Of Birthdays and Goals

Goals are fun.  They require emotion and time. The flashy goals, like a medal or a judge promotion, look great on Facebook. But honestly, they aren’t what shape us. Shaping falls to everyday, mundane goals.

 

I recently completed a flashy goal. Last summer, I began training to become a USEF R dressage judge—the third step on the national dressage judging path. As of August 22, I am licensed to judge at USEF/USDF-recognized shows up to 4th level. It’s a goal that takes a village, and one I’ve worked hard to achieve.

 

While I was chipping away at this flashy goal, a more mundane goal has slipped past, unacknowledged.

 

I signed the lease that created Straight Forward Dressage on Memorial Day, 2005 — 21 years ago. SFD is old enough to buy me an adult beverage.

 

Back in 2015, around SFD's 10th anniversary, I wrote a blog entitled Birthdays, Boyfriends, and Business that mentioned that, like most horse pros, I didn’t set out to become a small business owner. I had no idea where this path would lead. But, as fans of narrative-style video games know, if you take the step that shows up in front of you, you go somewhere. SFD and I are here, still walking the path. This is a huge accomplishment.

 

When I started SFD, I had business goals, which, like the marketing gurus encourage, I’ve plastered everywhere. They are not the flashiest goals, but they have guided many business decisions. In case you’ve missed them, here they are again:

 

 1) Teach using a straightforward curriculum that breaks dressage into logical chunks, enabling riders to really learn this sport.

2) Create a bright spot in riders' lives, where they can enjoy their sport in a judgement-free zone.

 

But then, there were other goals, some flashy and some mundane, that I didn’t make public. Looking back, the goals that made the biggest impact were the least flashy. Here’s a rundown of that list.

 

• ·    I wanted to train horses to compete at the FEI level. Twenty-one years ago, with a barn full of just-backed babies and naughty horses, that goal felt miles away. By prioritizing my education, which is a pretty mundane goal, and the support of some amazing owners and fellow trainers, I’ve achieved this somewhat flashy goal. 
•      I wanted to train and care for horses with enough skill to be respected by my peers. This is another mundane entry on the goal list, but one that I believe I do.
• ·    I wanted to run a low-debt or debt-free business. This is a 100% not-flashy goal, but one I proudly do. Ironically, the constant barrage of business-loan-offering spammers just can’t seem to understand this goal.
•     I wanted to be in a national equine publication. This flashy goal has happened for me as a writer, as an interviewee, as a subject of an article, and a few times as stock photos. The stock-photo appearances are always fun, as I usually find out about them from others.
•      I wanted to publish a viral blog, which I did in 2020. 

 

Looking at this list, the two goals that shaped my career most were the rather unglamorous choices I’ve made around avoiding debt and prioritizing my education. Sure, writing a blog that went viral and winning championships are great for the ego, but flashy goals are a bit flash-in-the-pan.  They really haven’t changed SFD’s direction.

 

The mundane goal around debt was part choice, part necessity. I started SFD without family money and with personal and education debt. I decided early on that SFD needed to be financially self-sustaining, and if it wasn’t, I needed to pivot or move on to another career.

 

This goal required me to see SFD as a separate entity.  It made me learn, very gradually, about “Ange the small business owner,” who is a very different person than “Ange, the dressage instructor/trainer.”  Over time, I’ve evolved from seeing myself as a trainer-who-has-a-business to a small business owner. I love teaching and training at SFD, but first I need to serve the health of the business. Because healthy businesses survive.

 

As a small business owner, I have written about how investing in the health of the business requires investing in everyone, not just me. Supporting my staff’s goals has been really fun. Seeing students thrive is cool, and to a large part, expected. Seeing your assistant trainer earn her L, that’s even cooler.

 

I’ve also learned that I need to block out time each year to work on the business. Because, in the words of James Clear, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” This 100% applies to businesses. 

 

Which meant that, during some seasons, I prioritized my education as a business owner over my education as a trainer or as an instructor.  Sometimes that decision is easy. When I was going through the most physically draining parts of my breast cancer treatment, I wasn’t up to riding 6-8 horses and teaching 6 lessons a day, so I pivoted to working on the business more. This has paid off in spades. Now that I’m strong enough to ride and teach more, SFD’s systems are at a higher level.

 

Unexpectedly, becoming a better business owner improved my teaching and riding skills. Dressage is a competitive sport, with subjective comparison woven into it.  That comparison easily sneaks into how we view our business growth and stability.  But Facebook rarely tells the whole story. Rather, it loads us with unnecessary emotional baggage.  I had to learn to objectively monetize my teaching and horse management skills separate from the emotional “am I good enough” standard.

 

Keeping my business owner persona separate has also helped clarify my “pivot or move on” line.  I really enjoy working with horses, and did long before I ever signed the lease. If the stress of being a small business owner begins to infringe on that joy, then it’s time to consider making changes. This clarity empowers me to move on if running SFD threatens my love of these wonderful, kind, and willing animals.

 

One big stress around every small business is making sure the math is mathing. Every few years, I make a list of “what SFD needs to provide to everyone (clients, staff, and owner) to continue.”  Sometimes that list triggers a rate increase. Sometimes it causes a “pivot” in SFD’s offerings. Some pivots have failed impressively. Others, sometimes things I didn’t think would work, become solid, sustaining parts of my business. I figured out early that my emotional attachment to the pivot rarely had anything to do with if it worked or not.

 

One pivot that has worked extremely well, despite my organizational growing pains, is our Schoolmaster Program. It also supports SFD’s mundane goal of teaching dressage as a skill, not a randomly-given talent. The Schoolmaster Program started as an observation and a question.

 

The observation was that entry-level opportunities for people interested in dressage are rare.  Buying a horse to learn dressage on is silly, as the horse riders need in the first couple of years of their dressage education is usually different from the horse riders will grow into a few years later. But lesson programs built around dressage-trained horses are few and far between, because the cost of supporting patient, dressage-trained horses and instructors is high. 

 

The question was, if I created this program, factoring in all the costs, which would price it higher than most lesson-horse riding programs, which often lower costs using group lessons and field board, would it fly? I worked out what I would need to make this financially and emotionally doable. Three years ago, I pitched it to the horse world.

 

It flew.  And continues to fly.

 

It has grown into a program that meets a need in our dressage community, and a program I’m proud that SFD offers.

 

So where does SFD go from here?  I’m not 100% sure, but I do see a few steps ahead and a few goals in the distance. I’m looking forward to the journey.