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Lately I have been reading a pile of books about using your past experiences to create a career that fits you.
The premise is that nothing you have ever done in life, whether work-wise or hobby-wise, goes to waste. You will have acquired skills that you can put to use later in a new field. The skill set you will have created is unique to you which, will allow you to pursue a career that is similarly uniquely you.
Sounds good… on paper.
But what about in practice? Are there real people out there, who have done just that? You know, people who have walked maybe a bit of a meandering path to get to where they are, who have taken some side trails in life? People who used what they found along the way to come up with something new and creative, something that allowed their personality to shine and something that was therefore truly and completely uniquely them?
I decided to go and find a real-life example, but when I started to really think about it, I realized I already knew one such person.
Meet Kirstin Bergmann of dogwalking.rocks.
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Kirstin runs her own business and provides different types of dog care, such as a dog walking service, doggy daycare and dog boarding, but she also sells high quality raw food and dog snacks and the list is not complete.
Although I am sure there are dog lovers out there, who knew from an early age that running a dog care business was their calling in life, I also knew that Kirstin was not one of those people.
She is fluent in Dutch and I knew through my family that she picked up the language whilst living in the Netherlands. I also knew she wasn’t running a dog boarding business there. Over the time we have spent together walking our dogs I had gotten to know bits and pieces of her story, but now we decided to sit down together and do a full blown tell-me-all-about-your-life-interview. Of course, what was supposed to last for an hour turned into three hours with a lunch break in between. I’m pretty sure it would’ve lasted even longer if other appointments hadn’t stopped us from talking more. It turns out her story is even more fascinating than I thought.
At least in her case I am thinking some of the stories that I’ve read in the books may actually be true.
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We started at the beginning.
It turns out her choice of high school was not the straightforward one. She knew she didn’t want to go off to college.
Wait, what?
Talk about already staying true to yourself at a young age. In a society that seems to value the linear career path of “finish high school, complete your higher education if you can and then get a job”, knowing, saying, and acting upon your own feeling that college is not for you is something special indeed.
Austria, from where Kirstin hails, has a quite particular option when it comes to higher education, something I didn’t know about until Kirstin told me. I looked it up and thought it was actually a pretty cool thing. You basically go to high school, get your proper high school diploma, which in Austria is called “Matura” and in Germany “Abitur”, and simultaneously get to delve into cool stuff such as communications and media design, but also international communication in business, which obviously includes studying foreign languages but also focuses on business skills etc. It’s pretty cool if you ask me, kind of like a high school “plus”. One of the things that was taught there was bookkeeping. Can you already start seeing part of what I was saying about skills being picked up throughout life that can come in handy later on, for example when you are running your own business and say need to do your books?
Internships at EGGER, one of the leading woodworking companies in the region led to a job there in a technical domain, where she was an intermediary translating between the wishes of the customers and the needs of the production department. “You want to produce that type of kitchen? Well you’ll need so and so many panels of those specs, with that amount of predrilled holes and a specific amount of screws and fasteners”.
And not unimportantly: “By the way, that is gonna cost you an X amount of Schillings (anyone remember those still?) and no, unfortunately we can’t do it for any less than that.”
Saying no is still a skill I am working on myself.
On the side she worked in the hospitality business, waiting tables in places well known to the international public for their après-ski.
A feeling of “I want and need to see more of the world” led her to quit the EGGER job. What peaks my interest, is how she describes the reason for this move. Kirstin tells me that she felt that if she did not leave then, she might not do it at all and though there was certainly nothing wrong about becoming a “lifer” at such a reputable company, she did not like feeling that way. I will call it a gut decision. It’s definitely her staying true to herself.
After her father’s death she knew it was time. Using her local connections, she landed a job at Crystal Cruises. Starting off as a chamber maid, her language skills (the perks of having had a high school sweetheart from Britain and her chosen specialisation in high school) quickly got her noticed and allowed her to move up, to become first a bar waitress and then a barkeeper.
Two tours on the ship ended with a move to Holland to be with her Dutch then-boyfriend and with the adoption of her first dog, Sandor, a Rhodesian ridgeback. Ridgebacks are an immensely athletic, strong-willed and confident breed. Their origins lie, as the name suggests, in Africa, where one of their uses was to keep lions at bay until the hunter arrived to deal with them.
You can imagine what Kirstin found when she drove up to a farm in the southern part of the Netherlands, where such a dog, having received no real training, getting by on a diet of cold cuts and horses bix, was kept confined to the property.
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It would be simple enough to picture a straightforward path from here to the start of her dog boarding business. Rescued dog – rehabilitated it – fell in love with everything dog – started her own business. But no… of course not. Life has a way of throwing you curve balls, and we humans have a tendency to explore the side trails.
What did start here was Kirstin’s passion for everything related to the canine diet. Sandor’s horses bix diet had not been conducive to his weight or health. And so his and by extension Kirstin’s exercise and diet journey started. Kirstin made trips to the butcher to buy him raw meat, chicken, lamb, and horse (which turned out to be good for his damaged stomach) in hopes of overcoming the gastrointestinal issues that plagued him. He had to be taught how to move again. Bit by bit he recovered. His callouses disappeared, his bow legs straightened out, his coat started to get its luster back and he no longer had to vomit.
Kirstin became convinced that feeding a raw diet played a large part in his recovery. However, not much was known about any of it at the time and so it became learn as you go, as she figured out what worked and what didn’t piecemeal.
