It’s that time of year – everyone and their brother has a sure fire way for you to lose those last 20 pounds, get organized or attract the man of your dreams. While I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions, this is a natural time of year for considering a few dreams you’d like to see come true in the coming 12 months.
The only problem is that dreams will stay just that – dreams – unless you develop a plan and some action steps to get you to that destination. It’s kind of like planning a trip.
If you’re planning a trip, you need to know 3 things – your starting place, your destination, and how you’re going to get from point A to point B. But as circumstances have often shown us, very rarely does life travel along the shortest distance between two points. Often there are detours, washed out bridges, and potholes to contend with. Sometimes we take the scenic route, and sometimes the tolls are a lot higher than we expected. This is where Google Maps comes in.
When you plan a trip with Google Maps, you’re offered a few different routes: shortest mileage, no tolls, quickest trip. When you’re planning your business goals for 2016, it pays to think along the same lines. Figure out where you’re starting, where you want to go, and then think about a few different ways to get there.
The first thing to do is to determine your starting point. Taking a detailed inventory of your business activities for 2015 should give you a pretty clear picture of where you’re making a profit and where things need a bit of tweaking. When you take your inventory, consider physical and mental expenditures as well. If you have one income stream that’s mediocre and you really love it, try thinking of ways to boost the income a bit – or just be glad that it’s bringing in some intangibles as well as a small profit.
On the other hand, if there’s a part of your business you just can’t stand – try to find a way to delegate it or even eliminate it altogether. Yes, you need to pay the bills, but one of the points of being self-employed is that you should enjoy at least most of what you do.
Once you’ve established your starting point, your next step is determining where you’re headed. What are your goals for 2016 – and while we’re at it, what are your mid-term and long-term goals? By being pretty specific about what you want to accomplish over the next 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, you’ll have a better idea of what you’ll need to do to achieve those milestones.
Are you looking to add a lesson program to your boarding barn? Hire a trainer, or switch from a regular boarding barn to full training board only?
Just like the route options on Google Maps, one route may be quicker, but have high tolls, while another may be the shortest distance mileage wise but take much longer. Think of these as shortest distance being easiest to implement and longest distance involving more work. The toll roads require investment – but may get you to your destination the fastest.
And remember that, just like Google Maps, your journey to your destination may hit a detour. If you miss your turn, don’t be afraid to make a legal U-turn at the next intersection, or figure that it’s time to do a little re-routing.
With careful planning and some flexibility, at the end of the year, you’ll be able to say that you’ve arrived at your destination!
An tragic case was before the California Appellate Court recently. A farrier was trimming a horse in a rocky corral when the horse knocked him down, and he struck his head on a rock. The farrier died of his injuries, and his widow brought a wrongful death case against the owner of the horse
Creative Commons photo by Throwa_UK
. The court dismissed the case, and stated the farrier was responsible for the horse (and situation), once the owner had “relinquished care and control” to him.
This is an important case for all equine professionals, and the ramifications are worth considering.
As a boarding and training barn owner, I carried a “Care, Custody and Control” policy, which covered me in case of an issue with a horse under my care – but if I had been injured or killed by a horse under my care – it was my own responsibility, not that of the owner, as I had assumed control of the horse, as a professional.
We all post those state liability signs outside our barns and carry the appropriate insurance to cover ourselves in the case of a lawsuit, yet many of us fail to carry disability insurance or sufficient life insurance – there are always other places for the money to go.
But, for a moment today, I urge you to consider the consequences of our livelihoods. We can’t always control the situation, we get that – we’re horse people. We’ve been doing this forever, and we know that horses are creatures of flight and sometimes we’re in the flight path. It’s what we accept because it’s what we were born to do.
But I encourage you to consider reviewing your life and disability insurance policies. Sit down with your numbers and give a hard look at what would happen to your family and your business if you were out of commission for a month, or a year, or forever. It’s sobering, but it needs to be looked at. Not next year, not when you get one more training client and you can afford it.
Perhaps it’s just me, (although I hardly think that could be possible), but I tend to get interested in great new training available through online videos, PDFs and emails. I want to learn everything, and I never met a new system that I didn’t want to take for a test run.
Which partially explains why my inbox started out this morning with over 2500 occupants. Now, to be fair, that is from all 3 of my email accounts, and a few are duplicates; but 2500 emails? Really?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was feeling pretty desperate. So, I began purging, and while I’m purging, I’m unsubscribing.
To be honest, I feel a little bad about all of this unsubscribing. The guy who I know can improve my memory really wants to help me out, and if anyone’s memory could use some help, it’s mine! And the man with the landing pages? And the sales funnel? And the freelance writing groups, and the blogging groups, and the goal training online, and all of the tack catalogs? I know all of these people, groups and companies (or at least most of them), have something that I might find useful; something that might even help me make significant improvements in my life; BUT (and it’s a big “but”), if I don’t have time to even open these emails and they just clutter my inbox or get deleted without being opened, how much use am I getting out of them? It was time to try to take back this little slice of my life known as my inbox, and I did it by simply remembering one thing.
I can always re-subscribe. If there’s something that I think I will truly want to revisit, I simply put the info into a Pages document on my computer and I can go back and re-visit or re-subscribe at any time.
Yes, that’s right, perhaps these goodbyes are not permanent (although in many cases, they’re likely to be). Perhaps I will decide one day that I want to watch that series of videos to improve my memory, or I will be interested in signing up for a course with a lead pages or sales funnel guru. But that day is not today. Today I want to be able to see the important emails that come into my inbox, read them, deal with them and delete them.
Now, I’m not saying this is the only way to tackle a thorny inbox problem. There’s a great system called Inbox Zero, developed by productivity expert Merlin Mann; and most email programs like Gmail and Apple Mail have pretty good ways of managing emails by tagging, using folders, etc.; but I simply wanted to have fewer of those little time-suckers drop into my inbox in the first place.
So I cut some ties, said goodbye to some new acquaintances and to some old-familiars who no longer served their purpose. I consider it a gift I’m giving myself for Christmas and the New Year – just a little oasis of calm for those times when I open my inbox and I’m not bombarded with a count over 2000, or even over 20.
If you have a crowded inbox, do yourself and your business a favor. Set aside some chunks of time and purge that inbox, but make sure that as you purge, you unsubscribe. Keep a list of those sites you may want to check back into in the future, but give yourself the gift of having your email work for you, instead of the other way around.
How are you feeling about the approaching Holidays? How about the end of the year? If you read those two questions and felt a
sense of calm, nodding as you thought of the wrapped presents for your clients/friends/family, your 2014 goals neatly ticked off, your organized plan for moving your horse business forward in 2015, then read no further — this post is NOT for you. Shoot me an email and let me know what it’s like in your world — must be fascinating.
If, on the other hand, you felt a mild (or extreme) sense of panic, and your brain felt like it might implode from to-do-list overload, take a deep breath and read on — this post is most definitely for YOU.
In the title, I promised both good news and bad news. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, shall we?
The bad news is that there isn’t a single perfect system out there. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of good systems”out there” – just Google “organizing system”. I came up with 116 million results in less than a .22 seconds. That’s a lot of organizing systems. (Caveat – if you’re easily distracted by shiny promises of a perfectly organized life, I do NOT recommend Googling this for yourself, you could get lost in there for hours…)
What I’m saying is that none of these 116 million systems are perfect, at least not for you (or me). And that’s OK. I figure if I let you know that right up front, I may save you the 30 plus years I’ve been looking. (If you’ve already spent more than 30 years, I apologize for not getting here sooner).
So if those systems aren’t perfect – where’s the good news?
The good news is that you can’t find the perfect system because you’re looking in all the wrong places, namely “out there”.
For as long as people have been handing out advice, we’ve been told to go inside. Not as in your mother telling you to go inside because it’s 13 degrees out and you’re building snowmen in your tee shirt, but as in staying true to what is right for you. From Shakespeare (“To thine own self be true”), to Astrid in ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ (“What you’re looking for isn’t out there, Hiccup, it’s in here”, as she lovingly pats his chest).
The point is, what works for “other people” may not work so well for you. But to give you even better news, here are 5 simple steps you can use to craft your own excellent system.
1. Know yourself. Polonius was right (despite the fact that he was a somewhat pompous old windbag), when he advised Laertes “To thine own self be true”. If you know you love paper-based calendars and are relatively tech-phobic, don’t run out and get the latest software for your phone in hopes that you’ll learn to love it. Stick to what works for you. Remember, this doesn’t have to be forever, just try it for a month and see how you like it, which brings me to point #2.
2. None of this is set in stone. Don’t be afraid to try a pocket calendar, wall calendar or 3 x 5 cards if you’re a paper fan; or a new calendar app for your phone if you’re so inclined. Many apps are either free or at least come with a free trial, so you can give them a shot without feeling like you’re taking out some sort of sacred contract. Try it before you commit your entire life to it. That being said, don’t jump ship too quickly – which segues nicely into point #3.
3. Try it for at least a month. If you’re like me, a sucker for the next “big thing”, realize right now that you may be spending a ridiculous amount of time trying and discarding new things without ever giving any of them a fair chance. By committing to your new system for a month, you’ll have a fair idea of whether or not you’ll be able to live with it, at least in some form (the italics on those last 3 words should key you into the fact that they lead nicely to my next point).
4. Think ‘outside of the box’, not ‘right out of the box’. As good as any system may be, chances are, there will be a few things about it that don’t quite work for you.
Love the in-your-face visibility of paper calendars, but wish you had more room to write notes or cross off items without making a mess? Try using a whiteboard. You can make up a calendar by using permanent marker or electrical tape to mark off the boxes as big as you want. Like sticky notes? Get some in different colors for different aspects of your life you’d like to organize and stick them on your calendar.
More of a techie? Try a program like Evernote, which allows you to keep all sorts of information (from your blacksmith’s phone number to your grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe) in one place. Evernote is available as a web-based application, and for all of your mobile devices as well. Note your eye doctor’s appointment on your phone, and it appears on your computer. You can even integrate Evernote and Google Calendars or iCal.
Good as they are, even whiteboards and Evernote won’t solve all of your organizational challenges, which brings us to the last point.
5. They call it “self” help for a reason. Face it, in a perfect world, we’d pick out the perfect organizing system, and hey presto – our lives would be perfectly organized! Yeah, well, I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but it just doesn’t work that way.
One of the ways we seeking types tend to get in trouble is that we believe the unspoken hype that all advertising is known for – buy this product and you will get the guy/girl, win the game, have perfect children, or perfect teeth, or an immaculate house, or whatever. Fascinating concept, but then so are all the things in Harry Potter books (especially the one where Hermoine gets to be in two places in once … but I digress).
Point is, the biggest reason for failure of most organizing systems is lack of user input. Buying the system will not change your life! It’s a system, not a magic wand.
A system is only as good as its user.
Probably the best piece of advice I can give you is to keep the You in User (say it out loud, it’ll make sense). Whatever system you eventually adopt (and adapt), make sure you use it. Visit it every morning to plan your day. Give it a quick check in the evening to see what’s on for the next day (and get an idea of how well you did today). Stick a note on the fridge to remind you to use it if necessary, but do try your best to use the system for a month, then evaluate and tweak it or trash it.
If you find yourself trashing systems frequently, go back to the first step. Figure out what worked and what didn’t before you shop for the next one, and eventually, you’ll have it – the best system. It may not be the best one for your mother, or your dentist or your best friend – but it will be the best one for you, and that’s what makes it perfect.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to use one in a fruit salad.
Anyone who’s been around horses for any length of time know where the expression ‘horse sense’ originated. Most horses have a pretty good sense of how to be a great horse. Move around. Eat small amounts constantly. Drink when you’re thirsty. Sleep when you’re tired. Run away from the scary thing first – ask questions later.
This native wisdom of horses doesn’t always help them fit our idea of a great horse, so we teach them a thing or two. Stand quietly when tied. No grazing while being ridden. Take a breath and think before you high tail it on out of Dodge.
The best education works in harmony with the horse’s natural wisdom and the owner ends up with a horse that has both “horse sense” (which I equate to wisdom) and a thinking, processing, trained mind (which, for the sake of this post, I’m equating with intelligence).
To run your horse business (not to mention the rest of your life) successfully – you need to emulate that well trained horse and work in a balance of wisdom and intelligence.
Here’s the deal. A lot of horse business owners are amazing at the horse end of things — the business end? Maybe not so much. I attended a business seminar for horse people several years ago run by Elizabeth Clarke – an attorney who owns The Equine Business Institute. One of the best, and scariest, exercises Beth had the participants do was to figure out how much we made per hour. Most of us a) really didn’t want to know, and b) sure as heck didn’t want to share our answer with others.
Here we were, a bright and talented bunch of entrepreneurs, many of whom were holding paper on farms worth a half million dollars or more – and we were so far below making minimum wage that we should have all chucked it right then and there and gone and gotten a good job waiting tables.
But we didn’t. We learned. Maybe our board rates went up a bit to cover some of the losses many of us were incurring in that sector. Maybe we started figuring out how much per stall our barn needed to bring in in order for us to show a profit. Perhaps our marketing changed a bit, or we kept better records. Whatever our changes, we made one important decision by showing up to that seminar in the first place. We were ready to add some book learning to our horse sense and improve our businesses.
