A Horse, Of Course
There are two sides to “expectations”. You need to know both if you want your horse business to be successful.
The first side is your expectations.
When you planned your business, hopefully, you determined there was a need for your product or service. And once you were convinced there was a market, you determined the market was large enough in potential to make your business a success. Finally, you were convinced you could reach your market in an economical way.
Armed with your “market” information, you set some goals for your business…your first of many expectations.
Once you’ve set goals (expectations) you need to track your progress toward reaching them.
The key now to your success is “not to be attached to your expectations.” Attachment always causes disappointment.
Whether you are on track to reach your goals within a specified period of time or not should be nothing more than information…not failure or success…just information.
If you are attached to your goals, and you are on track to reach them, you’ll begin to coast. Self-confident and smug, your success will soon become your failure.
If you are not on track to reach your goals, you’ll be depressed and stubbornly try to make what you are currently doing work better.
By being attached to your expectations, reached or not, you are not opening your mind to “change” which is constant, and must be ridden to success. If you are not changing and improving constantly, you will be left behind and failure is the only possible outcome.
Having expectations is fine, if they are guides and goals to success.
Being attached to expectations makes you and your business rigid and blind to new information and new desires by your market.
The other side of “expectations” is what is expected by your market.
Your customers believe that what you are offering—a horse, horse equipment, feed, or a service to them and their horse, such as training—will satisfy one or more of their desires. They actually purchase the “potential” to achieve their dreams.
As much as you don’t want to be attached to your expectations, you can be certain your clients will be attached to theirs.
In making an offer to satisfy the market’s desire, you must say what you mean and mean what you say. Anything less today and you’ll be out of business tomorrow.
We have become somewhat used to the idea that the car we buy is going to break down, the cell phone is going to have “dead zones”, and our computer is going to crash. We’ve become used to the idea that what is promised is not exactly what we are going to get. But as used to those ideas as we’ve become, we still “expect” to get what we were promised, and those that don’t deliver soon become extinct. Want an example? ..…US car makers, big department stores, magazines and newspapers.
Today those that deliver what we want survive…foreign car makers that build to last and provide good mileage…niche stores that have the exact style we want, internet sites that provide “instant” news and “in-depth” features, plus social networking and chat contact with friends.
Whatever your business, you can’t do more to make it successful than to meet your market’s expectations. If you say you can train the horse to be a champion, it better become a champion…if you say your boarding stable feeds horses correctly, they better have plenty of hay all the time…if you say your equipment will last a lifetime, it better be around next year.
If you can’t deliver, don’t say it
Say what you can deliver…a well-trained horse you’ll enjoy riding, a boarding stable in which you’ll feel confident leaving your horse, equipment that will help you get the job done.
While you don’t want to be attached to your expectations, you can be certain your customers are attached to theirs.
Visit www.horsecoursesonline.com to earn certification as a horse trainer, riding instructor or stable manager, or work toward a Bachelor of Science degree in Equine Studies. All courses online.
