to Better our Business

Company Values and Culture

Dan J. Barton is the founder of Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique–a pet franchise with big-box store capabilities like recurring revenue streams, innovating terminal software, but will always keep the mom and pop feeling by treating customers and their pets with dignity, love, and respect.

Our motto is, “Play Dirty. Live Clean.” We do this by providing monthly memberships for our customers. Our members can bring in their dog whenever they’re dirty for a pampering splash with our bathers and groomers, then can dash out happy and smelling great. We love it. Animals love it. Members love it.

LinkedIn

Objectives

  • Maintain a social media presence that operates on professionalism.
  • Find metrics of target audience to find mutually suitable candidates as shop owners.
  • Partner and foster business relationships with others in the pet industry.

Solutions

  • Develop LinkedIn network and share content.
  • Use Sales Navigator to focus efforts.

The Value of LinkedIn

  • Yielded more favorable marketing results.
  • Sales Navigator expedites sale targets.
  • Cost effective and takes minimal training.

Our Founding Story

Dan worked for 7 years with a gym franchise, and did so well, they asked him to come on as a CFO. The now, pet coach, ended up owning five different gym locations. Things were great.

Then, something changed.

Dan met a Yorkshire Terrier that would change his life, a Yorkie named Mercedes. The two grew inseparable and Dan found a new passion in his life–pampering and spoiling his dog. When Dan took Mercedes to big-name pet groomers, it just felt too industrial. It’s hard to drop the dog you love off with a stranger with a bad attitude and charges a bundle.

A vision formed in the pet parent’s mind. What if he could make his own company that brought the love, compassion, and pampering he gave his own dog, and turn this into a business?

Splash and Dash was born.

The business model provides a place where pet parents who want to treat their pets in a lap of luxury over the indifferent groomers at big-box locations can bring their pets, where they know trustworthy and loving people will be attending to their dog.

Dan implemented the business ideas learned in the gym franchise realm, and designed an innovative groomerie that is loving to animals, creates jobs, and helps inform customers on conscious healthy decisions for their pets.

“I look at their dogs as their children, their babies. I will give them the same type of care that I give my baby,” says shop owner Beverly-Jones Murphy in McKinney, Texas.

Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique expanded quickly and opened numerous locations across the states, and even a location in Australia. The company made the INC. 500 list three years in a row, and everyone is loving the unique services and products that Splash and Dash provides

At the corporate offices, every day was spent maintaining a quickly expanding pet franchise.  Since many of the shop owners were new to owning their own small business, training became the top priority.

The company is devoted to ensuring franchise owners’ success.

The Value of LinkedIn and the Sales Navigator

This is when LinkedIn became a crucial part of the company’s business plan. The company needed a social media platform where shared content was viewed under a more professional lens than other social media sites. LinkedIn was the answer.

Splash and Dash began sharing blog articles on just about every topic a pet owner, or shop owner could ever want to know about. They loved the results they were getting from LinkedIn so much, they decided to invest in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator package.

“The Sales Navigator helps us build professional relationships with those who might be interested in us,” Dan says. “I can share valuable information, and receive awesome insights every day. But I think most importantly it helps us, and others in the pet industry, be representatives of our passion.”

The company is planning on some major overhauls that include LinkedIn Sales Navigator as the forefront marketing tool in the New Year.

“LinkedIn is like the gift that keeps on giving. An initial investment goes a long way. You end up having this snowball effect for your business. The longer you work with it, the bigger it gets,” says Dan.

Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique applauds innovation and ways for small philanthropist business owners to get an edge over big-box stores, just like Splash and Dash did.

“We recommend it to our shop owners and anyone really who wants to capitalize on the brave new world of technology and social selling,” says Dan.

Franchise Opportunities; Six Ways to Handle Change in the Workplace

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Why Innovation is Important within Pet Franchise Opportunities 

A big change is taking advantage of franchise opportunities. Leaving the boundaries of the corporate world can be a stressful transition. The advantages of making the change are numerous. Franchise owners can create their own schedule, balance work and life, grow professionally, control who their colleagues are, and have the ability to work in an industry they’re passionate about. These are just a few reasons to explore franchise opportunities.

What is less known are the challenges–workplace changes.

