One thing about being self employed as a full time dog trainer, is you need to drive yourself forward. I am not saying I miss the world of Corporate America, God no. I am saying putting the skills in place to drive yourself forward can be challenging. In corporate America, there is a fire to put out every minute. Or in my job of Financial Controller, there were mergers, acquisitions, system change overs, audits, sales goals, ET to all drive forward every day. Sometimes a chemical spill in the plant just to make life a bit more interesting than it needed to be.
Being self employed, you can be the head of the operation and every job in between to the cleaning person all in one. When those times of lull come on, it's hard not to just luxuriate in the free time that has been afforded to you. When it's busy, you barely have time to clean and disinfect before the next client comes through your door. So when it let's up, you better be doing your admin and training items, or it's never going to happen.
During the lulls this year, I trained two dogs to compete during for Novice AKC A and B classes. I should have spent more time than I did, but I completed the Companion Dog for my dog, Jack, which was my goal this year. Bri's first two legs towards her Companion Dog title have been the gravy. Next spring we will finish that up for her, and start both on Open competitions. Devon, my neighbors other dog, is being groomed for Novice competition next Spring. Now is an excellent time to do that, as normally these are boarding months (due to the cold, and we train in all environments) and cases that can not wait for spring (IE the behaviorally challenged or aggressive students' dogs). Otherwise it will be a slow winter months for lessons, though I have two more signed up than I did last year at this time LOL.
Another goal for this year has been to finally put together my updated training manual complete with video tapes. This is such a daunting project, that I don't know it will be done at the end of this year, BUT I do know that I better start having tasks to do towards it each day. It's easy to get bogged down in the details, so you need to pick one and move forward. That's where I am today. Do I video something, do I write something, do I video then write something, do I narrate during or after the video....
Do I show the raw or finished product? The beginning steps with an untrained dog or trained dog? Or try all of the above. Headache ensues. I am good at projects too. I came up with a way to document and store my videos today to go along with my project. Now I just have to, er, make them. Or write up the scripts for them or something other than talk about them
I also have two applications to do that tie into this whole project while I am at it. I am nothing if not for multi tasking. Something that I try to do less of when I am actually training dogs, as if you are truly doing something else other than pretending to do something else, you may miss a moment of critical timing. That will set you back. When there is a lull, and you are doing a lot of documenting and writing type of stuff, it's easier to go to my older ways of multi tasking, so I get more than one thing done in the same space and time.
It's amazing how much time in a dog training business is not taken up by actually training the dog. However, it's all just as important to make the process as understandable and seamless as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment