Horses are BIG business 1

Now I have all that deep soul searching off my chest (about why I am bothering to write this) I can get on with writing about what I have been doing.

It is funny the way things happen. Whilst my soul was slowly being destroyed because I had let myself languish far too long in one place, I found the joy being sucked out of what had always been my solace,  that is spending time with my horses. Yes I was spending a lot of time with them, but in a very business like manner. I was developing my stud and doing all the right things about research on bloodlines and marketing etc but a lot of the day to day just being with them was lost. I even had someone employed to do what I had always loved doing. Kaching! Doesn’t that happen so often to us in business. We start a business because we have a passion about something or because we are technically good at something but as time goes on and the business grows we spend less and less time doing what we love and more and more time administering others doing what we used to love doing. I wasn’t doing something I hated, in fact I love working out bloodlines and talking to other people about my horses, but I don’t like doing all the paperwork and the organising schedules and would rather muck out a stable than do the filing anytime. How many times though do we see managers of businesses clinging to administrative tasks when their time could be better spent elsewhere? They may have different reasons to do so, it could be a need to micro manage, or a fear of not being good enough at all that “strategic” stuff or perhaps a fear of others perceptions if they are not seen to  be “working hard” but the result is the same – time lost that could have driven the business forward that can never be regained (You see this is where meandering gets you, I had no idea that was what I was going to write about when I started). Answer? Let it go people. Hire someone else who can do it better and more efficiently and put your energies to where they are best suited. That might be working in the strategic space or it might be using your technical talents, but running a business should be about have the right person doing the job, not one person doing all the jobs.

Back to my original track. I quit my business, something I found hard because as well as the uncertainty of branching out in a new endeavor, I was also leaving behind some very good friends and colleagues I had been working with for 20 years (and I’m only 26 fancy that!). I was excited about what I was moving towards but still hampered by what I was moving away from. I enlisted the help of my wonderful colleague Ros Tasker  and one suggestion she had was to look at the field (I have come to the conclusion pun-less writing is impossible) of horse assisted leadership training, thereby combining two passions and perhaps assuaging the guilt felt about “playing ponies” instead of doing real work. I couldn’t however face it. Work is work and play is play and much as I enjoy coaching and developing people and businesses it still comes into the work category where my horses are my relaxation. It would seem like trying to convince people I was eating diet food when I was eating chocolate.

Thanks to meeting someone new however my interest in horses assisted leadership development has been rekindled and I am happily researching away. In a webinar for The Leasdership Circle (Asia pacific) last night we were talking about the futility of loading new software onto people whose operating system was not yet able to run it. Maybe my operating system is ready to run something new.

Where to from here?

Good intentions!

Ok so September has bit the dust but I can at least manage to populate October in a small way.September passed in a bit of a whirl for me. Not so much in terms of activity, more what I was processing in my head. In addition I wasn’t really sure what direction to take this Blog in. A wise and respected friend commented on the fact that people must want to read it for some reason which means it must satisfy something in them that is not satisfied elsewhere. That kind of put the wind up me because I read a lot of blogs and see the same ideas recycled a few times and usually nowhere near as eloquently the second and third time around. In the business coaching field there are a lot of people with stories to tell and ideas to explore and is my thinking so original that I can really break through all that?

So rather than attempt to write cutting edge insightful and mostly original comments on the coaching field I can instead use this as a self indulgent meander through the things that grab my fancy from time to time. If no one want to read it (the book offers don’t come flowing in for instance) does it really matter if I have gained something during the process. And I will, because letting my thoughts flow from my brain out through my fingers always helps me process information.

So if you came here looking for pithy stuff I suggest instead you visit  Shirlaws Australia Blog  where my colleagues strut their stuff.

I am invisible

I found out on the weekend that I am invisible, or apparently so. This came as a bit of a shock to me as we were talking about my Friesian Horse stud, an enterprise I have been involved with for 12 years and was a pretty early player in the Australian market.

Even though at the time I ventured into the project I was not really aware of the theory behind positioning my business I instinctively knew I wanted to be aiming for the Rolls Royce end of the market, not the Great Wall. So that was the product part of the equation sorted out. I was going for premium product. So I invested heavily in my foundation stock, importing top bloodlines and using the best stallions I could, but even then there was a bit of a reality check because I didn't quite have the capital to really go for "Roll Royce" status. My choice became more Lexus v Toyota.

So what about price? At the time I entered the market the competition was not deep. A small number of sellers catering to a demand that could not be met, so I was able to charge a premium price (but then so was everyone else). Great so at the moment product and price are nicely aligned.

Service was the next consideration and again here I felt I was delivering the goods. Always ready to help people in their search for information, in the (frequent) event I could not provide them with what they wanted I was able to give them more avenues to follow up. My horses left my property well handled and ready for their new owner. I answered emails and phone inquiries, I was polite, helpful and engaged. So tick for service.