Whether you are a current franchisee, future franchisee, or just trying to gain new information, understanding changes in the workplace, change is important. Changes in the workplace happen with new software, scheduling, and adaptation of marketing trends. Change is useful to stay competitive and increase productivity. But it also can be problematic when small businesses have a hard time adapting.

Innovation is a staple of business growth. Without making changes to business plans, a company or franchise location can become obsolete. A study done by the Center for Creative Leadership stated that the number one issue facing leadership today is “dealing with complex challenges.” Furthermore the study went on to say that the number one biggest challenge is “competency in dealing with change.”

As an shop owner who has invested in franchise opportunities, it is crucial to tackle challenges head on. Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique has a motto that states, “work on the company, not in it.”

This schematic allows the company to embrace change. Not just adapt, but innovate. This uniqueness is what has led the company to find success.  

Clearly Define Solutions

A common challenge for those invested in franchise opportunities is getting customer to see the value in products or services. Why would a customer want to utilize my store’s service, when big box companies can provide the same service?

The problem is clearly defined. I need customers to see the value of the service.

The solution is clearly defined. Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique is the only franchise opportunity offering monthly memberships with a package service that offers recurring revenue. To use a common expression, customers get more bang for their buck.

Service is unique and superior.

Be Adaptable and Trusting

Be wary of franchise opportunities that are not willing to assist you with inevitable challenges that small business owners face. A good franchisor should have an open door. There should be a built in system that helps shop owners innovate. Corporate offices should encourage and assist investors through the whole process of opening.

Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique not only provides a built in method of innovation, but works tirelessly to ensure that all locations are successful. When challenges arise the company works for ways to capitalize off the challenges, not just work around them.

Use Disparity to Your Advantage

A good product or service is not only functional, convenient, and affordable–it fills a market gap. Franchise opportunities that do not have significant strategic, cultural, environmental, or marketplace impact have a tendency to fail.

An example outside of the pet franchise is the possibility of self-driving cars. One day we might live in a world where we can fall asleep in our car in Miami, and wake up in New York City. Transformative entrepreneurs like Elon Musk invest billions into capitalizing on the disparity between manually driven cars and the future of automation. This product does not exist yet, and that is what makes it valuable.

The founder of Splash and Dash Groomerie & Boutique–Dan J. Barton–is applying the same entrepreneurial logic to the pet industry. Taking business models that have worked in other industries and applying them to the pet franchise is the formula that makes this company successful.

Franchise opportunities should  not only have a unique competitive edge, but aim to change the industry as a whole.

The same can be applied to your small business when facing change. Don’t wait for other minds to find market gaps.

Find them yourself.

Solutions Do not Happen Overnight. Be Patient.

Many entrepreneurs become anxiety ridden because the results of their hard work aren’t happening instantaneously. Even with modernization in full effect, solutions to fiscal problems will take some time.

A pet franchise opportunities problem could be, you began using a corporate promotional strategy that allots for a sale that tentatively places prices extremely low. Understanding that this is a method to draw customers into the business to explore the advantages of your store. Once they see the value, and a credibility of your products and service is created, then you can gain repeat visits. It takes an initial price gouging to make this process happen.

Successful business venturists have no illusions about taking on entrepreneurial projects. 1 in 10 small businesses fail. Failing to act and failing to change are the usual suspects of why these businesses fail. But even more so, failing to use patience to let calculated risks fall into place can also be hindering for business success.

Delegating Responsibility with Pet Franchise Opportunities

An important part of business is understanding what you’re good at, and what you’re not. Some entrepreneurs are great with back office numbers, and don’t necessarily need to outsource, or hire an accountant. Some are good at management and have natural leadership ability. Others have a propensity for public relations and marketing and can easily promote their business.

All of these are examples of aspects of owning your own small business or exploring franchise opportunities. Realizing you can’t do the job it will take a whole team to do is important. When business expands or develops new systems you will have to innovate with the change.

Small business owners need to learn to delegate.

Developing a team of individuals you can trust is essential to handling change. The infrastructure of your business may be based on a strong management team who can take care of operations when you are not on-site. Your participation is crucial to this development.

The goal of investing in franchise opportunities or opening a small business is to develop your investment until it is self-operating. Your team of staff should be relatively self-sufficient. Once this happens you can begin expanding, but delegation is key to adapting.

Embrace change.

The best companies are the ones driving this change–the ones forcing others to innovate. By following these steps in your business model you can stake a few steps above the game.

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