Marketing Lessons From My Equestrian Days

In my early 20’s I was a sought-after horseback riding teacher, trainer and competitor! People paid me to teach them to ride, to train their horses and to compete with their horses. It was a dream come true for me because I could never have afforded such amazing horses and people to work with. Life was good!

Life was good until…. I started competing on a national and international scale! No longer was I the ‘top dog’ – competition was so much stiffer. I realized that if I was going to be ‘sought-after’ on a larger scale, I would have to improve my own riding and teaching skills.

However, I came from a poor family. There was no money to invest in a national or international level horse or even a coach!

But luckily I was gifted a scholarship to a week training with an international Olympic coach! I was sooooo excited – thinking I was going to learn the ‘magic’ that would skyrocket me to new levels!

I was shocked! Here’s what I learned and how it relates to marketing our businesses:

1. In all competition (marketing is a competition for your client’s attention), your job is to ‘STEAL THE SHOW’! In riding competitions, like many sports, you have to get seen to get chosen! In riding, it’s not always the BEST rider that wins the class but the one that gets seen at the right time by the judge!

It’s much the same in marketing — Your client needs to SEE you at the right time — when they have a problem AND they have to understand that you can solve their problem! You have to be able to communicate why they should choose you!

Are you being ‘seen’ by your dream client when they need you?

2. I learned from the Olympic coach that there is no magic answer to improving riding performance! There is no one way to do something that will magically propel you to the podium! In that week long course, the coach focused on the foundational elements of riding – the basics of position, weight distribution and the nuances of each element!

Sound familiar? The goal of your marketing is to bring you leads and sales. If you don’t have all the leads and sales (revenue) you want – then its time to go back to the foundational elements! During last week’s training (Make More Money Marketing Bootcamp), I shared 10 foundational elements that often need tweaking if your marketing isn’t bringing you the right amount of sales!

Which foundational elements of your marketing do you need to improve to get more sales? To help you get started, I’ve developed a Marketing Scorecard that you can download to help you identify the gaps in your marketing!

3. During that week long riding course, I learned that while we think we are doing something correctly, i.e. I thought my riding position was correct, it was imperative to have an outside person looking at my position, tweak little nuances and then to frequently remind me that I had fallen back into an old habit.

You see I had the exact knowledge about where my leg position should be to optimize performance however, without the consistent feedback on my own position, it was easy to revert to old habits.

It’s the same with our marketing (or any part of our business). It takes more than knowledge to grow your business! It also takes feedback so that we can improve!

How can you learn to Steal the Show; identify your marketing gaps and improve them; AND give you consistent feedback so you don’t fall back into old habits?

I want you to do what you love, get paid a sh*t ton of money doing it, and have the freedom to enjoy life!

That’s why I created The GROWTH Club and The GROWTH Club VIP.

It’s your opportunity to join a group of savvy business owners: