Today's guest is none other than Nigel Fennell, AWCF. Mark Hickcox kindly sent the podcast mic on to Nigel after our conversation. As I expected, we had a great chat, and I left our conversation feeling quite inspired by Nigel. You will notice a continuous theme in his story - one of sacrifice and investing in himself. I then realized that this has been a theme of many of the stories guests have told. Pretty much all the people in this trade, that we look up to, have had to make this calculation and decided to forfeit any semblance of work-life balance for a time to learn and practice the skills needed to get to the top of their game and achieve their career goals.

As the saying goes, nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice.

Life is all about trade-offs.

And unfortunately, we are restricted by many things, not the least of which is time. If you have lofty career goals yourself, I hope that at least one of the guests, if not more, has inspired you and shown you how it can be done even with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. If raising your young children seems like an obstacle, listen to Elisa Miller or Lori McBride's episodes. If you feel like you don't have enough time, listen to Cody or Chris Gregory's episodes, if you failed at your goal once or twice, and are hesitant to try again, listen to Mark Hickcox and if you don't think you can afford it financially, listen to both of Andrew DeVisser's episodes and he will help you lay the financial groundwork to make a plan and see it through.

These are only a few examples of many, but you get my point. All this said, please don't interpret this as me promoting an unhealthy work-life balance. Most of the folks I just mentioned only did this for a time. Eventually, they turned to focus on achieving a work-life balance only now armed with some credentials or bragging rights or an enviable client list that often made this a lot easier.

Anyway, as you will hear, Nigel's years of commitment to improving his skills at the cost of making more money have found him where he is today - well-positioned to teach those skills and make the next generation of farriers better for it. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

https://www.nigelfennellandforemansforge.org/