Betty Peto
Co-founder at Pet Groomer App.
Betty’s Way: A Grooming Business That Works for You
I was exhausted, battling chronic back pain, and questioning if the long hours were worth it all—let alone sustainable as a career. The “groom more dogs to earn more” strategy wasn’t working for me. It was painful to read between the lines of my chiropractor’s invoice to get the memo. Pun intended.
Burnt out and facing frequent meltdowns, I realized the problem wouldn’t go away with a career change—it would follow me. Instead of switching fields, I decided to learn about business management and see if I could fix my own and balance my energy, income, and free time.
I dove into communication, sales, and business strategy, listening to audiobooks while grooming and doing household chores. My husband, Levi, an analytical thinker with a growing interest in my studies, helped me make small but impactful changes in my business. First, slowly, and the better I got, the more rapidly my business transformed into harmony.
I created a home-based grooming business model — what we now call Betty’s Way—that allowed me to earn $500K in three years while significantly cutting back my work hours. Instead of grueling 10–12 hour days, I now work four days a week, six hours a day, with three-day weekends and 10-day breaks every 2-3 months. My back and hand pain disappeared without a trace and constant chiropractors’s visit to keep it away. I wake up pain-free, energized, excited, and in control, even on a workday.
The secret? Empathy—for myself AND family, human, and canine clients. That, in the language of features, translates into hourly billing, tiered pricing, penciled-in appointments, and itemized estimates/invoices.
But even after cracking the formula, I struggled with software that didn’t support my workflows at the level I wanted. Existing systems forced tedious workarounds. I didn’t want to do math in my head for hourly billing, nor did I want to type up an itemized invoice by hand. Keeping track of appointments on paper or forcing clients into a slot to call it a day didn’t sit well with me, nor with my clients. I needed a system that not only digitalized but also automized my workflows and provided the results I sought.
From Frustration to Innovation
Along with solving my own business pain, I wanted to help fellow groomers facing the same struggles—burnout, no-shows, unpredictable schedules, pricing confusion, and endless admin work. But when I shared my approach with the workarounds with then-available software, my peers weren’t sold on the extra workload of the setup and managing it all. I couldn’t blame them—I wanted to get rid of it myself.
Since I was at hardcore dreaming, I dared to want built-in compassion and consideration in the software workflows that I use with my clients, which had a ripple effect of them considering me right back, in the forms of not only showing up for their appointments but also being on time.
Enter Levi. As a software engineer, he was no stranger to workplace frustrations. With an entrepreneurial mindset, he did not fit the corporate mold either, and he was eager to build something meaningful and break out of the 9-5 job he had.
Our daily venting sessions turned into brainstorming sessions. Then came the lightbulb moment: Why not build the software that I—and so many other groomers—actually need?
So, we did. That’s how the Pet Groomer App was born—designed from the ground up to give home-based groomers the financial stability, control, and freedom they desire.