Sandor died young at age 6, but instilled the love for the breed. After having waited for the right litter to come along, Ridgeback puppy Kingston entered onto the scene. It was around about this time that Kirstin also started her training to become a certified dog trainer.
The curve ball in the form of a relationship break-up put a stop to all of it and saw a move back home to Austria, where she found a job at a marketing agency.
It was there that Kingston’s life unfortunately got cut short when he was runover in an accident at the young age of 18 months.
Nonetheless being flat mates with her dog trainer cousin and fostering rescue dogs helped her recover from burning out at her marketing job. This also revived her interest in dog training which led her to follow a whole slew of trainings and courses.
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At this point Kirstin had figured out she wanted to see if she could make a living out of “dogs”. This is where I sat up a little straighter in my chair, because how she went about it was fascinating.
As sadly was to be expected, she did not get lots of shoulder pats, attagirls and go-for-its. The talk was more along the lines of “that’s not a real job”, “you’ve already been sick for so long, are you sure?”.
It would have been enough to make anyone doubt, but she did not let it stop her.
In a tourist town with lots of holiday homes there is always a need for cleaning services. The timing of those services is not that critical, and can be planned flexibly. So, Kirstin started her own cleaning company, which gave her the financial stability and enough time to grow first a dog walking service and later on a dog boarding service on the side.
As her dog business grew she could let go of some of the cleaning work.
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Though the dog walking and boarding market in the region is certainly very far from saturated, Kirstin’s service is also not the only one. So how does she find clients? And if clients have a choice, why do they come to her?
Her answer to the latter question is instantaneous: “Noone does what I do, the way I do it”.
The majority of clients are a good fit for her and her concept. She credits this partly to her website. Remember her background in marketing?
A good deal of thought went into how she describes who she is and what her vision is. Because it reflects her authentic self, the people drawn to it, usually jive with her too.
In fact, she says, the reason her business differs from the others, is because she is the one running it. She does so in a way true to hér heart. As there are no two Kirstins there can simply be no two the same businesses.
Kirstin draws the parallel to dog training. She could tell me how she trains her dog, but if I were to copy her method to train mine, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t work. Her energy, her body language, all of it is unique to her.
And do you know what’s fun? What dogs are really good at? Picking out a phony. They have built-in authenticity detectors (humans often do too by the way, they just don’t always realize it). Merely mimicking her methods would only work when those methods are in line with my personality too. Not to mention, we have not even considered the differences in the dog on the receiving end, but that’s a discussion for another time.
The point is, she brings something to her business that only she can, and she attracts the customers that value that.
Now that’s starting to sound an awful lot to what my books were saying…
Using the connections fostered through her stints in the hospitality business and simply from being a local to the region she also managed to tap into a whole new client base.
Working with the local hotels and camping, guests bringing their dogs along on holidays and wanting to go out for a bout of shopping, or skiing are now able to bring their dog to doggy daycare.
Those feeding their dog a raw menu at home but stymied as to how to do so on holidays, have the option of buying complete raw meat meals (BARF-menu or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food menus) from her shop, a cooperation between her and hundefeinkostladen.at.
No need for others to repeat Sandor’s raw food journey of discovery.
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So, what’s still hard?
Surprisingly the first answer that comes is not one that I expected. I would have expected something along the lines of “dealing with the owners”, but, no, that’s not it, because, well read the above about the customers she attracts.
Draining is when she ends up with a combination of dog guests that don’t jive together. This doubles her work and makes her wish there were more hours in the day.
When the group of dog guests cannot all be walked together, this means Kirstin has to double the walks, taking them out in turns, and as her walks aren’t 30 minute walks around the block but generally full-blown hikes, it takes a good chunk out of her day and leaves little time for anything else.
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Which brings us to the topic of saying “no”, no to dogs that just aren’t a good fit for her concept, even though the owners may be wonderful, or no because she is full for example. It’s something she sometimes still struggles with but is getting better at too.
Avoiding having to say no by getting creative and making things work regardless is in her character. That’s not something she wants to stop doing because it’s who she is, but it is important to know when to draw a hard line in the sand.
She recalls that observing her own dog, Kira, taught her a valuable lesson in that respect. Kira is her heart-dog and foster-fail because of that. She is the lady of the house and chief overseer of the doggy hotel. Having arrived as a rescue youngster right when Kirstin got started with her business Kira had to deal with a lot right from the git-go, such as tolerating an ever-changing mixture of strange dogs in her home. By observing her dog well, Kirstin realized in time that some things were simply “a lot” to ask of such a young dog. She changed her expectations, allowed Kira to take a step back, recover and to be her own dog.
If only we could all head that lesson, and allow ourselves to take a step back when we realize we are asking too much of us. This may be just be as simple as uttering that two-letter word: no.
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And if she could do one thing?
Well, there is still that overarching goal of teaching more people to read dog body language, contributing to a better relationship between dogs and people, and a reduction in bite incidents.
What is my personal big takeaway from our gettogether?
Listen to you, and follow your heart. When I look back through Kirstin’s timeline, each time she truly listened to herself, it took her in a direction that better aligned her with her inner self.
I want to thank Kirstin for taking the time out of her busy schedule to sit down with me. I hope her story inspires other people to make the unconventional choice if it is what is right for them.
First and foremost, though, I wish Kirstin all the best in weathering the COVID-19 crisis. It has hit Kirstin’s region, which relies heavily on tourism, hard, and by extension her business as well.
LINKS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_schilling
https://www.hblw-saalfelden.at/
https://www.egger.com/shop/en_US/about-us/group/history
http://www.hochhoerndlerhuette.at/