So what about the final consideration, market? Was there a Lexus market for my Lexus product or was I addressing a Toyota crowd?  The thing about the horse world is that as a group we are united by our love of the equine, but from there is starts to fragment rapidly. For everyone who loves a breed there are those who wouldn't own one if you paid them, for every person who thinks that Olympic Dressage is the epitome of training and grace there are those who prefer to chase cattle and throw them to the ground with a rope. The first step was to determine who my market was. And that perhaps is where I bit off the really tough mouthful. The market I wanted was not just the Friesian enthusiast, but the Dressage Enthusiast that wanted something a bit different. So the Freisian enthusiast is going to bed at night dreaming about big black horses with flowing manes and shiny coats. Its is all about the horse and how it "speaks" to them. They may not have deep pockets but they are prepared to do what it takes to afford their dream. More your classic car market than your Lexus. Dressage people on the other hand can be broken up into even more subgroups. At the extreme end you have the professional, the person who has serious aspirations of representing their country and for them it is all about the ability of the individual horse to do that. And there is a breed that dominates the world in this respect having been purpose bred for the job for hundreds of years (predating the actual modern Olympics - they must have been prescient). At the extreme other end you have the happy amateur enthusiast that dabbles and does it in what ever horse they happen to have, colour shape size, breed etc are irrelevant as long as it is equine and you can sit on it. So my very narrow market was people who want to do well in dressage at the local, state and national level but don't have serious aspirations (though we can all dream) of making the Olympics and also want to do it on fairytale horses a la Ladyhawke.

So Product - tick, Price - tick, Service - tick, Market - dodgy. It is there alright and prepared to pay but just how large is it?

Having Positioning sort of nailed (a bit lacking in market research) it was time to look at my Branding in the context of that position.

First of all we concentrated on the horses themselves. My two stallions are placed with a professional rider, they compete at every major competition in our state and often venture interstate. They are known by everyone in that world and have their own little band of admirers. My older stallion has his own facebook page, we have a new you beaut website (I thought) that I am now able to update myself (much quicker and more relevant), I advertise in the horse persons bible. I have corporate colours, I have logo's, I have a youtube video that constantly gets hits from all round the world. I'm on appropriate special interest forums where I am a community member not just a spammer with plugs for my horses. I have in the past exported horses to New Zealand and have sold horses to most other states. I have served on the board of our breed society.

Yet I have become invisible! Some one who lives but an hour away, knew my horses, had seen them in action, could not find me. I have also found that I was getting less inquires (and was talking that down as due to the large increase in breeders and thus availability of horses) and that the recent sales I had had were from referrals to me from other breeders?

What was going wrong?

Well I'm working on that but two things have emerged. I need to expand who I am talking too. The "old crowd" know me and where to find me but I am not connecting with the person who sees one of my stallions or someones else's horse or just some pictures on the internet. I need to increase my "chatting' sphere. Find where those new people are looking. Secondly my website, or rather sites. My old site (which I have no control over) comes up first in every search and of course it is woefully out of date and has no link to my new one It needs to be taken down so my job now is to keep hassling till that happens. The second is I am on a crash course to learn how to promote my new one so it comes up when people search not just for my stud but for my breed. That's the starting place anyway.


So what is the learning in this? Yes you have to get your positioning right and spend a lot on time on that, but once you have done it, don't take you eye off the ball. Your market is always changing and moving and you have to be nimble and move with it.

Django of Cacharel 

Tashkent Friesians

Django's Facebook

Why Business Coaching?

This is more about me still than about why you should choose to work with a Business Coach. Just so you can get to know me a bit better.

My first introduction to Business Coaching was when the accounting practice of which I was a partner decided to engage a coach. We had seen a presentation by a Shirlaws coach at a conference, asked around and received some good recommendations about them from others who had worked with them. We got them in because our growth had just stalled. We had had many years of reliable growth but the two years that had just gone seemed almost dead in the water. Any growth we had was just inline with CPI.


So we got a coach from Shirlaws and said "Mate, we need to learn how to sell better, we need our staff to be able to sell this business to their contacts but above all we need the partners to be more effective at selling". So the coach, like all good coaches says "Yes I can see you have slowed down in your growth now tell me, what else is going on in your business?" "Well, ............................"

Cut a long story short (and it was a long story as we worked with our coach for two years) we did great things in that business. We had a really hard look at our culture, our communications, how we were positioned in the market, how to get our systems really supporting what we did and , oh yes, we did to a bit about sales skills! The biggest change of all though was for me. I had one of those light bulb moments (though it wasn't really like that, it was more like a beacon flaring up after starting with a couple of rubbed together sticks) where I realized that I just did not want to be where I was any more. It wasn't satisfying me. I was too constrained by all the compliance work to do what I really wanted to do, which was help businesses be better businesses, what ever that might mean for the owners. So I decided to leave, to strike out in a new direction, go back to Uni and follow my passion for learning and complete my Masters of Business Coaching and above all join this wonderful vibrant energizing organisation that is Shirlaws.

So that's why I am a Business Coach, to get those fires lit in people so they can bring passion to their business and their lives.

Hello World

Ok here we go. The exciting new whizzbang take the world by storm new blogging revolution starts now. Gulp! What do I say?.Had enough trouble coming up with the title. See, it all started with a dream I had when I was at school, one day I'd be ensconced in some top secret lab in Tashkent conducting experiments that would save the world. Why Tashkent? All that terribly romantic Silk Road stuff and it was a long way from the rolling green fields of Suffolk  where my school was located.

So, now I am relocated to the still rolling but not quite so green hills of Australia, when I named my Friesian horse stud what other name could I give it than Tashkent? (Come on, its obvious isn't it?). TK became my suffix for the horses so when I set up my twitter account I became LynnTK. So now I set up my blog and TK just seems right but how on earth do you link a Friesian horse stud that has it's roots somehow buried in the an ancient trade route to Business Coaching? With great difficulty and with the odd witching hour spent tossing around names. Totally Kinetic. Toasted Krumpets (spelling optional) Tossing Klingons? Just wasn't working so I compromised and thus Knowledge Transfer was born.

Oh and if you want to check out the Friesians of Tashkent you can find them here Tashkent Friesians and my opinionated stallion Django's personal soapbox Django's facebook page