Today we’d like to introduce you to Danelle German
Hi Danelle, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
It all started with my desire to have a Persian cat as a pet. When I finally found what I was looking for, it was a show-quality Persian kitten that the breeder suggested I continue to show. I knew absolutely nothing about showing cats, which became quickly apparent when I entered my first cat show. Because I hate to lose, I set out to learn how to groom my cat so that we could win in the show ring. This whole endeavor led to acquiring more show Persians and mastering the art of show grooming. Before long I was running cats for Regional and National Wins in CFA (Cat Fanciers Association).
During my show career, my feline-exclusive vet asked if I would consider offering some cat grooming services to people in the Greenville area (where we were living at the time). She was seeing cats in bad shape and comparing them to my freshly groomed Persians right we before we headed off to a show. I agreed to let the vet give out my home phone number. This was in the late 90s so we were still using a land line and looking things up in an actual phone book with Yellow Pages.
Within weeks I had 80 cat clients coming to my home and paying me money to groom their cats every month. Honestly, I could not believe it. Based on feedback I was hearing from those initial clients, I could tell that no one else in the area knew how to handle and groom cats the way I did. This made me seriously wonder what would happen if I actually made an effort to grow a feline-exclusive business.
At this time, we were living in Simpsonville so I opened a 500 square foot salon space on Main St. Simpsonville and started the trial-and-error process of figuring out how to best market my business in a time before social media, when print marketing ($$) was the way things were done. It was clear to me that most cat owners thought their cats groomed themselves and that their cats hated water and blow dryers, yet the cats had issues that were a real nuisance to everyone in the household (shedding, hair balls, dandruff, allergies, odors, destructive nails, matting, etc). My belief was that, by focusing on those problems and the solutions I could offer, cat owners would patronize my salon.
Within the first year of officially opening The Catty Shack, LTD, I went from 80 clients to 480 clients. The business continued to grow exponentially those first few years, reaching numbers beyond my wildest dreams. Within a few year’s time, I relocated to a 2000 square foot space up the road that would allow me to add feline-exclusive boarding suites and groom more cats in a day.
It was during this time that two of my long-time, regular clients moved from SC to other states. Both called me a month or two later, frustrated and upset by the awful cat grooming experiences they were having in their new locations. Their cats were mishandled, traumatized, and left looking horrible after the grooming sessions. This is when I began to understand that the “pet” grooming industry had completely left out cats as far as education and training was concerned. I had worked so hard to get my clients on a 4-6 week schedule, giving them stellar results and fixing the common problems that living with cats presented. My clients were not able to find this same quality of service by a knowledgeable and skilled professional elsewhere. I brain started working overtime to come up with a plan to fix this problem.
My first plan of action was to attend the USA’s largest pet grooming expo held in Hershey, PA each year. In 2006 I attended that show thinking I would be able to take cat grooming seminars and buy products and tools from vendors that would allow me to do an even better job for my clients. I also assumed I would be able to meet other cat groomers and network with them. What happened instead was that I discovered the show was 100% about dog grooming. What a disappointment! Honestly, at that show, most people I spoke with about cat grooming looked at me like I had three heads.
During the 10-hour drive home after the show, I called my husband to express my frustration. It seemed I was alone in my vocation, with the majority of the grooming industry being completely ignorant about cats and their grooming needs. Here I was bringing in six figures a year and making life better for my clients and their cats, while the rest of the grooming industry thought cats could not or should not be groomed. My husband asked me what I was going to do about that.
I was now on a mission! I started the membership-based National Cat Groomers Institute, created the first ever cat grooming standards, and wrote a certification program and study guides for cat groomers. The next year I was speaking at the Hershey Groom Expo, doing two live grooms on a stage in front of 100s of attendees and presenting the NCGI’s certification program to the thousands of groomers at the event. The seminar was filmed and offered as a DVD for sale at the show. It sold like hot cakes! The grooming industry was clearly hungry for cat groomer training.
