Saturday, May 12, 2007

Invest in the Best

5 Top Tips to further/establish your equine career.

Invest in yourself:
If you're looking to improve yourself for a particular field but struggle with the idea of a full time focus on acquiring skills or a piece of paper; consider work and study. For example, I was working on a horse stud and am interested in teaching, so took up a correspondence course for instructing while working. I could do it at my own pace and because it all relates to horses, things I was doing at work (although not directly related to teaching people to ride) were of benefit to me in this study.
Many put off furthering their skills/starting in a new area until they can focus solely on this decision and consequently end up not doing anything at all.

Invest in others:
Make yourself known; get out there. Attend events related to an area you are working or wish to work. It is possible to do so through work, for example I attend horse sales with my job and have received other work through being seen at these sales. People start to recognise you if you get out there often enough and if you're taking the time to get to know them and what they do, you may just find it'll help you in your particular focus.

Invest in education:
Consider saving to invest in furthering your knowledge - books, a particular course, even travel to a particular property or country to focus on a certain discipline. If this is the place where you can get access to the 'experts', then consider going there.

Invest in the future:
Set goals for tasks that would be of benefit for you to have achieved and find ways to learn or master that particular skill. When I first started out working on a stud, through my six weeks of work placement leading up to that employment I did all I could - injections, dealt with the birth of foals, handled the stallions, mares for covers, helped with vetting, feeding. In the last week I concluded the only thing I hadn't done was drive the tractor around the farm... A rather amused boss obliged to this request, also!

Invest in your industry:
Find out if there are any clubs, federations, etc that you can be a part of in a particular industry you want to work/be known. Many of these clubs have a fee which means you're putting money into that industry, proving you're taking it seriously but as an added benefit, you're being informed of events, changes, important things in relation to this field. Also, you're getting to know key people in this industry.


"A horse is like a violin, first it must be tuned, and when tuned it must be accurately played."

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