Contrast that with some newer people in the horse industry. Maybe a college degree with a major in Equine Business and a minor in Marketing. No doubt people coming from a background like that are going to have a lot of the answers to the questions Beth Clarke asked us that day many years ago. But an MBA doesn’t guarantee success in a horse business any more than a marriage license guarantees you happily ever after with your spouse. You’re going to need more.
Specifically, you’re going to need time. And experience. You’re going to need to learn which local farmer has the best hay, or a who to call (or email) when you need a new lesson horse. You’ll need to know when one of the horses in your care “just isn’t right”, and know when to call the vet – and know enough to be working with a vet who trusts you when you say something with the horse “just isn’t right”. In short – horse sense.
So, you can see how both the book learning and the horse sense are critical components to your business, and your life. If you ever doubt the importance of both – just think about the best fruit salad you’ve ever had. I’ll bet it didn’t contain any tomatoes.
By Wiros from Barcelona, Spain [CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia CommonsWe’ve all seen the disclaimers on car ads, stunt shows and the like – “Professional stuntman – Don’t try this at home!” Mostly, the warnings are there for a good reason. Professionals are trained to do a job and do it well. Trying to walk a tightrope or jump a motorcycle through a flaming hoop probably doesn’t make much sense for most horse professionals (event riders – I understand, you may want to give these things a go). For the rest of us? The costs typically outweigh the benefits – a year in a body cast vs. a 30 second thrill… Yup, pretty much well left to the professionals. They are good at what they do because it’s their specialty — just like your niche in the horse industry is your specialty.
So why do so many equipreneurs take on tasks that really aren’t their specialty? In a lot of cases, it’s because of perceived fiscal responsibility. You’ll save money (insists your inner penny-pincher) by doing your own books, writing your own contracts, handling your own marketing…. You can fill in the blanks. But does doing these jobs on your own really save you money? Maybe this week, maybe even this year; but if you’re focusing on the long term for your business, your most savvy option may be to create good relationships with a few great professionals now, and watch your business grow well into the future.
After all, you may be able to get away with pulling a loose shoe or doing a little bit of a trim on a chipped foot, but unless you’re a trained farrier, would you really want to be responsible for the soundness of your (and your clients’) horses? Most barn owners would say no, and hire a professional. The same with your vet – suturing wounds and diagnosing mysterious illnesses things we typically leave to the professionals. This is even more true on the business side of things, where we’re less likely to have knowledge of best practices. The Big Three
Here are a few examples. First – hiring a good lawyer to handle your contracts. By a good lawyer, I mean one with equine experience who is up to date on the laws (and lawsuits) concerning the equine industry. While no one can prevent lawsuits from happening, having great contracts in place (whether boarding, training or release and hold harmless), can go a long way to define your responsibilities and make sure our clients are (literally) on the same page.
Second – A good (really good) accountant. Even with QuickBooks and FreshBooks and all the other equine-business software out there, hiring an accountant to at least do your taxes (and preferably to do your books at least quarterly) is an investment, rather than an expense. Miss one item on a tax return and it could cost you thousands, or bring close scrutiny from the IRS, neither of which would be my favorite activity.
Third – an Equine Insurance specialist. It pays to shop around on this. Not only do prices of policies vary widely from company to company, but you want to have a great relationship with your agent. Having the right policy is only so helpful if you can never get in touch with your agent, or you aren’t comfortable speaking with them.
While those three may be no-brainers to many equipreneurs, there’s another category that lots of us try to do on our own. Marketing. SEO, Keywords and Blogs – Oh My!
Hiring good people to help with your marketing can make or break your business nearly as decisively as any of the “big three” listed above. Most horse folks are aware how important a website, advertising and social media can be to their business, but many of us simply don’t have the time to figure out how to build a website and optimize the various social platforms out there. Sure – we post pictures of the latest show to our Facebook page; we may even tweet about a summer camp we’re offering or a saddle sale at our tack shop – but is it really helping? Do riders, trainers, barn managers and tack shop owners really have the time to learn about SEO? And is it the best use of your time, or your money? Probably not, and here’s the reason – you’re a specialist in your own niche, and that’s where you should be spending your time and energy.
By taking the time away from your specialty, be it training racehorses or running a therapeutic riding program, to write web copy or write a blog post; you’re taking time away from what you love most and do best. You’re taking time from what makes your business uniquely yours, and spending it on a delegateable task.
Hiring professionals to design your website and logo are the first step. The next step is to hire a writer to manage what goes onto your website, your social media and blogs and even send out monthly email newsletters. Many writers (myself included) can tailor exactly which services you want into a package, and even build your website. Frequency of social media posts, the number of pages on your website, whether or not you want a blog – it’s all negotiable. Start with the basics and grow from there.
When you hire your writer, be sure they know something about the horse industry. Trying to explain the whole world of horses to someone who has never been involved may make it seem like you would have been better off doing it yourself. I’ve been involved with horses for over 40 years. I’ve shown, trained, taught, owned and run my own boarding and training barn, managed barns for other people. I get the horse business. I know what long days and hard work are. I know how excited you can be about a great stallion, an important win in the ring, or a student with Cerebral Palsy walking without braces for the first time because of your riding program. I’ve been there and lived all those and more. And now, I’m here to help you tell your story to your clients, present and future.
If you’re ready to see your business grow and would like to spend more time doing what you do best, give me a call at 434.381.0271 or email me at Penny@TheHorseWriter.com. I’ll be happy to set up a free consultation call so I can show you how to spend more time doing what you should be. The Horse Writer – Because you’d rather be riding than writing.
TheHorse.com recently racked up it’s 100,000th follower on Facebook. In honor of that achievement, they’ve challenged equine enthusiasts across the country to donate a combined 100,000 minutes of time to charities. As reported by Stephanie Church, Editor-in-Chief at The Horse, 100,000 is a pretty big number — “It’s just shy of the population of Kenosha, Wisc. (U.S. Census Bureau, July 2012). And since the number has grown since Friday, we’re now neck and neck with West Palm Beach, Fla.”
You can read more about the challenge and sign up here.
Your thoughts on volunteering may run along the lines of – “Yeah, sure. Right after I stack this load of hay, schedule Spring shots, and go find Ace’s $100 bar shoe that he lost in the mud by the gate…” Face it, the norm in this business is to have more work than time, few breaks, few chances to socialize or donate time to your favorite organization. Just keeping on top of the chores is enough to keep you (and probably at least half of your friends and relatives) busy on any given day. But what if I were to tell you that, rather than just being another commitment you could do without, volunteering can positively impact your bottom line? Don’t believe me? Read on for 5 overlooked ways volunteering can help your business.
1. You’ll grow your network
Sure, you see your clients regularly, sometimes run into other horse people at the feed store — and there are always other riders and trainers at shows; but, you’re always busy with your own agendas and rarely have time to make new acquaintances at places like this. Volunteering gives you access to new people, and a common thread you can weave into new friendships, new experiences, and even new clients.
2. Like It, Share It, Post It, and Tweet About It
Volunteering at your local Therapeutic Riding Center fixing the ring? Clearing trails in a State Forest? Painting jumps for your area 4-H group or Pony Club? Take photos, post them to the club’s Facebook Page (as well as your own business page). Tweet about the fact that you’re honored to be helping out a great organization. Follow the group on social media, and invite friends to attend the event (just check with the organizer first, so they don’t have 2 dozen unexpected volunteers showing up and not enough tools or jobs to go around). Social Media is not only a great way to promote your business directly, but also to show that you’re involved in the community and that you give back to deserving organizations.
3. Add to Your Skill Set
You may have mended a hundred miles of fence, but have you ever constructed cross-country obstacles? You write checks for the vet, blacksmith, and feed store, but have you ever scribed for a dressage judge? Maybe you’re interested in learning a bit about reining, or want to run a charity trail ride some time in the future. Volunteering at events can be a great way to learn new skills which could translate into a new revenue stream for your business.
4. It takes a Village
Volunteering to be a jump crew at a 4-H show, or clear trails for a Rails to Trails project or your local hunt? Get your students or boarders involved. It provides a great sense of community, and once you have fostered the feeling of working together in your group, you can more easily translate that into work parties around your own barn. Provide a grill and have a sign-up for pot luck and make a fun day out of it. Next time your beginner jumping group goes into the ring, they can be proud that they painted the jumps or filled in the flower boxes.
5. Supporting the Cause
What’s near and dear to your heart – finding a cure for Breast Cancer? Saving horses from slaughter? Helping disadvantaged youth? The state of the wild horse population in the US or working horses in Third World countries? Find a group whose mission aligns with your beliefs and ask about volunteer opportunities. You’ll be supporting a cause you truly believe in while spreading the word about your business and services.
So, the next time you’re at your planning calendar — think about planning some time for volunteering. You may just find that you’re helping out your bottom line while you’re helping your favorite charity.