I started offering one-on-one training in my salon in Simpsonville to students from around the world. Quickly, however, the demand outgrew the supply. In late 2009, I applied for a school license from the SC Dept of Higher Education and opened a feline-exclusive grooming school in downtown Greenville. For six years my staff and I trained students from across both North and South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. By 2014, we had students booked 18 months out for our 2-week, very intense school session that included grooming lots of cats as well as learning about their breeds, colors, temperaments, health, anatomy, and grooming needs. Part of our school program also included a great deal of teaching on how to set up a business, price services to be profitable, and market to get new clients as fast as possible. I have always believed that being a great cat groomer is only half of the necessary ingredients to be successful in this extremely niche industry. The other necessary ingredient is to be a savvy business owner with a great marketing strategy. I knew that if my students were to realize the same success I had experienced, they would need to master both of these components.
National Cat Groomers Institute has grown steadily since its inception in 2007. I spent over a decade traveling the globe giving seminars, conducting workshops, and providing high-dollar private instruction. Our presence in Canada and Australia, in particular, grew rather rapidly because of my focus in those two countries.
By 2014 I knew we needed to change things up to make our training and certification more accessible to more people in a shorter amount of time. In late 2015, we moved from a brick-and-mortar school program to an online course format. Prior to that move, I had spent about a year training up next generation Certifiers around the world who could continue to provide hands-on instruction and administer certification exams to students who completed our distance learning program. This turned out to be a wise decision, with more and more CFMGs (Certified Feline Master Groomers) building lucrative feline-exclusive grooming and boarding businesses around the world. Cat owners are seeking out CFMGs above other groomers (another intentional goal I set out to accomplish many years ago) because of their appareled knowledge and skills when it comes to feline grooming.
People often ask me what I think the most crucial component is to building the great “cat empire.” My answer: strategic marketing!
In the beginning, I had to convince cat owners (by way of paid print and radio advertising) that regular, expensive, professional cat grooming every month would make life better for them and their cat. This contradicted the myths they’d been led to believe (cats groom themselves, hates hate water, etc). Then I had to convince an entire population of dog groomers that investing in earning their CFMG certification would net them a great return on investment if they followed our program. In conjunction with that, I was also convincing non-groomers (teachers, nurses, and other professionals) that there was revenue to be had in this industry if they went through the program, earned their CFMG certification, and set up a professional feline-exclusive business. In the middle of all that, I was selling cat owners on the reality that CFMGs are who they needed to make life better for them and their cat.
I need to mention that during this incredible journey, I wrote more books, invented a patented drying machine (the Catty Shack Vac), and invented an organic shampoo bar for pets (Chubbs Bars). Each of these projects presented new and unique marketing challenges in order to make them successful.
I am retired from teaching others how to groom except for the occasional advanced training event. For the past ten years I have been focused on teaching other entrepreneurs both in and out of the grooming industry how to effectively market their product or service, how to write compelling website content and social post material, and how to get a handle on their business by turning weaknesses into strengths. All of that just clicks with my brain. I can easily identify problems and sort out solutions, breaking down steps into bite-sized pieces for my clients. God gave me this brain and I am grateful to be able to use it for the benefit of others as they seek to improve their businesses and reach big goals!
I am in this place today because of a Persian cat named, Target, who I took to a cat show and who taught me that I sucked at cat grooming. God has provided so many wonderful things along this crazy journey. Over the years, there have been many sleepless nights, tears of frustration, attacks from enemies, obstacles that seemed impossible to overcome, a ton of jet lag, a few cat bites, and many times where I simply stood amazed at the magnificent cat empire that was built out of nothing.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. Is it ever?
Besides all the dangers of working with cats and getting peed on more times than I can count, there have been a lot of failures and attacks.
