If you love horses and are looking for a great way to earn money, you might be interested in opening up a horse boarding business. It’s fun and relaxing. You get to spend most of your time outdoors and riding horses. But you know that it’s much more difficult than that, right?
That’s no reason to back down immediately. Like all business ventures, the start is always the hardest. However, if you’re able to start the business well, you’re on to a great long-lasting career. If you’re a newbie to this field, hold tight to your reins, and take a look at these tips.
There are three important things to keep in mind when opening a business, and it also applies to the stables: Planning, Implementation, and Client Management.
Planning
A burning passion for horses won’t suffice your business alone. Like all business ventures, it’s a must to plan out everything before you launch. Before anything, you should ask yourself: where will I put my barn? When is the best time for it? After all that’s sorted out the next questions are about the facilities, the amenities, the manpower, the set-up for clients, the trainer and so much more. This can be a little overwhelming, but it can all be done and sorted out once you have a project tracker.
A project tracker helps you organize and prioritize the matters that you have to attend to, it also reminds you what details you should take into consideration when choosing. For example, in deciding where to put your barn, the project tracker can remind you that the recommended ratio of land space for a horse is one acre. It can help you decide if you’re looking for a property to buy. Or if you already have a property ready, it can help you in figuring out how many horses you can board.
Setting up the barn itself is a bit expensive. This is why having a tracker can also help you make projected costs of the stables building, electricity expenses, water, and the cost of labor you will need to pay for. This way, you won’t be surprised when you have to pay for these things. Having an estimate can also help you find the right materials you need, you won’t be forced to pay too much, or won’t be forced to settle for low-quality products for a low price.
Part of the planning phase is also determining what kind of boarding you want to offer. There are three kinds of boarding, Full, partial, and self-care. Full boarding entails your barn feeding the horses day and night, letting the horses walk, grooming them, and training them. This is why research is very important too, as you will define what services you provide.
Part of your project tracker is also your goals. How many horses do you want to board, what utilities would you want to soon have? If you don’t have an arena now, do you plan to have one soon? Setting up goals in your tracker can help you come up with a plan on how to meet them. It’s important to set up goals so that your business has a direction and that there is continuous expansion and growth for you and the whole venture.
Implementation
Implementation is mostly about choosing the right things for your stables. Yes, this is part of the planning, but the difference with planning and implementation is that planning gives you estimates, it entails a lot of canvassing and setting up the standards you need. In implementation, you are going to actually purchase the materials that you need.
One of the best things you can do for your barn is choosing to go environmentally friendly. It’s good for your business because it’s good for horses. Clients will also want to board their horses in your barn when they learn that you’re doing your best to reduce carbon footprints. Clients these days are not only going after quality, but also ethical practices. One of the ways you can practice is by choosing sustainable materials to get for your stables. There are a lot of eco-friendly lumbers in the market that you can choose from instead of buying commercial ones.
In taking care of your pastures, you may want to go organic on your fertilizers, it’s healthy for the horses too. If there’s an option to go organic for hay, explore that venture too.
For more sustainable practices, rotate your pastures to avoid overgrazing and revisit your manure system, are they disposed of properly? How about the water system, are they used conservatively? These are some of the things you can check when trying to go for eco-conscious practices.
Client Management
It takes two to tango. Let’s say you have an awesome business plan and a great system at your barn, it’s all good to go, you need one last element: the client.
Clients are the most important stakeholders. They fund your stables. You need them to keep the business afloat. They are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to find the perfect place for their beloved horses. This is why besides the great amenities and system, you have to have a great rapport with the clients.
The horsing community is relatively small, and word travels fast. If a client you have had the best experience in your boarding, they will surely recommend you to their other friends. The same goes for if they have a bad experience, they will pull out their horses from your stables and tell their friends not to entertain you.
Try to connect with the clients, join communities on Facebook. Make sure that you give them a trusting image so that you get new clients and keep them.
Like all businesses, setting up a horse boarding is hard. But if you have the passion and the drive to be the best in the business, there’s nothing stopping you.
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