Every 2 years, this issue delivers hundreds of facts and figures in the “Farrier Business Practices Survey” that can help you determine how your footcare business compares with other operations around the country.

This random sampling of American Farriers Journal readers offers an in-depth economic analysis and serves as the benchmark for the entire industry.

While there are reams of extremely valuable data to be extrapolated from these results, it definitely shows that continuing to invest in your knowledge and skills is a paying proposition. In fact, the data demonstrates a direct correlation between investing time and money to learn and your business growth.

Attending Vs. Not Attending

To shed more light on the value of continuing education, we reanalyzed the survey data based on farriers who attend and don’t attend shoeing events.

O Full-time farriers who attend one or more educational shoeing events each year had an average yearly gross income of $84,425. By comparison, full-time shoers who didn’t attend educational events averaged only $71,644.59 in annual gross income. 

In other words, an investment in continuing education returned $12,780 in extra income.

The survey revealed that full-time farriers who invest in continuing education attend an average of three local clinics and one national event per year.

O For part-time farriers, investing in continuing education paid even higher dividends. Part-time farriers who attend one or more educational events a year averaged $38,888 in annual gross income. The rest of the part-timers averaged only $20,813 in gross income.

So the…