Sometimes I wish my brain had an “off” switch. During times of trouble shooting problems (such as what shampoo are we and our members going to use when the one and only good shampoo for cats is off the market because it belongs to a company I don’t own or control), I will go for days or weeks on little-to-no sleep. My brain won’t stop trying to figure out a solution. When the first idea fails, I have to come up with another idea and another idea and another idea. Of course this pays off in the end when I finally figure out how to make the thing or solve the problem. But along the way, it gets exhausting and frustrating. My husband is so patient and supportive and will say things like, “You’ve got this, babe. You’ll figure it out.” That is NOT what I want to hear in the middle of the exhaustion. And yet, I know he’s right every single time.
There has been a great deal of stress during all this empire building. Now I pay for it with chronic neck pain and complex ligament and vertebrae issues that don’t have a solution. I know the years of planning, building, trouble shooting, air travel, jet lag and all that have created this chronic pain. It is something I will have to live with. On the flip side, there is great joy in watching our members and students live out their dreams. So I take encouragement from that. But definitely there is a price being paid every single day.
Another ugly side to all this is the attacks I have gotten from people I don’t even know that have tried to destroy me, my business, my reputation, and employees. It’s sad that there are people like that out there, motivated by envy or whatever. Honestly, these attacks only serve to make me dig my heals in and reach higher to reach new goals and achieve more. I know that’s the opposite of what the attackers have in mind. I can look back at some of my achievements or new products we’ve come out with over the years and know those came about as a response to someone’s attempt to destroy. I’ve thought about writing them a “thank you” note.
And this leads me to another bad side of the business: theft. I truly do despise thieves. They take what does not belong to them. They steal the bright ideas, hard work, and huge investment of an innovator. The depravity of man on display. If I’ve built it, someone somewhere has tried to steal it at one time or another. This is an ugly truth that then requires resources to be spent on fighting the theft. Not only do the thieves steal from me and my companies, but they ultimately steal from our fabulous members and customers by taking resources that would have normally been spent on caring for our customers.
Every single bump in the road is a learning opportunity. It doesn’t always feel good to learn from those things. But, in the end, I believe it’s necessary for achieving greater things.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about National Cat Groomers Institute, Catty Shack Vac, Chubbs Bars Co., Danelle German Marketing and Consulting?
National Cat Groomers Institute:
A membership-based organization that provides training and certification for cat groomers around the world.
We are the first and most comprehensive company of this kind.
Catty Shack Vac
Patented drying machine sold worldwide. My husband and I invented the CSV. We sold the company in 2023 but National Cat Groomers Institute is still the biggest driver of sales.
Chubbs Bars Co.
I invented the organic pet shampoo bars. We primarily sell to the grooming industry with wholesale distribution in various countries and some retail. The shampoo market is the most competitive market within the grooming industry. The shear number of choices is staggering. When I first launched Chubbs Bars in 2013, some people told me it would never make it in such a competitive market, especially since the industry is predominantly dog grooming-focused and I am the industry cat grooming expert. My reach was to a much smaller segment of the market. However, here were are 11 years later, still selling Chubbs Bars to the world.
Danelle German Marketing and Consulting
I offer private business coaching and business intensives that are either 2 weeks or 1 month long. I also write Storybranded website content for a variety of business types, whether they offer products, services or both. Besides overseeing the operations of NCGI and Chubbs Bars Co, this work is what I primarily do.
The thing I’m the most proud of is building a lucrative and far-reaching cat grooming industry when one did not previously exist. It was a lot of work! Now women (and some men!) all over the world are living out their dreams of being a business owner with a skill set that few people in this world possess. This is the most amazing thing ever!
How do you think about happiness?
Being on the lake. I love watching the sunsets over the lake, playing in the lake with the grandchildren, paddle boarding with the dogs or grand kids, and enjoying time on the boat with the family.
Contact Info:
- Website: DanelleGerman.com, Nationalcatgroomers.com, Chubbsbars.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/danellegerman_/, https://www.instagram.com/nationalcatgroomersinstitute/, https://www.instagram.com/chubbsbarsshampoo/
- Facebook: Facebook.com/ncgia, Facebook.com/chubbsbars
