The Shift.

This time of year is full of resolutions and goal setting. It can also be a time of reflection on previous goals and resolutions. This time of year for us is a big shift. The last month or so, I've been sick twice (boo!), and will the number of incoming calls decreasing, instead of sitting at my desk, I made good use of baking cookies & spending extra time with loved ones. I wrote about a lot of that last week.

The week after New Years for us is always about The Shift. The Shift from a slower pace being plopped right back into the swing of things. Every January, we host our Rent The Chicken Owners Conference inviting all of our Rent The Chicken Affiliates to a local conference to kick off the upcoming Rental Season. Homestead Phil and I work on sessions that we will present at the conference, meals, social times, etc. We work on coordinating logistics, prepare the itinerary, and more. At the same time, we start to hear from more of you via email, telephone, smoke signal (j/k .. seeing if you're still reading!). We also increase our Affiliate Group Conference Call schedule from once a month to every other week through April. Soon, one of us will always have to be home during the work day as the calls get to be so often that they are hard to field on the road with just the iPad. I am not even complaining! Incoming calls are needed or we won't be renting chickens! As even more time continues, both of us have to be home during regular business hours. Homestead Phil ran a report recently on our incoming calls of April - June of 2017 vs April - June of 2018. We had over 900 more calls in that three month period in 2018 than 2017! Say, what?! We anticipate that 2019 will have an even higher inbound call volume!

We set a number of business goals but not typically many personal goals. Maybe this year will be different. I'm fairly certain, one can make new goals even without changing the year, right?

One goal: running. I really hope to be able to start running again soon. With two major sinus infections that caused my lungs to not function to full capacity in the last 5 weeks, I haven't been able to get out even when the weather has been nice enough. Maybe within the next week, my lungs will cooperate and I'll be able to share my running adventures again!

We were on a workation recently and Givi Kitty joined us in our little RV. We started using this term a few years ago where we are still connected to our phones / emails / social media, etc but we are working off-site or unavailable for a few hours during the week day. We could NEVER go on a workation in May for reasons I explained above. I think I could learn a lot from Givi Kitty as I likely don't rest enough. (I think she could learn from me as I don't think she works enough! haha) Here are some pics we snapped of her during our workation.