Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lars Anderson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Lars, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

Starting a small business is hard work. The biggest takeaway I’d have for folks considering starting a business is this: It’s never a 1 man show. The people who may have told you they started their business completely by themselves, did everything themselves, etc, are more than likely trying to sell you something, like how you can do the same. The reality is that the help that family and friends can provide through their support is integral to early and continued success. As a quick example, I would still be working the same job I hated if it weren’t for my wife encouraging me to take the leap of faith required to go into entrepreneurship.

The key thing to remember is, nothing is free in this world. You get what you give.

When we started, in order to build brand awareness, and to get people talking about our business, spreading the word, etc: We did one simple thing. We offered free dog grooming to family and friends in exchange for google reviews. This had a variety of benefits. We were able to groom some dogs in our mobile dog grooming van with little to no pressure. We could figure out the best way to utilize our newly purchased equipment, we could figure out what equipment we still needed, we could hone in on our processes and standards, and most importantly, we could take our time. Then, when we started working with real paying customers and their dogs, we were more than ready.

For our friends who took us up on this offer, they got a service “for free” that normally costs between $100 and $300. They were all ecstatic to take us up on our offer!

For us, we received so much in return for these “free” services. We received glowing google reviews from all of them, which helped with spreading brand awareness online. We got multiple referrals from friends and family of our friends, and most importantly, word started to spread about our business organically.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I studied Finance in college, mostly because I thought it would be the most versatile degree for getting a job.

Once I graduated I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, I ended up working in the mortgage industry. In total, I worked in the mortgage industry doing a variety of different jobs for over 8 years. I was fearful of doing a job like that my whole life, so I knew I eventually had to make a change.

I’ve always wanted to start my own small business, ever since I was a kid. After a couple years of being married to my wonderful wife Tori, she encouraged me to finally make the leap, and I started reading books and researching different industries I could get into.

Growing up, my best friend’s Mom was a mobile dog groomer, and as an adult, my cousin also started a mobile dog grooming business, despite not being a dog groomer himself. After running the numbers on many different types of business opportunities. I decided to start a mobile dog grooming company of my own.

We offer convenient, compassionate, and high-quality dog grooming services, right outside our client’s homes. Our clients pick us over other groomers for 1 on 1 grooming, no pick up or drop off at the salon, and because we never put their dogs into crates or kennels. As a family owned company, we pride ourselves on picking up the phone, taking every call, texting with clients, and really serving as a luxury concierge to schedule dog grooming services. We have up front transparent pricing, and an easy to use website. We arrive on time, on the scheduled day, and most importantly, we keep our word. It’s the foundation of how we parents, and how we run our company.

We’ve been in business for just over 6 months, and I’m immensely proud of how quickly we’ve grown, and how quickly word of mouth has spread about our customer service. We are looking forward to scaling from 1 mobile grooming van to 5 or more in the next 5 years.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Shoe Dog – Phil Knight: This is a memoir by Phil Knight, the creator of Nike. It’s an extraordinarily inspiring book. The story of Nike feels like the story of an underdog team in a movie that you can’t help but root for. Phil Knight is a great storyteller, and especially adept at conveying the spirit of Nike, and what they were trying to build to help athletes perform better. This book will inspire you to start a business, to follow your dreams, and to travel the world.

The Ride of a lifetime – Bob Iger: This is a memoir by Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney. Among his personal history, it’s the story of Bob’s “big swings” – Disney’s acquisitions of Pixar, marvel, and Star Wars.

Will it Fly – Pat Flynn: This is a great book for any aspiring entrepreneur. It’s essentially a guide for taking the idea you have for a business, and testing the idea to see if it’s actually what you want to do with your life. Will your idea support the lifestyle you want? Will it support the work/life balance you want in your life? Is the actual day to day work what you want to do? I completed all the exercises in the book in earnest and I really felt it was helpful to ensure I wanted to go ahead and make the financial investment / take the leap and quit my day job to start my business. I highly recommend it.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Absolutely. Only 5 months in, we lost both our employees in the span of 2 weeks and we suddenly had no one to work for us. Both employees encountered issues in their personal lives that led to them leaving without notice.

Losing both our employees in such rapid succession without either of them being able to give us 2 weeks notice was extraordinarily stressful. It was nothing short of a shock. We were fully booked for the next 2 weeks with no one to work.

I dropped everything else I was doing, and called every person I knew who had anything to do with the dog grooming business, including people in my network who weren’t even in the state, in order to ask and see if they might know anybody who could step in and help us, or who could be interested in working for us full time. After scrambling, many hours hours on the phone and tons of stress and anxiety, we eventually pieced together 3 different groomers to step in to help us temporarily until we could find and hire a new full time groomer. Through these temporary groomers, we were able to groom dogs 13 days out of the 23 days in between when our 2nd full time groomer quit, and when our next full time groomer started with us full time.

I am extraordinarily proud that we were able to keep most of our appointments. We hardly lost any clients during this 23 day period.

The biggest lessons my wife and I learned were to get creative with how we were sourcing candidates, to change our interview process, and to band together to support one another during this challenging time. We also learned the importance of keeping a steady pipeline of candidates at all times. We persevered, and through all the hard work of interviewing so many candidates, this actually led to us being able to expand, hire more groomers, and we’re about to buy our 2nd grooming van.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://andersonmobilegrooming.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andersonmobilegrooming/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Anderson-Mobile-Grooming/61566835044283/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/andersonmobilegrooming/