Setting Goals for the New Year

I've long believed that setting goals is a great way to lend clarity of purpose and a sense of power and control to the otherwise overwhelming vastness that is the future. It's like editing your potential. And it's something that I've always done quite naturally. In fact, as a young child, I was notorious for making proclamations about how things are, how they ought to be, and how they would be. And why not? I had considered all the angles I could think of, I had studied the world and everything in it, and I felt perfectly comfortable letting people know exactly what was what. The adults around me could rarely change my mind or even budge me once my feet were set. I was a powerhouse of focus and determination. I think "stubborn" was the word my parents liked to use.

Of course, as I got older, I learned that even the strength of a will like mine doesn't stand a chance against the forces of reality. The world moves and we are moved. It took many years to realize that there isn't enough strength to survive on strength alone. There isn't enough in the world. And anyway, the hammer is just not always the best approach. If you don't balance your strength with flexibility, patience, and judgement, you'll eventually wear out.

So I spent a lot of time working on mental flexibility. Putting things in perspective is a great way to bounce back from failure and learn as much as possible while moving on to the next adventure. Unfortunately, it's possible to become too flexible and lose sense of the future. For a while, as new circumstances and new people came into my life, new possibilities came into view and old ones disappeared. Flexibility means that that's OK because every opportunity is equal in importance and interest. But floating ahead without form, a future without real goals is just a soup of potential. In order to realize that potential and gain the benefits of both the struggle and the victory (hopefully!), the victory has to be defined. You have to be willing to inspect the soup and consciously pick out the parts that, from now on, are going to be most important.

So here are my business goals for 2010:

1. To add grooming staff to enable the shop to service more clients and to free up more personal time for me to pursue other goals.


2. To develop my online client tracking and appointment software for sale to grooming shops.


3. To develop Groomerisms educational products for sale to grooming shops.


4. To update this blog with a new article at least once per month.


5. To attend at least one grooming education seminar.

And there it is. I look forward to an exciting new year!

Job Fairy, Where Art Thou?

I am currently in a tentative hiring mode. I say tentative because I'm not in a hurry. I'm taking it slow. It is very challenging for me to trust someone else to come into my space, share my responsibilities, touch my equipment, interact with my clients, and otherwise affect the business that I have so carefully and lovingly set up here. Hiring is not something I have a great deal of experience with and not something that I particularly enjoy. I stink at it, really.

And as much as I value the learning process in general, this is one area where I wish the job fairy would just come and deliver to me the exact right personality, skill set, and personal situation to match up with what I need and what I can offer. I also hope that I have the right kind of vision to recognize them when they show up at my door. Perfect fit or not, it takes me a long time to feel comfortable around new people. And my discomfort tends to be contagious.

But I am determined not to work alone forever. One of my original goals for the business was to provide the kind of work opportunities that I was unable to find when I was an employee. I longed for the ability to serve my clients well and fully, to take time to communicate and educate and to make myself available as a resource for anyone who was interested in my perspective. I found myself often in a profit-driven environment, where the primary owner of the business was not involved in the daily operations except, as I saw it, to ask me to lower my standards of care. And profit was driven not by efficiency and increasing value but by circumventing the legal system and avoiding making investments in business-builders like employee education, advertising, client education and better service. My passion was a problem, my efforts were measured in dollars and cents without the option of working smarter, and my drive to share knowledge and help the clients and coworkers around me were met with surprise and sometimes criticism.

I freely admit to being a diva. I am never satisfied and humility is something I struggle to embrace. I'm an idealist, an empath, and an alpha. I get myself in trouble frequently because I assume that others can see that my intentions are so bright and beautiful and good that I give myself permission to speak in absolute, unapologetic truths. I assume that other people realize that I arrive at no conclusion lightly, that I am constantly absorbing and filtering new data and refining my thoughts. Although my thoughts are ever-evolving things, at the moment I speak them, I put behind them the force of my conviction. I'm good at conviction.

I thrive on debate and I enjoy a lively exchange of viewpoints. I don't really know when to quit. It is a challenging perspective, for me and everyone around me, but I've realized that it is who I am. My ongoing struggle is to harness the power of my convictions without expecting to be universally loved for them or driving away those that I would rather keep nearby. But my ideals have allowed me to serve a particular type of pet owner well and in congruence with my own personal fulfillment formula. I chose a good area for an educationally focused business -- my clientele in general is interested and engaged and willing to actively participate in the care of their animals. They recognize and appreciate quality, they value learning, and they enjoy the interactivity I offer. I am constantly amazed at how supportive they are.

My hiring decisions have to bring in more energy and fill in the gaps where my skills and temperament fall short. It's a tall and specific order and one that I haven't even managed yet to fully, objectively define. There isn't a lot of room for error. The position that I'm offering is part-time and entry-level. I don't have much to offer, financially. But in terms of learning, growing, and sheer opportunity to contribute, the benefits are limitless. The right candidate will be getting in on the ground floor, will be part of an environment where creativity is valued and encouraged, where attention to detail is treasured, where challenges will be heaped on as soon as the willingness and ability to step up is demonstrated, and where communication and cooperation are working realities. And more importantly, where skill is recognized, built, and rewarded. Some day this will be a well-oiled, self-propelling machine and I will have room for people comfortable with polishing it for a paycheck. But right now I need someone with an insatiable desire to learn how the machine works, has thoughts about how to make it better, would welcome the opportunity to be taught how to drive it, and is ready to make their career a priority.

Where is that brilliant, ambitious upstart searching for a platform from which to set the world on fire? Where is the wise and resilient soul with the vision to support and enhance my work who is willing and able to add their energy to mine? And when I find that candidate, will I be able to keep up?