30/05/2026
Yes to this!
You can see it as working hard for someone else, or you can view it as doing the best you absolutely can to build your own portfolio and reputation, with every opportunity given to you.
So to those kids out there today…… Go above and beyond, but don’t think of it as just for your boss, think of it for yourself! Learn every aspect of the business, learn how to (either positively or negatively!) carry out the work, deal with customers, deal with the back office, learn how to best hone your own craft. Remember If your boss is doing well it will reflect on you and open more doors than you’ll ever know!
We have had many people come through our doors working for us….. the stand out ones that went above and beyond learnt everything and then went off and took it further with their own careers and I look at them now and yes I feel proud, but I also know they worked with pride to take forwards for themselves and it’s these people with this attitude that really flourish and we are just a pathway to setting them up 🤩🙌🏼
Don’t work for Yogi! He’s a slave driver!
I want to pose a genuine discussion point because I think this goes far beyond farriery.
Today I run a successful polo farriery business shoeing around 600 ponies a month. It is busy, physically demanding, and the standards are high. The days can be long and I have a reputation for expecting people to graft. Some people would probably say I expect too much. The thing is, I did not build this business by asking other people to do something I had not already done and continue to do myself.
For seven years I worked for an Argentine farrier doing day work. During those seven years I grafted. I did the early starts, the late finishes, the difficult horses, the pressure, the travel, the weekends, and all the jobs nobody else wanted to do. During that time people regularly told me I was a fool. They told me I was working too hard for another man. They told me I was building somebody else’s business. They told me I should stop grafting and go and do my own thing.
What they failed to understand was that I wasn’t just building his business. I was building my reputation.
Every horse I shod, every client I met, every problem I solved, every standard I maintained, every extra mile I went was creating something far more valuable than a day’s wage. It was building trust. The clients were watching. The vets were watching. The managers were watching. The industry was watching. Most importantly, they were deciding whether I was somebody they could rely on.
When my former boss retired, many of those clients came with me. Then word spread that I was now running the business and the company tripled in size. That did not happen because I suddenly became a better farrier overnight. It happened because I had already spent years earning trust before the opportunity arrived.
That is the part I think we are losing.
It feels like we have created a culture where people want the reward before the reputation, the autonomy before the apprenticeship, the income before the graft, and the status before the standards. People want the outcome, but they resent the process that creates it.
I currently have a guy working for me who grafts. He works hard, turns up, takes responsibility and is quietly building his own reputation in exactly the same way I once did. And do you know what some people say to him? They tell him he is a mug for working that hard for somebody else. The exact same thing they told me.
The reality is that he earns a minimum of £6,000 per month. On top of that he has a company vehicle, accommodation and bonuses. When you look at the entire package, he is operating somewhere around the top 5% of earners in the country. He is well looked after and well rewarded for what he does.
Yet some people still see him as the fool.
What fascinates me is that many of the people giving that advice are often earning significantly less themselves. They see the effort but not the opportunity. They see the workload but not the trajectory. They see today’s sacrifice but not tomorrow’s reward. They complain they don’t have enough work but refuse to graft.
At the same time, some people look at me, look at the number of horses going through the business, look at the turnover, and become disgruntled. They see the money coming in and assume they understand the picture. But they rarely see the other side of it.
They don’t see me getting a phone call at 4am on a Sunday because a horse they shod for me has lost a shoe and is playing that morning. They don’t see me getting out of bed and driving across the county because ultimately the responsibility lands on my shoulders.
They don’t see the horse I have to go back and shoe again because the vet wasn’t happy with the balance achieved by somebody else. They don’t see the difficult conversations when things go wrong. They don’t see the clients who expect answers from me, not from the employee who originally did the horse.
They don’t see the invoices that can take months to be paid while the lads get paid on time every single week. They don’t see the diary management, the logistics, the staff management, the constant schedule changes, the phone calls, the messages, and the pressure of keeping everything moving in an industry where tomorrow’s plan can change five times before lunchtime.
They don’t see the horse that suddenly needs doing at 10pm when everybody else has gone home. They don’t see the nights spent worrying about whether enough work is booked in, whether standards are being maintained, whether clients are happy, whether vehicles are running, and whether everybody’s wages are covered.
What many people want is the reward attached to ownership.
What they don’t want is the responsibility attached to ownership.
The reality is that the reward exists because of the responsibility. One cannot exist without the other.
The people who laughed at me years ago were evaluating my life one week at a time. I was evaluating it one decade at a time. That, I think, is the real difference.
This discussion is not really about hard work. It is about time horizons.
Many people look at a hard-working apprentice or employee and ask, “Why are you doing all that for somebody else?”
But perhaps that is the wrong question.
The better question is, “What are they building while they are doing it?”
Because some people are only earning a wage. Others are building a reputation, a network, a skillset, a client base, and a future.
Of course, not every hard job is a good opportunity. Of course, employers can exploit people. Of course, some situations are genuinely unfair. That is not what I am talking about.
I am talking about situations where someone is paid well, exposed to high-level work, held to high standards, surrounded by opportunity, and given access to a network that would take years to build on their own.
At that point, is the graft really the problem?
Or have we simply lost the ability to recognise when hard work is an investment?
Have we forgotten the value of apprenticeship? Of working your way up?
Have we become so focused on immediate comfort that we no longer recognise compounding opportunity?
Have we confused being tested with being used?
Have we forgotten that trust, reputation and credibility are earned before they are rewarded?
Because from where I stand, the order used to be fairly simple.
Learn first. Graft second. Build trust third. Earn reputation fourth. Then enjoy the rewards.
Now it often feels like people want to start at the reward and negotiate backwards.
Maybe I am wrong.
But I would genuinely be interested to hear what others think.
Has the culture changed?
Or am I simply becoming the old bloke who sounds exactly like the generation before him?
