Alisha Murray

Alisha is one of our SEED participants, which offers tailored support for young people in Perth & Kinross to explore self employment, start or grow a business. She runs AM Equine Services.

Getting Started

Alisha started riding when she was about three years old, having weekly lessons at stables and getting her first pony aged around 6 or 7. Eventually she began competing, got new ponies, gained her qualifications and started working.

Then the yard she worked at lost the land and Alisha was made redundant. She says: “I was toying with the idea of starting up myself but didn’t know whether it could work—my old boss was really encouraging so I put the feelers out, contacted the local riding clubs, got some good feedback so went ahead and did it! Its all stemmed from there.”

The Enterprise Journey

Alisha has mainly grown her business through word of mouth, which she says has gone really well. She has also found posting on Facebook to be helpful in spreading the word through friends of friends and building a local network.

Like many small businesses, she has been impacted by the rising cost of living, with the cost of fuel being her biggest challenge. “When fuel costs were at their highest, I questioned how viable things were and was really glad to see them come down. What I do for my clients is a necessary service, keeping the horses fit and healthy, so this side hasn’t been impacted, but I do think that people who would have had that bit of spare money perhaps aren’t spending it now,” she says.

Another challenge is simply keeping on top of all the paperwork involved in running a business! “I find that quite hard to do,” Alisha admits. It’s very easy to think ‘I'll just do it next week’. I think that will probably get harder when the lighter nights come and I’m out riding until late. I use the GrowBiz spreadsheets for this and like them but I need to carve out some time to do paperwork during the week and also ensuring I’m getting time for me too, one to work on!

Ensuring that you have time for you is probably one of the most difficult things to balance as a self-employed person, and Alisha considers not doing this and not saying ‘no’ enough as one of her biggest mistakes when first setting up her business. But she now has some useful advice: “What I've started doing is scoring days in my diary for my time. if I want to fill it, I can.

While there’s been plenty of challenges, there’s been lots of achievements too.

“I’m proud of my qualifications in Horse Care – feels like it was a pretty big achievement to get all them under my belt. It was quite difficult timing because I was at college during lockdown. Especially hard when you're doing a hands on course.

“Winning in competitions is always a good thing, I like coming home with the red rosettes! I’m really proud though of bringing my young horse on to the stage of competing—when he arrived he was completely feral so bringing him on has been challenging but really rewarding too—it feels so much more satisfying to get him to the stage of calmly competing, knowing I’ve done this myself, rather than buying a horse that’s already there.

Support

Alisha is especially grateful to her parents for their help: “My mum basically has been my biggest supporter and my rock. Without her, I probably wouldn't be where I was today. And my dad as well— he puts up with a lot of my mad ideas and has supported me taking me to events up and down the country when I’m sure he’d rather have been in bed on a Sunday morning! Both my parents are self-employed, this has really helped too, knowing that its possible to do this.

She also received the GrowBiz SEED support and grant to help her buy necessary equipment. She says: I’ve liked having this support. It's feels easy and because it's quite informal, we can just chat things over. The fact that you're just an email away is great. If I’ve got any questions, I can ping a quick email, and you're really good at getting back.

“The grant has been really beneficial to me too – every bit of my kit is used every week. The branded wear is really smart and clients have commented about this. The clippers are great quality and its nice planning taking the branded side of things forward. We’ve just bought a horse lorry so I’ll have my logo sign-written on here and also a work van too.

“I’ve added my details to REDS – that’s a nice thing to be on too.”

Looking to the Future

Although Alisha is not working towards any specific net zero goals, she is mindful of the issue of sustainability and has cut down on unnecessary journeys. She would also like to further her education: “Through the Equine Touch Physio course and I’d like to progress to being an accredited coach with my teaching too.”

She has some great advice for any young people considering setting up their own business: “Definitely put the feelers out first, do market research, see if there's a gap for the business that you want to do. I'm glad that I did that, I just didn't just jump into it with both feet, and then realise that actually, there's nobody there, or there's lots of other people doing the same thing.

“And I’d advise people to get organised. I'm naturally quite organised—early on my business was set up through, like, HMRC etc, and I knew what I was doing, I felt I had a solid base by doing these things so I’d definitely suggest that.”

Find out more about the SEED programme here.