20 brutal indicators your horse coaching practice is evolving.

Launching your own horse coaching practice is not for the faint of heart. The early days of your endeavor are full of excitement. Your journey gains traction through press releases and friend's referrals. You feel like this is going somewhere, it feels doable, yay!

Yet, after a while, something strange happens. The initial excitement fades as you enter the brutal doldrums of the 'inbetween'.  In the doldrums you are neither a fledgling practice, nor quite successful yet either. Ugh.

This is a peculiar place to be. The slow place can make you doubt yourself and your product. You wonder if you were wrong to believe your great ideas were worth building a business around. Are people truly needing your service or was it all an illusion. Will it ever get better?

Starting your own business, no matter what field you are in, is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. In 2019, the failure rate of startups was around 90%. 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year, and 70% in their 10th year. More than 95 percent of startups fall short of their initial projections.

Jaiks, getting heart palpitations and clammy palms yet?

Relax. Remember, you DO have what it takes, but what matters is where you fix your gaze.

17 Signs of brutal growing pains.
The following experiences are completely normal when failing forward in the doldrum phase of launching a business. They are NOT signs you are failing. They are growing pains as you transition from ugly duckling practice to powerful swan practitioner.  They are also signs that you need some healthy space between you and your practice, so that you can sustain yourself through this awkward adolescence phase of business building.

1. Organizing fancy events, workshops, kick offs, that you launch, then absolutely hate and vow to never repeat.
2. Printing new logos on business card and tshirts, only to realize that they are not right, and in the trash they go.
3. Developing a new service with lots of enthusiasm without it ever getting traction with the general public after which you abandon it, while hanging your head in shame.
4. Building a new website, spending hours on it, only to realize that it sucks, and needs a complete overhaul, preferably by a professional that you cannot afford.
5. Obsessing over whether your tagline is an attractor or a repellent to your ideal clients.
6. Reading an article about colors for businesses, and deciding the colors you chose for your business are completely wrong and must change tonight.
7. Wondering if McDonalds is hiring because you feel you are a complete disaster, an epic failure, and your practice will never be successful.
8. Getting green with envy after you see a peer or competitor in your field post about a successful retreat or client review.
9. Coming across a website of a new business in your field that just opened up in the next town over, causing you to get a panic attack because they might steal all your clients after which you will die in a lonely puddle of sad business failure tears.
10. Trying to please all clients and offer all services, just because you can and because you have someone willing to pay for it.
11. Accepting a client just to keep the lights on and the bills paid, but secretly being really annoyed by having to work with them.
12. Working your tail off and feeling strung out in a million directions, feeling like you are walking around like a chicken without a head, a fraction of your former self.
13. Self doubt, self loathing, self flagellating and taking everything personally, despite knowing it is unhealthy and unproductive.
14. Realizing you truly absolutely hate doing taxes and are super bad at keeping track of receipts, wondering when the IRS might target you.
15. Snapping at your partner because things didn't really go as planned with a client and you lost their business, even though you didn't like them, so you should be happy, but it still pisses you off and it feels like a personal rejection which hurts like hell.
16. Reading an article of a famous sales guru who gives practical yet highly irrelevant advice, and still being very tempted to implement his techniques into your business, simply because he is famous and you are not, so he probably knows better than you, after all, you are just a noob who knows nothing.
17. Sleepless nights wondering if your practice will ever see the light, or will be doomed to rot on the trash heap of failed business practices.

All these thoughts and feelings and sensations are a normal part of early practice launching. Building a practice is rarely smooth sailing all the way through. There are very few businesses that became an instant overnight success. Most have been percolating for years, with business owners amassing skill, knowledge and experience well before the idea to launch a business was ever born. Remember that as you stumble, trip and fall your way forward through the doldrums.

*****WARNING
Sometimes motivated entrepreneurs take their skills too far. The more driven you are, the more likely you have what it takes to build a practice from scratch. However, the more driven you are, the more like you also suffer from anxiety around failure, so the more you have to lose mentally.

Give yourself time. If you came to the conclusion that having your own practice is a good idea, then you have a spirit with a proclivity for obsessively hard work. Make sure you understand how to stay physically and mentally balanced and healthy while you embark on this path.

Here are 5 tips to protect your sanity while launching your own practice.

1. Do not wrap up your identity in your practice. You do not want to teach your mind that if your practice fails,  this means you personally are a complete wreck of failure. Keep a healthy separation. Repeat after me: Your practice is what you DO; it does not define who you ARE.
2. YOU and your family have priority; not your practice. If you experience obsession over success or failure of your practice that prevents you from enjoying time with your loved ones, it is time to reevaluate priorities in your life and make healthier choices. 
3. Have an exit plan. Know what you will do to take care of your needs (and those of your family) should the practice go under. Don't gamble, don't stick your head in the sand. Make educated decisions, be prepared, and be realistic.
4. Be conservative with your expenses. Investing in your company is fine. Using savings to carry your practice through temporary setbacks is also fine and sometimes needed. However, invest based on your practice's needs, and not on your wants. I used to work for a start up company that was under water financially, yet the CEO bought a brand new wide screen TV to help the team stay on top of the workload. Nobody ever looked at that TV, and a few years later the company was kaput. Keep it simple. Luxuries are often just a trick to make you feel more successful than you are or to attempt to impress other people with your financial success.
5. Be realistic and don't bullshit yourself. Are you able to pull this off, or is working for someone else's practice a better fit for you? Is this practice ultimately worth the brutal sacrifice you are making? Is it in alignment with your purpose and life view? Why are you doing it? Are you trying to make your parents proud,  impress your boyfriend, prove your husband wrong? Make sure your motivation is pure, authentic and worth wile, or toss the entire practice in the trash in favor for an endeavor that truly fits you well.

KEEP GOING. YOU ARE DOING GREAT.
But if you love what you are doing, and your intuition says you are on the right track, keep your eye on that Northern Star, and do not give up just yet. Be realistic, but if it feels right, keep on going, keep on trucking, keep on failing forward. When encountering set backs, take a deep breath and try again in the morning. Soon you may move from the doldrums into the space where fair winds blow your practice toward clients who need you and your amazing practice. For some of you the payoff is completely worth the brutal winds of erratic change. For some of you it isn't. Know yourself and if it feels truly right; KEEP GOING. YOU ARE DOING GREAT.

EquineFailures
Here are some of EquineFlow's failures, ahum, evolutions in the 12 years from 2009 to 2021. Can you see the multiple identity crises EquineFlow went through? Click on each image to read the description of what the heck I was trying to accomplish. I still have a headache from that, ugh. 

However, for the past 3 years or so, EquineFlow has entered a space of fair winds, in which the scope has narrowed further as the fog lifted for where the core of EquineFlow must lie. Will it stop evolving? I highly doubt it. Change is the nature of the game and I enjoy how EquineFlow grows where humanity flows.

So moral of the story; breathe, smile and enjoy the wild ride. Know your limits; don't give up too soon and certainly not too late. And if you need help, shoot me a line at monique@equineflow.com. Bon voyage!