Prediction about your horse business: 2007 will be your best year yet.

How do I know that? Two good reasons.

1. 2007 will be a lucky year for you. You probably already know that because it ends in 7. Countless studies have shown seven is a lucky number as well as any digit between 0 and 9. With luck on your side in 2007, your best year yet will happen easily because of reason number 2.

2. You intend for 2007 to be your best year yet. I’m not taking about a wimpy New Year’s Eve resolution that 2007 is your best year yet, I’m referring to an intention to improve your business this year that is backed with a planned strategy and an attitude shift in your gut to play a bigger game than you have ever played before.

In the past, you’ve started the year off with renewed enthusiasm for building your business to a new level that creates more time, more money and a better support team to help you accomplish what you set out to do.

Then your intentions pull up lame because they aren’t strong enough to jump over your self created fences. Maybe you’ve built these fences in the past:

• Fear of making changes to improve your business. Directing you business through change can be a rough ride. It’s like riding a white-eyed horse whose muscles are tense enough to launch you into a low earth orbit in a nanosecond. Do you stay on and work through it or do you get off before it hurts? I know you’ve ridden white-eyed horses through some tense moments and proven your leadership ability.



• Habit creates comfort. Your routine is the perimeter of your comfort zone. Doing familiar tasks provides validation for your competency to do work. Mucking stalls, cleaning saddles and writing the checks to pay bills is important work. However, it’s not the important work that the business owner should necessarily be doing. If you know you need to get out of the plow harness and start calling prospects about your horses for sale, giving demonstrations and clinics and understanding your business numbers and raising rates, get uncomfortable and do it.



• Lacking Imagination forces your business to operate in the round pen of mediocrity. New opportunities come about because of application of imagination. Your business blinders have probably been on too long and your idea pool has dried up. Foster creativity.

Solutions:

Fear: If you fall off - get back on. You won’t be breaking any bones.

Habit: Break out of the harness. Mix up what you do. Do the important things even if they make you uncomfortable.

Lacking Imagination: Change your environment- what other industries in sports and recreation can be copied to help source new ideas for your business? Brainstorm with others.

The best time to start?

Now!

Call or email me about your business loans. We can put together a plan that makes sense for you.

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." -- William Faulkner

"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life." -- Dr. David M. Burns

"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution." -- Bertrand Russell

Normally at this time of year, winter weather maintenance items fill my evening hours. If you live in cold country with horses, you get accustomed to frozen water pipes, iced buckets, extra horse blankets, wind-packed snow drifts, manure overload, hard starting tractors and diesel trucks. This hasn’t been the case in the Northeast US and much of Canada this season.

I’m delighted nature has provided me with a break to enjoy the evenings with a little reading time. Christmas gifts of books have provided good entertainment for my “free time”. I’m reading “The Starbucks Experience” by Joseph Michelli and am wondering how the 5 leadership principles of Starbucks can be adapted for use in the horse business world. Stay tuned.

My commute to the office has allowed me the chance to watch the construction of two outdoor skating rinks in the side yards of wishful figure skaters and hockey enthusiasts. The view of home-built makeshift plastic and 2”X8” iceless rinks is as appealing as an outdoor riding arena covered in water and mud. The only solution for each predicament is prayer.

I’m preparing for several presentations about various topics in the horse business world in the next few months. On January 28, 2007 I will be speaking at a local event sponsored by trainer and clinician Tom Pinkowski. Tom and Debbie Pinkowski put on their first Niagara County Horse Fair and Expo last year and are following up with an even better local event this year.

I’m off to Atlanta in February to do multiple sessions on marketing, operating a profitable horse business and balancing work, rest and play on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007 for the attendees of the American Morgan Horse Convention.

I’m also on the road to State University of New York Cobleskill Equestrian Center in late April for horse business workshops.

If you’d like to know more about a presentation about profitable horse businesses, call or e- mail me!

I work with Professional Horsemen who are struggling with the business half of the horse business. Just like a top performing horse has a strong foundation, so does a top performing horse business.

If you've had enough with disappointment in your horse business, call or e-mail and we can talk about your business and how I may be able to help you.

If you know other horsemen who would enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them! I am on a quest to tell 1000 people what I do and I need your help.

Life is short,

Ride hard.

Doug

Need a speaker about the horse business for your horse related organization? Talk to me about talking. Keynotes and workshops available. (716) 434-5371