I wear lots of hats.
One thing we are never short of is hats. Every seed supplier, feed salesman, equipment dealership, and co-op seem to be very concerned that we might get a tan forehead.
I used to get attached to my “favorite” work hat. That was a problem, because it would get dirty and smelly. Washing it solved that, but brought up an equally troublesome problem – washing it always made it fit differently. So it was no longer my favorite anymore.
I have since become less attached to my work hats. I have become a cap casanova – love ’em and leave ’em. When they get dirty and/or smelly, I kick ’em to the curb. And why not? I have been going through them at a rate of one per month for two summers now (winter hats are a different story – I’m totally committed there) and have yet to see the bottom of the hat pile. Right now, of the two I wear, one is from a bull sale I went to three years ago; the other I bought in high school (at least 13 years ago). I think I might be close to having a balanced hat budget though. Income is the same as outgo based on what I’m seeing.
I wear lots of hats.
Most small business owners probably are like me in this regard – jack of all trades, master of none. As a rancher, no two days seems the same. No two hours even seem the same sometime. Today I worked as our human resource person, market analyst, webmaster, government agency liason, IT help desk, vehicle fleet maintenance manager, and herd foreman. I think I deserve a raise. I’ll have to talk to myself about that later.