The operational plan section of your horse business plan is designed to define the day-to-day operations of your horse business. What has to be done, when does it need to be accomplished, and how is it structured?
Although you will need to think strategically in order to write the operational plan, you also have to be practical. You might want to get something done in an hour, but if experience tells you it will take two hours you need to account for that.
Basically, the operational plan is a blow-by-blow of your daily life in the horse business. It should include the things for which you, personally, are responsible, as well as those tasks you will delegate to employees.
Create Operational Categories
The easiest way to delve into the operational plan is to divide your horse business operations into categories. It is usually best to create your categories based on the services you offer, which might involve riding instruction, horse training, stable management, breeding, competition, summer camps, clinics and a host of other programs.
Within those categories you have tasks or duties that must be completed on a regular basis. If you have a riding instruction category, for example, the tasks under it might include:
- Teaching lessons
- Meeting new students
- Managing school horses
- Billing
- Scheduling
- Horsemanship programs
You get the idea. Your goal is to make a list of all the duties that must be fulfilled in your horse business, whether they need to be taken care of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annually or on some other schedule.
Budget for Operations
Also included in the operational section of your horse business plan is a budget for each of the items on your list. Everything you do in the horse business, from feeding animals to paying the farrier, costs money, and you need to allocate sufficient funds for everything.
My advice is to come up with a set time frame in which your budget is set. You feed your horses on a daily basis, but you can calculate a monthly budget instead of breaking it down into 24-hour periods. This makes it easier to streamline everything across the board.
Scheduling
And finally, a horse business plan is not complete without schedules for operations. When will the grain be mixed? The horses be fed and turned out? The horses in training be worked? These are questions you need to answer now—even if the answers change at some point in the future.
Capturing It All
The process of writing a horse business plan might seem tedious, especially when you’re writing down every task you will need to accomplish. Not the most exciting way to spend your time.
However, I can’t tell you how much easier this will make your life once your horse business is up and running. Keep at it, and we’ll finish up the horse business series this week with posts on the management plan and products and services.
You might also like:
- Horse Business Plans 101:
Management Plan - Horse Business Plans 101:
Marketing Plan - Why Write a Horse Business Plan?
- Horse Business Plans 101:
Products & Services - Horse Business Plans 101
About the Author: Laura Jane Thompson is the Chief Equestrian Officer of Riding Instructor University and the Feature writer for the horses section at Suite101. She believes that any horse business can succeed provided its owner practices smart strategy.
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