How the MarketingOnline.com “5 Step Action Plan” made a difference in Ellen Einkauf’s horse training business.
After joining MarketingOnline.com, I followed a few of the “How to” Courses available in the training section for members. I enjoyed going through the courses and thinking about ways that I could make changes in my business and personal life to be more productive and have higher yields. I found a lot of success with the “5 Secrets to Making Change” course and want to share my results with you as a guest blogger.
In this course, Alex explains his 5 secrets to success in the form of questions to ask yourself in the steps of making change. The first is, “What is my Pain?”. I answered this question simply; I don’t have enough horses in training. After going through the discussion more, I changes my pain. I need more horses that are bringing in money without me having to front liability costs. For my business, this means that they don’t have to be in “training” but if they are being used to teach lessons or bringing in any small amount of money without me fronting costs, it’s a win. After going through more of the course, I specified my pain even more… It wasn’t just about the horses, my pain was that I needed to find more business without increasing liability. This includes horses, but I realized I needed to diversity my pain a bit more.
The second secret is to ask yourself, “What is the resolution?” The obvious answer for me was to get more horses in. But after more thought, that wouldn’t really solve my pain since it doesn’t account for the liability problem. The resolution is that I need more horses in the barn that are available for use without adding expenses and liability for me. In my niche, this would be finding horses that I don’t own (because then I have liability such as vet bills, maintenance, etc), but can pay to use, or “rent” for specific tasks. I figure, as long as I am breaking even, it is worth doing, so long as I don’t have to add liability expenses.
Alex talks about the fifth question being the hardest to answer, but I found the third to be the toughest for me. It is, “Why am I stuck?” Immediately, I figured it was because I just didn’t have enough resources (money, contacts, time) to make it happen. Then, I wrote a page of my thoughts and all the reasons and excuses for why I was stuck. But after going through the course and following his guidance, I came to realize what the true answer was. I was afraid of making a mistake that would result in a lot of failure. I needed to stop fearing the untried and unknown, and take a risky step. In the past, I have jumped right in with no fear and made a bit of a mess of things. This time around, I need to find that confidence again, but find a way to decrease liability in case it goes wrong. When Alex mentioned that you should look at why you are stuck with a pain but have yet to find the resolution, it made me think. I realized that I was stuck in a pattern of only doing what I knew would work, since it was tried and true. But that I couldn’t really make the big steps towards change without allowing myself to take a smart risk with confidence.
The fourth question is, “What’s the process?”. By the process, he means the process towards resolution, not the solution itself. He talks a lot in this section about getting a mentor so that you can speed up the process of finding that resolution. I realized how important it was for me to utilize the resources that I already have and try to network to find more. By learning how other people got unstuck from their pains, I automatically get to lower my liability by not making the mistakes that my mentors and peers have already worked through.
The last question is, “What is my first step?”. Alex specifies how important that the first step is a physical action. I determined that I needed to brainstorm and make a list of people to contact (both new and old resources) to help me with ways to get unstuck from my pains. Specifically, I am going to ask them if they know of any horses in the area that I can use for my business, know of any other ways to diversify my income to lower liability, and ask them if they know of other people who would be good contacts for me.
About The Author:
Ellen Einkauf is the owner of Olympus Training, an equestrian business in Orange County, CA. She teaches hunter/jumper disciplines and cross-trains with a dressage foundation to all levels of horses and riders for the sport of riding. She also specializes in injured rider recovery and re-balancing techniques.
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