9 Lessons Solopreneurs Can Learn From a Labrador Retriever Named Jazz

Last week I spent four days at Ballyneal, a golf club in Northeast Colorado. I have been visiting Ballyneal since 2004, and this year a new character was walking the grounds. Her name is Jazz, a nine-month-old, yellow Labrador Retriever.

Jazz’s master is Rupert O’Neal, owner of Ballyneal, and he has trained Jazz to be a caddy, of sorts. Jazz charmed me, and today I examined what can be learned from this four-legged solopreneur.

1. Act older and smarter than you are. After spending four hours on the course observing Jazz’s skills and demeanor, I thought she was three or four years old. I was extremely impressed when I heard she is less than a year old.

2. Know your job and do it well. Rupert is training Jazz to lay down approximately 20 yards in front of golfers who are preparing to hit a shot. Jazz faces the golfer and positions herself at a 20-degree angle from the player. Jazz extends her legs far in front of her, with her head absolutely flat against the earth. She remains still until the ball is struck, and then she rises quickly in an attempt to follow the flight of the ball. It’s an impressive display of self-discipline, and she does it for every shot. Well, almost every shot; more on that later.

3. Show up for work smiling, with your tail wagging . Jazz might have the best gig of any Lab in America. She reigns over more than 700 acres of rugged High Plains land that’s filled with critters of all kinds, including frogs, turtles, rabbits, bullsnakes, rattlesnakes and coyotes. It’s very good to be Jazz, and she appears to know it.

4. Scratch when it itches . When Jazz needed to scratch her back, she ran into a sand bunker right away, rolled onto her back and let the sand relieve the itch. I say, if you’re itching to offer a new product or service, be like Jazz and scratch that itch right away.

5. Know your clients better than they know themselves. I noticed that Jazz possesses a remarkable ability to find “lost” golf balls in the rough. I asked Ballyneal caddy Charlie Mulligan how she does this. He said Jazz uses her nose. She commits players’ scents to memory and then tries to pick up the scent in the rough.

6. Work hard for your clients, but don’t kill yourself. I asked Rupert how much water Jazz should drink during an 18-hole round of golf. Rupert said: don’t worry about it; she knows where the water is and she’s not going to die just to prove she’s man’s best friend.

7. To land more assignments, continue to work hard at honing your skills. Jazz isn’t perfect yet at her job. She sometimes leaps up—trying to get a head start on the ball—when the golfer is in his or her backswing. Golfers hate distractions during their backswings, so Jazz’s early movement is not appreciated. As a result, Rupert has cut back on Jazz’s golf-course rounds, until she proves during training that she will not move until the ball has been struck.

8. If you know the way, show the way. Jazz knows where each hole is on the golf course. When golfers finish a hole, she does not loiter. She promptly turns around, takes the lead and trots to the next tee.

9. When the job is done, get a cool drink and move on. Jazz wasn’t into long goodbyes. When we finished the 18th hole, Jazz ran up the hill to the clubhouse for a drink of water, never looking back.