Wha Should I Do With Work Load

Only take in XXX amount of mounts per year. Raise your prices. Stop taking in animals you really don't care to mount and focus on one or two animals. There are multiple things you could do. Let your customer base know that you are only planning on taking in a certain number of mounts from say the beginning of September through the end of January, if you reach your maximum quota don't take any more in. Tell them they can take it to someone else or bring it to you, let you cape/skin it out, get measurements and have them bring it back to you once you start taking stuff in again. Sometimes it gets hard to say "NO" because you want to please everyone else. I learned a long time ago the more you are out to make everyone else happy, your happiness is the one that suffers.

 

I also had planned on doing taxidermy full time when I retire. I also started to get over worked,etc.What I do now is take in enough work to keep me busy all winter( I usually finish everything by June ),then I have the rest of the year to fish and enjoy life!Thinking of doing just deer in the future.

 

If that’s the case then tell people you are not taking new customers at this time. Sounds like your repeat customers will keep you plenty busy and if they don’t you will have people standing in line waiting. New Customers will go crazy over something they can’t have at the moment!

 

Raise your prices. Make more, do less at the same time weed out any price shoppers. I can understand not wanting to say "No" but you also have to think of your health and with the stress of too much work and not enough time to do it can play hell on you mental and physical condition.

 

I had the same dilemma a while back and just raised prices to the highest threshold that it regulated my work load to where I wanted it. I just retired though at 59. Taxidermy was full time for me during the fall and winter only. I did fishing charters spring and summer.

 

I have two young men that help me. One is full time, the other comes in after school for a couple of hours. If it weren't for them. I'd go nuts. The full time man mounts 2 deer per day. I do all the fleshing and finishing work. I really don't mind fleshing deer capes...I can set and listen to FOX business news, drink coffee, and I have 2 capes finished by 8 am each morning. Yes, I am a morning person. During the day, I do what I want to, deal with customers, and assist if there is a problem that my employee can't handle. I plan to totally quit taxidermy at age 70 (if I make it), and let these two young men have it...I just want rent money on my shop each month! We've taken in 500 specimens since Oct 1, the beginning of my fiscal year. That's way more then I care to do myself. BTW, I retired from my "real job" 16 years ago!

 

Good discussion, great info. I am 59 now and planning on retiring and opening up a taxi shop at 62 for a part time/full time job. It would sure make life easier if my wife would find a job that has insurance. Pretty lazy man that can't find there wife a second job ya know.

 

For those concerned about health insurance, just run your anticipated numbers through the health exchange for an idea of what insurance might cost. It does vary greatly from area to area. They are opening up the subsidies to higher income levels that the website is not reflecting yet on the website.

And don't believe the hype about HSA's. In my case, it actually was more expensive to continue to contribute to my HSA, but that is a whole new discussion.

 

Another option is to look into wholesaling some work out to another taxidermist to do some work for you.
I do this with turkeys that I take in. I dont like doing them and I love doing deer heads. So I have another taxidermist do my turkeys wholesale for me.
And I also do wholesale deer heads for other taxidermists.
It all depends on what you like doing. For me, my time is better spent doing deer heads than turkeys. That is why I take in wholesale deer heads but have somebody else do my turkeys for me.

 

That should work, but I've been screwed hard by wholesaling work to other taxidermists. If you can find a reputable and dependable wholesaler, it great!

 

Finding dependable, quality wholesalers is the only way I could possibly meet the demand of my growing taxidermy business, which for now, needs to remain a sideline business. I can’t retire just yet . You do have to find someone you can count on and that will do good work, but finding the right wholesalers will give you a lot of relief. Also, the no brainer is...raise your prices. You may not want to be the most expensive in your area, but you sure don’t want to be the cheapest!