Increase sales, improve your performance, design better equestrian programs. Find all the tools you need in one convenient place. Please take your time exploring our Farm Freebies or our horse business tips.
This web site is all about developing a solid horse business and letting it take off. It’s about finding your passion, your reason for living, and making money with your skills. It’s about solving problems and improving solutions, and preventing catastrophe.
I strong>love helping an individual launch a successful horse business. I don’t do this because it makes me rich or because it makes me famous—it does neither. I do it because my story has led me here.
While removing a student from his horse might not be an ideal scenario, it is sometimes necessary. Riding instructors must protect themselves, their clients and their employees, which sometimes means making difficult decisions.
There are three situations in which you should remove a student from his horse in riding lessons:
That’s the criteria. If you are teaching a riding lesson where one is true, it’s time to remove the student from his horse.
I taught a riding lesson once where a student purposefully tried to run his horse into another horse in the arena. I’ve seen lessons where a student drops his reins or takes off at a canter without warning, or attempts to jump an obstacle without permission. All grounds for automatic removal.
Your horse business will not survive if you allow dangerous behavior to continue. Your students must respect you enough to stay safe when working with horses, and if they don’t they lose the privilege of riding. Period.
Even if a student is not being overtly dangerous in a riding lesson, his refusal to follow the orders you give should result in removal. You conduct riding lessons a certain way for a reason—to keep everyone safe—and a student who disrespects your commands should not be tolerated.
I have a three-strikes rule for this situation in my riding lessons (unless the behavior becomes dangerous, in which Strike Three happens right away). Set a zero-tolerance party for failing to follow rules and you’ll have a much more orderly riding lesson program.
Let’s say a horse comes up lame in the middle of a riding lesson. Or what if you notice that a horse seems dehydrated. When this happens, it is best to remove the student from his horse immediately.
If possible, you can set up another horse for the student to ride, thereby saving the lesson. If you can’t, you can offer a make-up so the student doesn’t miss out. Whatever the case, respond to an ill or injured horse immediately.
In every situation except the last, it is important to make it clear that removing a student from his horse is a punishment. It should be uncomfortable for the student so that it discourages repeats in the future.
Some riding instructors make their students sit outside the arena and watch the rest of the class, while others send disrespectful students to the barn to muck stalls or clean tack. Whatever the case, send a message when things get out of hand in riding lessons.
One caveat:
Make sure that students (and their parents) know the rules before you remove a student from his horse. This is extremely important because the student (or his parent) is paying for the riding lesson, and will therefore be upset when he gets nothing in return for his money.
Give every student a copy of the rules, and make sure to talk to parents after a riding lesson where a student was removed. Tell them what went wrong and exactly how you handle it so there are no misunderstandings. Communication, you guys. It makes the horse business go ’round.
Horse business owners are as entitled to payment as any other entrepreneur. If your clients don’t pay on time—or at all—you cannot continue to offer your services. Everybody loses.
But don’t make the mistake of assuming that your clients think about payment from your point of view. They’re thinking about their own income and expenses, and they view your invoice in terms of how it affects them.
We’re all egocentric to a point. Your job as a horse business owner is to structure a payment policy that will encourage customers to hand over the dough.
Yesterday we talked about incentives in the horse business, but today I want to take it a step further. You can generate interest in your horse business services without actually offering anything for free.
Or you can combine this tactic with a freebie. Your choice.
Today’s Farm Freebie: Gift Certificates